Restoration

God has you and me on His mind all the time, and restoration for us to Him as His children is His passion. Jesus came for that very purpose—to restore all that had been lost, to reinstate position and authority, to place back in the family of love and acceptance, to bring back the joy and absolute contentment of being One with God the Father, with Jesus the Son and with the Holy Spirit.

In the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, the words restoration and restore have some very interesting meanings, which would describe what God has done for us. Let’s look at these definitions.

The act of replacing in a former state
Renewal, revival, re-establishment
Recovery, renewal of health and soundness
Recovery from a lapse or bad state
To return to a person, as a specific thing which he has lost, or which has been taken from him and unjustly detained
To replace, to return, as a person or thing to a former place
To bring back
To bring back or recover from lapse, degeneracy, declension or ruin to its former state
Declension is a leaning back or down, a falling or declining towards a worse state, a tendency towards a less degree of excellence or perfection
To heal, to cure, to recover from disease
To make restitution or satisfaction for a thing taken, by returning something else, or something of different value
To repair, to rebuild
To revive, to bring back to life
To renew or re-establish after interruption
To recover or renew

We can conclude even from these secular definitions of restore that that is exactly what God has done for us. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, God’s plan of restoration was already in place. He said in Genesis 3:15 that satan’s authority, which he had just gotten by deception would be tread underfoot. To bruise the head means to break the lordship of a ruler. When Jesus came, that is exactly what He did—He stood in man’s place, as man’s substitute, and took back everything the devil had illegally gotten by deception, everything he had stolen from mankind. And once again, man has the authority as God’s child to walk in a place of victory all the time, a place of peace and joy all the time, a place of confident assurance all the time, having dominion over all the earth. The life of God has been brought back; that which has been taken and unjustly detained has been given back. He has given us His very life; we are partakers of His very nature; He is living in us. We have His life; we have His power; we have his authority. We have it all.

We have the promise in Joel 2:21-27 that God will restore the years that have been stolen from us (by poor health, by lack of finances, by wayward children, by stressful marriages). He will restore.

And do you know what is wonderful? He tells us in Psalm 23 that He restores our soul. Now that is an area that needs restoring big time. Our minds, our wills and our emotions need to be restored with the Word of God.

And for those with need of healing and health, there is a very specific scripture to feed on. In Jeremiah 30:17 we read these words: For I will restore health unto you….

God has made provision to bring us back to life while we are here on this earth, not only in our spirits, but also in our bodies, in our homes, in our finances; in other words, He has brought life to us totally---wholeness, soundness in everything that concerns us. The Holy Spirit has been sent, and the Word is here to bring God’s life back into us again. We are new creations in Christ.