Restoration and the Master Plan
By way of a quick review, this teaching started when my church recently changed its name. We made that change because we wanted a name that better reflected our destiny and values. We feel like God has been leading us into a new level of our destiny and into some new areas. Over and over in the Bible, whenever a person came into a new destiny, there was often a name change associated with that to describe the calling, to describe the destiny.
This "new destiny" does not seem to be isolated to just my church. The church at large is also moving into some new levels of penetration, into the different realms in our culture in order to advance the kingdom of God. But it is also deeply impacting our local congregation, so the leadership there felt that as God calls us into a new place, into a new level, we need a new name to describe and simply to define who we are and what God has called us to do and be. So, we're calling ourselves Community of Grace. We're sort of moving into that and we're beginning to lay the foundation.
As we did this, we wanted to give our members something easy to remember what is important in the House of Grace, by giving them as an acronym for what G.R.A.C.E. stands for -- five values that we have. (This teaching was originally developed just for my own church to underscore our church values. But since these five values are kingdom values and are universal to many churches in the body Of Christ, I am making this teaching more generally available. Of course, each church will have its own unique calling, and that calling may define some other values in addition to these five. Any given church may end up placing a much lower emphasis on some of the values I am talking about, but they will embrace them to one degree or another. That is why I am going ahead and sharing these five values with you in this teaching series.)
The first letter, G, stands for "God's presence" and our pursuing that. A better name might even be "glory chasers," because we are to pursue His glory, to chase after Him. If you don't have His presence, you don't have much of anything. Our highest value is going after, pushing in, pursuing His presence. We talked how to do that and some things related to that.
Now it is time to move on to talk about the "R" in grace. It stands for "Restoration" or "restoring lives." And that is very important in the body of Christ, as we tend to be sinful and imperfect beings who need to be redeemed and restored. The redemption part was accomplished when Jesus died for our sins and rose again. We have instant forgiveness and are made pure and holy in God's eyes when we believe in Jesus. But the restoration part is not instant. In fact, it usually takes quite a while because God often tends to work through a process.
This value of Restoration is based on the premise that God really does have a plan for each of our lives. God does have a purpose, a plan. This is a foundational thing. When God made and created you, He also designed you. He did it on purpose and with intention, and you are not an accident. You are not a mistake of God or a boo-boo of some sort. Some people think because they may have gotten on planet earth by illegitimate means, that makes them illegitimate people. That is not true! God's not limited by legitimacy or illegitimacy. That statement may mess with your theology, but the Bible says that God planned everybody. That is the premise we focus upon, that everybody who lives on planet earth, God knew about in advance.
God planned a perfect will for each life and wants to give each person an invitation. Now, that's the foundational principle by which we operate on. When we first begin to walk in this area of restoration, we didn't really know what the calling of God was bringing us into. Fourteen years ago, our church was a mess and we had to go through a conflict resolution process. That is when we began to find who we are, we began to set a very generic statement of purpose. We were just here to impact our city and its surrounding communities with the love of God.
About four years into this, we began to see that there was an anointing upon us for healing and restoration. We developed a new statement of purpose because we had pulled back and turned inward so that God could heal us. Now it was time to begin moving forward again. We began to realize that some of the people in our congregation were developing into ministers of healing. So we began to say, "OK. Let's be very intentional in what we do and how we do it." In 1995, we developed a new statement of purpose. The first couple of lines say this:
We are here as a church to equip you, to discern and to carry out God's call on your life, by accepting you where you are and restoring you to be completely all in Christ.
The first thing we have to embrace in restoration is that God really does have a plan. We muts believe, "God really does have a call on my life. I am not a mistake; I am not an accident." God really planned you and has a purpose for your life.
The word of God says this in Psalm 139:13-16, "You made my whole being. You formed me in my mother's body. I praise You because You made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What You have done is wonderful. I know this very well. You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother's body. When I was put together there, You saw my body as it was being formed. All the days planned for me were written in Your book before I was one day old."
There is one phrase in the middle of that which says, "What You have done is wonderful and I know this very well." God wants you to know this very well: He thought about you. He planned you. He designed you. Now some of us are still mad at God for that one. Why did you give me the parents that You gave me? Why was I born when I was born, where I was born. How come You gave me the color of hair that I did. How come You gave me the genes that I would lose my hair?
Some of us have been designed with things we'd rather not have, and these may be issues we have to address with God. But the first thing is that we must embrace that God really does know everything. His design and everything about your life is going to fit His call upon your life. The first thing that we have to embrace is that God really did do things with intention and on purpose. We just take faith that God's wisdom is far above our limited human perspective.
Sometimes, some people really blow it in their lives. They just mess up horribly. Then they say, "How can God ever use me? Look at all I've done! How can God ever, ever use me?" There is not any mistake that's so big, so huge and massive that God's love and His grace can't heal, restore and make new. That is a good thing about God, isn't it?
The first thing is that God does have a wonderful plan for your life. The second thing is that there is accountability about following the plan. God did not just say, "Here's a plan and I hope you will be able to follow it." Then one day He says, "Did you happen to follow the plan that I gave you? Oh, you didn't. Okay, well, that's all right." Nope, it does not happen that way. God really expects and wants us to follow the plan.
One of the roles of the church is to help you to follow the plan. That is because one day you're going to stand before God. It says in 2 Cor 5:10 that "we must all appear," and that word is a rather inclusive term. We will "all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad."
God entrusts us with His most valuable possession. He has entrusted us with our own lives and we are valuable and precious to God. When you look at the stories in the gospel, you see in the parables of Jesus, He speaks about faithfulness to what God has entrusted to us. He talks about the guy with the talents, how He gave one five, one two talents, one, one talent. I don't know why he gave one five! I mean the guy that had two said, "What? How come you didn't give me five?" It's up to God as to what God gives you. But, it's up to you to be faithful with what He gives you. If He gave you two, you don't have to be faithful with five, just with two. Whatever God has given to you, whatever He has entrusted to you in your life, your time, your abilities, your talents, whatever God has given to you, He just wants you to be faithful with what He gave you, not with what He gave someone else.
Again, the first step in restoration is accepting that God carefully and intentionally designed us, that we are not an accident or a mistake, and that He has a purpose for our lives. And that purpose is why He designed us the way we turned out. We have been carefully designed according to His plan and purpose. We need to stop disliking God's design and stop complaining about it and we need to begin to allow God to show us what His purpose is and to teach us how to walk it out.
Right Standing Before God
A part the church's objective is that when you one day stand before God, you will be able to give a good report. One role of the church is to help you be a success, to help you stand before God and give a good report. 1 Cor 3:12-15 says, "Now anyone who builds on that foundation may use gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But there is going to come a time of testing at the judgment day to see what kind of work each builder has done. Everyone's work will be put through the fire to see whether or not it keeps its value. If the work survives the fire, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builders themselves will be saved, but like someone escaping through a wall of flames."
In short, the Bible says that our life is filled with investment: investments of our time, investments of our talents, investments of our skills, of our abilities, investments of our money, our resources. We are going through life investing all of these things. And one day God is going to hold us accountable for what we do with what we have. One day you are going to cross that realm and enter into the glory. Some of the things you've invested in will have eternal value, the gold, the silver, the jewels. Some things will go through the fire and when you get on the other side of eternity, they will stick with you and stay with you forever and ever. But, there are other things we have invested in ourselves and they will be burned up and gone when we get on the other side. How are you going to spend eternity?
Some people think they are bad enough just to make it. God says "Listen, there are a lot of things, if you'll invest yourself into, that will last forever." Therefore we will be held accountable for the choices we make and how we live our lives.
The church has a role in helping with that process of accountability, so that you will finish well. Our role is help you realize that God's will for your life does not wrap around you. It wraps around Him so that you can become His channel of blessing. It is a major paradigm shift for people, I know. But it's supposed to be wrapped around Him and Who He is. It's all about Him! It's all about Jesus! Therefore, there is an accountability for following the plan. We will be accountable when we stand before God's throne. And in order to help prepare us for that, the church needs to begin to hold us accountable while we are still here on this earth. That way, if we start to take a wrong turn, there is someone to let us know and to help us get back on the path.
One of the things the church needs to do is to help people prepare for their destinies. That often involves the restoration of life for wholeness. God is going to hold you accountable for that plan but the church's job is to help you to do that plan. Therefore, there's going to have to come a process where you can do it. That process is what we call "restoration." In other words, you need to come to that place where you can do what God has called you to do, and the church needs to help you to begin to look like Jesus, so you can do what Jesus did. That is the objective of this restoration process. It is to transform your fallen nature and your faults and failures and past hurts, so you can begin to look more like Jesus and less like you the old you.
Romans 8:29 says, "For God knew His people in advance and chose them that they might look His Son." Therefore, the church has an agenda, but it happens to be God's agenda, so it's okay. If God wants you to look like Jesus, then what should the church do about it? It must help you look like Jesus, to become like Him. The church needs to do whatever it takes for you to look like Jesus. I love John Wimber, one of the founding fathers of the Vineyard movement. He said, "Our job is to take people wherever they are and make them thoroughly Christian."
Along with that, the church needs to help you come into wholeness. We have various ways that that happens. Sometimes, we are very kind about this and encourage them gently: "Come on in, the water's fine. You can wade in. Yes, wade in here, ooh yes, ooh yes. Doesn't that feel good?" Other times, the church needs to be a bit more forceful with a person, to sort of shove them into that water instead of trying to coax them in. Whatever it takes to help you, that is what the church needs to be willing to do for you. That is because God has given us an agenda to be like Jesus.
Eph 4:13 says "the work must continue until we all are joined together in the same faith and the same knowledge of the Son. We must become like a mature person, growing until we become like Christ, having His profession." This is restoration. Restoration is simply to become like the Lord Jesus Christ.
The world out there is full of hurting and broken people, isn't it? You do not have to go too far to find them. You live with them. They live next door to you. They live behind you. They live around you. You work with them. I mean, the world is filled with hurting and broken people! We will always have something to do because the world is filled with them. These are people who have somehow gotten "off track."
Our job is to help people get back on track. Not only does the world hurt, bruise, and batter people; but the church does a very good job of that, too. There are a whole lot of wounded soldiers who have been beat up and battered by their own churches.
God is calling His church to be a place where people can find healing instead of a place which damages them. One of the best ways to do this is to simply start where people are, not where we want them to be. And a good way to accomplish this is to provide a healing environment. In other words, the church becomes a place of acceptance, a place with a measure of tolerance, without compromising the standards and the principles of God. It just loves people where they are. It is simply allowing people to be in process, allowing people not to be perfect. It is allowing people to make mistakes, allowing people to fail. Moreover, it is helping them work through the process.
If you do not have that kind of environment, then nobody really gets healed, because everybody will hide their stuff so they won't get beat up for having it. You can only get healed when things are brought into the light. Therefore, if it has not brought you to the light, you are not going to be healed. If you have an environment where it is not safe to be "in process," or if people can't be who they are with what's going on in their lives, then they are not going to get the help they need from God.
If the church is not a safe place to grow and develop, then a person will go to church and put on their "church face." When they are asked, "How are you doing?" they will reply, "Oh, I'm just doing wonderful. Don't you think God is great? Oh, yes He is!" But inside, they just feel horrible, and things are falling apart. But, they don't dare tell anyone because others might think they are unspiritual. Others will think that the person doesn't have the goods. So they want everyone to always think that they are a good Christian. So they say, "Oh, great! Things couldn't be better!"
Why don't they just say, "This week stinks! I've been going through Hell at home and you wouldn't believe what I've been facing here." Many churches make it very difficult to be honest about this type of thing. They make it difficult for the hurting person to get some prayer for their problems. We need to make church a safe place where hurting people can be real and transparent, and get help for their problems instead of having to hide them. We need to have a place where they can say, "God, I'm in this mess. I've messed up," and know that people will love them and accept them even though they have failed.
There is another thing about restoration: restoration has to permit healthy confrontation. I know that word "confrontation" is a bad word for some of you and you would like to run from it. You don't want anything to do with confrontation, because primarily all you know is unhealthy confrontation. Therefore, you label all confrontation as "bad." However, there is a place for righteous, holy confrontation. In fact, there is supposed to be a climate in the church that's conducive for that. That is what the word of God says. In 2 Tim 4:2 Paul is speaking to Timothy and says, "Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction."
Some people hang onto the words "reprove" and "rebuke." But did you see the words "with great patience and instruction?" Some people just miss that part. There is a reason and purpose behind godly confrontation. It will help people to grow, help them to develop; it is not just about pointing out their mistakes. It is there to help them move to the next level. It will help them to mature, and that is the reason we do it.
I will tell you this: you will not grow without confrontation. You won't. Church is not to be a "confrontation free zone." However, the rule in the house is that all confrontation has to be in love, because when love is present, there is safety. For 1 John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."
Let me say it again: a "safe place" is not a place free from confrontation, but free from condemnation. Sometimes during a confrontation, someone might say, "I'm not feeling very safe right now." With me, people do not always feel safe. So, I ask the question, "Do you feel confronted or do you feel condemned?" If you feel confronted, I say, "Good. I have done my job." If you feel condemned, I have to check my heart and ask myself if there is something coming from me that is condemning. Healthy and godly confrontation will never condemn the person.
Most of the time, when the person feels condemned, it is because they have perceived what was said through their filters, because they have an unloving spirit and do not feel loved, a spirit of self-condemnation, self pity, all of the things that simply feed into that. But people won't grow without confrontation, they just won't. So part of the restoration process has to include godly and healthy confrontation that moves the person in the right direction.
That is what the restoration process is about: helping people get off the wrong path and start moving in the right direction.
The Restoration Process
In our last lesson, we talked about how many believers are not walking in their full potentials. They are not moving in the fullness of their destinies because they have some areas of dysfunction in their lives that keeps them from doing so. Many believers have been hurt or wounded or treated unfairly in their pasts; and those past things can affect their ability to respond to God and enter into the fullness of all He has for them.
Most believers do their best to cover these things up, to push them below the surface so people won't know about them, so they won't look bad and so they won't have to feel embarrassed. They are like little land mines buried in the ground, seemingly harmless until someone or something steps on them. Then they explode. They cause the person to react in inappropriate ways or to strongly feel inappropriate emotions. They bring torment. God does not want to cover these things up and hide them. Instead, He wants to diffuse them. He wants to bring total healing and restoration to past hurts and to current issues. He wants to bring us to a place of maturity where we can live in his peace and joy.
Some of us hide these past issues pretty well and look like we have it all together even when we don't. Others are so strongly affected by them that they have problems functioning in certain areas of their lives. But most of us have some issues in our lives that God is still dealing with, so we need to create an atmosphere in our churches that allows people to cooperate with God in the process of addressing and resolving these issues. We need to make our churches a safe place to be in process, a safe place to learn to grow and mature in the Lord.
One of the ways the church fosters recovery is to create an atmosphere where it is safe to be yourself, where it is safe to struggle with some issues that you are in the process of overcoming. Some people have these types of thoughts about themselves: "If you really knew me, you wouldn't like me. If you really knew me, you'd reject me. If you really knew all about me, you would not have anything to do with me. If you knew who I was, if you knew my history, if you knew my past, if you knew those things, if you knew what was going on in my mind, if you knew all those things, you would have nothing to do with me!"
That is usually the enemy bombarding our minds. So what the church needs to do is to create an environment that says that even if though we know all about you, we love you and we will accept you. Our job is to help you to work through the process of restoration and healing. Let me tell you, you will never fulfill your destiny without that. I mean, all of your ups and downs are all a part of God shaping you to fulfill your destiny.
Do you think anyone can fulfill their destiny without going through some ups and downs? No, because the ups and downs are where we grow. We grow when we ride through these things. I am reminded of Joseph.
If we look at the peaks and valleys Joseph experienced in his life, we see that he started out pretty good. He had some incredible dreams from God, and probably felt pretty good about himself. He told his dad and then his brothers, "I had this dream and you guys were bowing down in front of me. Isn't that great?" They were not quite so happy. His dad gave him a good rebuke. The brothers basically said, "We're going to take this guy out." And they did! They took him out where he ended up in a very low time, thrown into a pit and sold into slavery and taken into Egypt.
He was sold and went through hardship and trials thinking, "I've got these dreams. I have these visions of what has to happen. This doesn't seem to be fitting the course here." He eventually got to Potiphar's house and, all of a sudden, he gained favor in the house. Potiphar put him in charge of this and in charge of that. At that point, he probably felt good about himself.
But he ended up with too much favor in the house, so much that Potiphar's wife noticed him. That only got him into some pretty serious trouble where he was falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison. So he went into a high point in Egypt, then he went into a low point and got tossed into prison. I can imagine him sitting there in the prison wondering, "What am I going to do now? It doesn't seem to fit the dreams. It doesn't seem to fit everything that God gave me. I've lost my track. I've gotten off track here. I will never be used by God."
All of a sudden he started to feel good about himself again, because he got raised to a position of authority in the prison, orchestrating prisoners. You know the story where the cupbearer and the baker got tossed into prison. He interpreted their dreams and he did so accurately. He told the cupbearer, "When you get out, tell everyone about me, and get me out of this place." The cupbearer said, "Sure, I'll do it." Of course, he forgot -- he had divine amnesia. He did not say anything for a couple of years until it was time, after Pharaoh had his dream.
And all this time, Joseph was going up and down, up and down, up and down. But where did he grow? Where was his character being built? It wasn't at the high spots, but when he was working through the process; that's when he grew. That is when he developed. That is when character was built in. That's when he was able to stand the test.
So when you look back at those hard times and you look at those hardships when all you wanted to do was escape the problems, you realize that that is what made you what you are. That is where character was put into you. That is where the stability and growth and maturity came from!
I didn't say this was fun. I said this is where character is developed. You think, "God, could we do this any other way?" The answer is "No." We don't just grow naturally on our own; we need a little bit of pressure to do so. God knows that about us, so He is very able to help supply the pressure that we need to grow us and to mature us.
Getting rid of our baggage is the part of the maturing process. That's why God sometimes takes His time in getting us through things. In fact, the more time He takes for you to spend in the dungeon, probably the greater place of elevation He's going to bring you. He had to keep Joseph around to a place where He could use him. What if Joseph had gotten out when the cupbearer left? I mean, what would have happened? Would he have fulfilled his destiny? What would have he done? He would have gone back to his family, which would have caused all kinds of problems in God's plan for him to keep the family alive in the time of famine. It would have also caused some problems in his family. First of all, Jacob would be saying, "I thought you were dead!" And it would have been a mess reuniting with his brothers when he still had all those unresolved issues with them because of what they did to him. He came from a dysfunctional family and would be going back home to one. Things would have gotten worse when the famine hit. They would have starved to death, this dysfunctional family. They never would have fulfilled their purpose and their destiny. That's why God had to keep Joseph there.
Do you know what it is like when God keeps you at that "growth place" where you don't want to be?. Am I speaking to you here? Okay God! Oh! But it's part of the process that God takes us through to mature us and to prepare us for our destiny. That part -- preparation for our destiny -- is really important. You see, we were not just created to walk on this earth and take up space and maybe do something that would be meaningful to someone. We were created by God for a specific purpose, to participate with Him in His kingdom plans.
Resoration is important, but it is not the end goal. The purpose of restoration is not just to get your head above water, to keep you from drowning and to make you feel a bit more comfortable. For a lot of people it's, "I just want to survive tomorrow. I just want to get past next week." And so, a lot of our recovery, healing, inner healing, and all the stuff that we do is simply to give people enough to survive so that they can get to square one.
But, there's life beyond recovery. There is a destiny. God just doesn't get you to square one, get your head above water, so you can now just wade. He wants you to swim. He wants you to fly. God wants to bring you to new heights.
We will talk about that more in our next lesson.
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