Steps for Spiritual Restoration

When you need spiritual recovery and when it’s time for your heart to return to God, Hosea 6 provides an outline for the process. It shows the steps for spiritual restoration that we need so that our lives can be lived in harmony with God, with ourselves and with others.

God takes sin very seriously; much more seriously than most of us do. Sin is not just the negative or ungodly behaviors in our lives, but also includes our tendency to avoid doing the right things. It includes what we do and what we leave undone. Because sin separates us from him, God desires that sin be removed from our lives. He loves us and wants relationship with us no matter how far we have run away from him. He wants to live in loving communion with us and therefore, he desires that all things that interrupt that relationship and everything that pulls us away from him, be removed from our lives.  He’s no killjoy; he seeks to give us abundant life and so he shows us how to make that happen.

When it’s time to return to him, look to the steps of restoration found in Hosea 6:1-3 (NLT):

• Admit that you are “torn” and “injured” (v 1).  Honestly admit that you have need and that your relationship with God has been severed.
• Decide to “return to the Lord” (v 1) by committing yourself to God’s care.
• Allow God to “heal” you and “bandage your wounds” (v 1) by asking him to show you how and what you need for your spiritual recovery. He will show you what must stop, what must change, and how to live in friendship with him.  God will change you as you respond to his leading.
• Be intentional about “knowing the Lord” by “pressing on to know him” (v 3). Grow in relationship to God by learning his ways and understanding his will as revealed through the bible.
• Live life with him “in his presence” (v 2) by allowing him to guide and teach you and to use your life for his purpose.
• Seek to encourage and help others in their process of returning to the Lord. “Let us press on to know him!” (v 3). Recognize that you will grow strong in God as you turn and help others who are struggling toward spiritual restoration.

How to pray in pain

“Cry aloud before the Lord, O walls of Jerusalem! Let your tears flow like a river. Give yourselves no rest from weeping day or night. Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord. Lift up your hands to him in prayer,” (Lamentations 2:18-19).

Jerusalem has fallen. The people have been taken into exile. The Temple is destroyed. The walls of the city are demolished. And the prophet Jeremiah, the one who for so many years warned and pleaded and threatened the people of God, now laments with a broken heart the destruction that has come upon them. The language he uses in Lamentations is open and frank. He teaches us to cry aloud to God in our pain and to be honest before him in all situations; particularly when the pain of sin has caught up to us. We learn that we need not ever hold back the expression of our hearts from God.

For the Judean people, their pain was the result of sin.  It was sin that led to their destruction. The people now felt abandoned by God. Their pain and loss were almost beyond bearing. And Jeremiah mourned the tragedy. We must understand that unchecked sin always leads to devastating consequences. It may not seem that way at first, but ultimately sin brings sorrow and loss. Restoration can only begin in the midst of mourning and admitting the truth to God. This is what leads to God rebuilding our lives.

Many of the Jews believed that God would never bring destruction upon them no matter what they did.  Sometimes we can fall prey to this kind of dangerous denial too.  We take our theology of grace and election too far and assume it means we now have carte blanche before the Lord. No matter what we do, we think, grace will cover it all.  Lamentations provides a check to this foolishness and reminds us of our responsibility before God. He is still a holy, holy, holy God. We cannot assume that the Lord will protect his own at all cost and simply turn  his eye away from their sin.

Yet we know that God is not aloof to our pain.  The God who brought destruction because of sin is the same God who bore the judgment of that sin on the cross of Jesus Christ. God is not against us, but is for us and has forever demonstrated his love in the cross of his Son. His great purpose in each of our lives is to conform us to the image of Jesus. This means that he will perform a thorough work of purging us from sin and shaping us to reflect the One who has borne our sin and our sorrows.  The great hope we have is that no sin is so great that it puts us beyond the reach of God.  He is ever- ready to amend us and restore us and transform us when we turn to him with all our hearts.

So turn to him today. Be honest in your pain. Where there is sin, confess it and thoroughly turn from it.  Receive God’s mercy and cleansing.  And allow the restoration to begin.

The Power of Denial

Denial is a psychological defense mechanism that can lead to real and lasting devastation. Basically, denial is the refusal to acknowledge the existence of an unpleasant reality.   Denial was active in the lives of the people of Judah and particularly their king, Jehoiakim of Jerusalem. Jehoiakim absolutely refused to listen to the prophet Jeremiah’s predictions of the coming destruction by the Babylonians. He preferred to listen instead to the lies of the false prophets who continuously declared peace and low-cost deliverance. Jehoiakim wanted to believe that no harm would come to him despite how he lived. He wanted blessing without accountability. He was committed to keeping up the charade that God would not bring correction to His own people who had rebelled against Him. Jehoiakim’s denial was so complete that he even burned the scroll on which Jeremiah had recorded the Lord’s message. “”Whenever Jehudi finished reading three or four columns of the scroll, the king took his knife and cut off that section of the scroll. He then threw it into the fire, section by section, until the whole scroll was burned up. Neither the king nor his officials showed any signs of fear or repentance at what they heard,” (Jeremiah 36:23-24).

Jehoiakim was like so many us who pretend our sins will not catch up to us and who deny the consequences of our actions by ignoring them. As the old saying goes, denial is not just a river in Egypt—it is a force in all of our lives.  But to be whole people who live in freedom, we must face the truth about our actions. The only way to overcome our problems is to deal with them squarely before the Lord. Had Jehoiakim heard the words of the prophet and turned away from his sin, God would have spared him and brought healing. We know this is the case because that’s what happened with Johoiakim’s father Josiah.  When Josiah heard the words of the Book of Deuteronomy for the first time he tore his clothes in repentance and committed himself to a program of change.  Josiah received the merciful love of God because of his heartfelt and true response to God’s corrective word.  But such was not the case with his son. Jehoiakim chose instead to listen to the lying prophets and to reject God’s clear warning.

A life of freedom always comes through a commitment to truth.  Essentially, committing to truth is committing to God. We must be willing to hear what God’s word has to say about our lives and then respond accordingly.  Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” (John 8:32). Are there any “false prophets” in your life calling you away from the truth? Are you struggling to accept the reality of your actions and therefore living in a dangerous kind of denial? Are you rejecting what God has clearly pointed out to you as sin in your life?  May I encourage you to allow the Holy Spirit to search your heart and help you gain God’s perspective on what is really going on within you.  And then honestly turn to the Lord to be healed. Commit yourself to him and ask him to give you the power to change. With God, we never receive what our sins deserve. Instead we receive grace and mercy because God specializes in restoring that which is broken.