For years, even though I’ve said God is still working on me, and I’ve even written about it, until recently I didn’t really understand what I was saying. I hadn’t thought about the parallel to the actual restoration process that I looked at in Part 1 of this devotion. Now I see clearly that  I am that item that is dented, rusted, and not working correctly anymore with broken parts.  Not pretty to look at and considered useless by some, yet he sees value in me.

Even though I feel damaged and irreparable after heart breaks and disappointments, I’m not. I feel like I’ve been bent and warped in ways I can’t come back from, but as I sit here tonight with tears in my eyes the message, I feel like God is speaking to my heart is so very clear.  It’s the message I want to share with you here.

He is saying to me and you that just like that man on YouTube who takes apart the damaged, thrown out item, one screw at a time (piece by piece), just like that man who determines the way that the pieces needs to be repaired and gives it unique loving treatment to restore it, Just like him, God will have to do that with us, with our hearts, and with our lives. Even if the process hurts like hell, we must trust our maker to remake and restore the broken and misshapen parts of ourselves.

For me, it’s the thought patterns that I have that are destructive and damaging, the places where I’ve been hurt so I don’t know how to trust, the ability to allow myself to feel at all because for a long time I didn’t let myself feel and there was complete numbness. God would need to work to restore me, to restore every single piece, and I would need to let him. Even though it will take my entire life to complete the process. Still, I must trust, I must submit myself to God and surrender to the process. It’s not easy, but it is necessary for true restoration.

For you it maybe a bit different in the method but the restoration process will be the same. You too will be required to submit yourself to God and trust him to know how to work in you and on you to bring about complete wholeness and full restoration.

I’m going to be brutally honest now about the process of restoration.  I don’t want to have go through this process.  I want to skip some parts of it.  Can’t he just work on the things that I want him to, the easy parts?  Are there things that I’ve not allowed him to work on? Like the whole you can have this God, but not this. Maybe part of it is that I don’t understand why it’s not all better yet. After all, I’ve been a believer for a long time.  I wonder at times will it always hurt when I hear about a friend who’s struggling in their marriage? Will it always take me right back to those moments when I cried out to God in desperation because I didn’t know what I was going to do? Will I always be terrified of love because it has only brought me pain?   Will I always struggle with my self worth and seeing my value because of past rejections?  Will certain songs always feel like a knife stab to my heart? I’ve forgiven, I’ve moved forward, yet I continue to live my life with these past demons like divorce, infidelity, judgement, self hatred and rejection that follow me.  Parts that perhaps are not restored yet, and still need the loving treatment of my maker.  I need to give these parts to him too.

I guess I thought when I was younger that it would be very simple, that if I just believed that God was working on me, that he would do the work and it would be all better. All finished. That is not how it has turned out.  There are so many pieces to repair, the treatment takes time and even when God repairs me, I make stupid choices and end up getting hurt again.  Or sometimes it’s not my choices but just life happens.  Life is so hard. I keep wondering if there’s some point where it’ll ease up a little, but it doesn’t. So, I feel like I get sandwiched in from the behind stuff that I thought was healed but still hurts like hell and the stuff that’s ahead that terrifies me because my rose-colored glasses are shattered in a million pieces. I know I always give encouraging uplifting thoughts but tonight I’m just being real. I feel pressed in from the past and the future. 

I realize I’m a messed-up machine no matter how much I want to be new at present.  I also realize that I will struggle all my life no matter how much I don’t want to have the same thoughts that I fight and the same feelings that I deal with. I’m tired of this merry go round and I just want to get off the ride. But that’s not an option.  So how do I live not alright?  How do we all do it?

First, we realize a truth that will set us free, that can encourage our downcast, weary soul. God doesn’t expect perfect now, he knows we are in process.  Hence the need for grace. Now I’m realizing that I need to be OK with not being alright or perfect as well. He’s going to work on healing and restoring me.  He’ll continue to my entire life, and it still won’t be done till I see him in heaven. I have to be OK and believe by faith that I’m whole even when in this moment I might not have that reality fully realized. This is where faith comes in.  You see, I have to believe by faith that I am the restored masterpiece, the finished work. Even though right now he’s melting my pieces down and reshaping and reforming me and probably doing it again for the 20th time, but he doesn’t give up. No, He keeps working on me. 

This is the same for you.  As a believer, you need to be OK with just being OK. In this life, or during our lifetimes if you want to say it that way, God will continually repair, restore, heal, prune, and work on different parts of you. We are not ever complete on this side of heaven.

As a believer we need to accept that the process of God refining us and restoring us is a lifelong process. If you look at someone who is a saint in your eyes or an amazing believer, I guarantee you when they’re on their own they stand before God no different than you do, in process. With just as many issues, challenges, and pains. In the church we need to stop preaching perfection in the vessel and remember that the holiness belongs to the Lord. It’s His Holiness that covers us, it’s never our own. We don’t have the capacity to be perfect within ourselves, only through the covering of Christ will we ever be able to stand before God and be declared righteous. If we accept that he’s continually working on us, then we’ll stay submitted and under his hand. Furthermore, we need to trust in the processes that he has to take each of us through.  For all of us, it is different.  For all our individual parts is varies as well.  Yet he is working in his way and in his time. We simply have to trust and submit. 

For me, God has given the part of my heart that felt rejected the treatment of being bathed and lavished with love from himself as well as from friends and from family, people who express acceptance of me just as I am, and scriptures that speak of God’s acceptance of me. Slowly as I bathe in the light of his love, he is washing away the rust and the decay and the corrosion to restore that part of me. No longer rejected but accepted, daughter of the most High King.

I can’t tell you what kind of treatment God will be doing to all the areas of my heart, but I can tell you that there is still so much to do.  I must choose to stay surrendered and trust no matter the unknowns.  Like me, I hope that you will stay in this process even if it’s difficult. We must choose to stay surrendered, trusting, and in the process of restoration.   Persevere, it is not easy.

One more thing to consider is the reveal.  At the very end of every show, they do the flashback of the before picture.  Then they show the after-restoration pictures. It’s so dramatic and beautiful. Do you know how God sees you? He sees us as restored already as he’s working to restore you piece by piece. Bringing the not yet into the here and now. He’s so excited for the day when we see him, and we will be as he is. I don’t think there’s going to be this panorama in heaven where we see the brokenness and then the restored us but that would be so cool. The big reveal, you, fully restored and transformed by Christ through his sacrifice. Voila. Except we’ll know that it took a lifetime to get there. The transformation is far from instantaneous.   

I know what you’re thinking, it doesn’t seem right that it would take a whole lifetime when he could just snap his fingers and do it in a moment. The truth is you wouldn’t really appreciate the beauty of the restored item if you hadn’t seen the devastation before. If you did not know the effort to restore and make new again you wouldn’t really appreciate the transformation fully.  Through this redemptive process God’s glory is revealed slowly, piece by piece, even more fully as he restores and redeems his people.

He shows his faithfulness and his persistence by continuing to work on us and work with us every day. His enduring faithfulness is evident in his persistent and thorough work on our souls. He also shows his love and grace towards us as he continues to work and restore us even as we add damage while he’s still working.  So truly, there is a sign on my heart – don’t judge her yet there’s an unfinished part.  Lots of them actually, and that’s ok.  I hope today you say the same for yourself because it’s true.