Restoration

Here on TDDUP we talk a lot about restoration.  I am not sure that we grasp how amazing of a concept restoration really is.  Do we understand the magnitude of restoration and the gravity of what has taken place?

In our society, we see restoration be portrayed in different areas.  Usually we see restoration take place when something awful has taken place.  This is seen in our dwelling places and cars.  If a fire or flood has taken place in our homes, we call a restoration company.  If our vehicles have been in an accident or has been exposed to the time and elements, we would seek to have it restored.  In both of these examples, a technician takes the damaged property and begins to work on it to bring it back to the original state that it was meant to be.  Not the state that it was before the accident or incident but the state that it was DESIGNED to be...back to its brand-new, non-tarnished, pristine condition.  If this goal can be accomplished by using the pieces left over, those pieces will be salvaged.  If not, those pieces are removed, disposed of, and replaced with new material.  All for the purpose of bring that home or that vehicle back to the state that it was in on the day that it was originally completed....or better.

When it comes to our marriages, restoration follows the same guidelines.  The goal is to bring that marriage back to state that it was originally designed to be in.  Not the state that you have always known it to be but, rather, the state that God originally created it to be.  But, you with marital restoration you cannot simply hire a technician to come in and make the needed repairs.  No, marital restoration is a much more complicated and delicate issue.

Restoration is a process in which we cannot or dictate the path to wholeness.  True restoration is that which cannot be accomplished by the hands of man or within the boundaries of our understanding.  Restoration is too grand of a concept for mere mortals to fully comprehend or work out in our own meager ways.  Restoration, true restoration, is a divine process which we have no authority over.  True restoration is a God thing.

As humans, we have the ability to come up with systems and guides to bring us to a sense of healing.  However, all of the ways in which we attempt to bring about restoration can only bring us to a partial healing.  We cannot cause full and complete restoration because we are not full and complete in ourselves.  Even if we have done nothing wrong (according to us) and are living as right of a life as we can, we are still incomplete.

In home and vehicle restoration, the best restorers are those that have spent years building cars and building homes from scratch.  They know their finished products from every step of the process.  The same is true with our marriages.  If we desire a true and complete restoration, we cannot look to other individuals who can only see in the dimensions in which we live.  We must look to someone who was there when marriage was first instituted...who caused the first marriage to take place....who laid the foundations of what marriage was supposed to be and what it was meant to depict.  We must look to God who knows every marriage inside and out.

God has made every marriage different.  And every situation we find ourselves in our marriage is unique to us.  But every marriage is made up of the same core materials...two individuals coming together and, by joining body, soul, and spirit, become one.  God has worked with these core materials for centuries and He knows them inside and out, front to back.  He knows how to make a great marriage from an utter disaster.  He will take all of the damaged parts and cause them to be made new.  And if we have caused them to be damaged beyond repair, He has the ability to create new parts that fit better than they did originally.  God is such a master craftsmen of marriages and lives that He is able to take what seems to be worthless and make it priceless.  And when He has completed the work, the marriage will be in the state that He designed it to be from the first time He envisioned it.  Which, by the way, is far beyond what we can even comprehend in our feeble little minds.

Friends, the Master Craftsman of Marriages desires to put His hands in, on, and around our marriages in order to make them what He designed them to be.  Will you let Him?

Josh and Serena