Just Be 30 Day Challenge Michelle Gott Kim

Just Be 30-Day Challenge

September 21, 2020 Michelle Gott

Just BE Restored – Day Twenty-One

Webster says ‘Restored’ means to bring back into existence or use; reestablish; to bring back to a state of health, soundness or vigor; to give back, make return or restitution of (anything taken away or lost)

Synonyms: recover, reclaim, rebuild, repair, revive, rescue, refurbish, reinstate, fix, replace, return, hand back, redeem

GOD says in Psalm 23:1-3, ‘The Lord is my best friend and my shepherd. I always have more than enough. He offers a resting place for me in His luxurious love. His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss. That’s where He restores and revives my life. He opens before me pathways to God’s pleasure and leads me along in His footsteps of righteousness so that I can bring honor to His name (TPT).’
When I was a child, my family lived in a little ‘ghost’ town in the mountains of Colorado. It was so small, that’s what they called it. It wasn’t haunted but, rather, sleepy, touristy in the summer, almost non-existent in the winter. My home had been built in the 1880s, an old two-story log cabin. It was eccentric and antiquated. It still is, we still own it. My momma cooked on a wood stove and we heated with wood and coal. In fact, my dad didn’t install electric heat until after we moved so that it didn’t freeze during times when we hadn’t winterized it yet but still vacationed there. We played hard. Outside, not in front of a television, rolling in the piles of leaves, climbing the mountains behind the house, looking for arrowheads, digging worms for my brother’s ‘bait’ business, fishing in the streams and creeks with homemade fishing poles fashioned from willows.
We also worked hard. One of the things we did was restore pieces of furniture for the house. We returned them to their original condition. It was like a treasure hunt, my mom pursuing all these nasty paint-spattered pieces, tables, chairs, dressers, a hutch, a bureau, even an organ and a Victrola (an old-fashioned record player, lol). There was this putrid-smelling, intense, acidic, toxic gummy gunk, we spread on top of the latex-painted item, and slowly, over time, the goop would eat away at the paint. We’d scrape and peel, and again, slowly, over time, an entirely different interior would surface. The exterior was being removed, revealing what was underneath. The process was so very lengthy, and it wasn’t pretty, and the scraping and refurbishing felt extreme. But eventually the inside would be exposed for what it once had been or was intended to be.
At first, I could be aggressive, scrape pretty hard on the very first coat, but as layer upon layer disappeared, caution had to be implemented so more damage wasn’t done. We used varying stages of sandpaper, starting with an acute coarseness, and gradually, over time, we would end with the finest of grits; almost soft enough to rub gently on someone’s skin. When finally the old paint was scraped away, all the layers, the whorls of wood grain would appear, and the image of what lay beneath was unveiled.
The final step, and perhaps the most important, was protecting the new exterior we had uncovered with a clear finish to seal its rawness from being tarnished by the stains that inevitably would damage the surface, marks left by accidents, some purposeful, scratches, spills, life.
This reminds me today about all that has been done to restore me. My Heavenly Father has spread His grace all over my life. Through the sacrifice of His Son, has come the intense peeling away of my sin, the exposure of what lies beneath my surface and the reclamation of my soul. And, as if that isn’t enough, the Holy Spirit has breathed on me with the softest of protectants, His confirmation as a sealer of redemption, to keep me from again being marred by the scars of this life. Jesus also made restitution for me so that what had been taken away or lost was not just restored but made new. All that the enemy has stolen is being returned. Joel 2:25 says ‘So I will restore to you the years the swarming locust has eaten (NKJV).’
Furthermore, He restores by reviving with renewal. I find this perfect footnote in my Bible about v.3. It references that likewise it could have read, ‘He cause my life [or soul, Heb. Nephesh] to return (TPT).’ It goes on to explain, ‘So often, life drains out of us through our many activities, but David found that God restores our well-being by our pursuing what pleases God and resting in Him.’