Restoration

 Ahhh...Spring. 

It's the time of year when women all over the country feel the need to deep clean their houses. As they deep clean, they purge their homes of all the things they no longer need. Rather than taking these things to the garbage or the goodwill, we go through the ritual of lining everything up on our lawns or driveways in the hopes that someone will find their treasure among our trash and pay us to take it home with them.

This is not part of my Spring routine because I am travelling with Mantours this time of year. However, as we drive from place to place, I see plenty of yard sales, and I remember.....

Years ago, one of my favorite hobbies was restoring furniture.

Being a bargain hunter, I loved finding a piece of old furniture at a yard sale, purchasing it for practically nothing, taking it home, sanding it down, and restoring it to something new. 

I remember one time my next-door neighbor put an end table with a broken leg out for the garbage man. Seeing its potential, I snatched it up, fixed the leg, sanded it down, refinished it, and restored it to a beautiful piece of furniture that we used in our house for years.

I love that word---restoration. But what does "restoration" mean? 

We take something old, beat up, and seemingly useless and "restore" it to its original beauty. We give it back its value and make it able to be used for its original purpose again. 

The truth is that God's will for each of our lives is that we are restored. 

He wants to take our sins, our regrets, the things that have damaged us in our past, our bad choices, and even our just plain mistakes----He wants to take all of our garbage and make us beautiful. He wants to use our failures to become a shining testament to His grace. 

This is God's will for ALL women.

You see the amazing thing about God is that He isn't sitting up in Heaven creating a pile of good people and bad people. He isn't saying, "Well, I'll love her, her and her, and redeem her and restore her and bring her into a personal relationship with Me, but her and her----no they are just too far gone." 

No God's will is that ALL women (and men) experience His redemption and His restoration and spend their lives living in an intimate, personal relationship with Him. 

The beautiful thing about God is that He sees more than just where you are right now; he knows it all.

From conception until your dying day, He knows everything you've experienced, everything you've done, and everything that made you the way you are. 

He's got the complete picture. 

Despite this, and maybe because of this, He has a design for your life that is greater than anything you can imagine.

When you allow Him to take you through the Restoration process, He can and will make you into a woman with a future beyond anything you can see or imagine. 

I know this is true in my own life. I remember a time in my life when I felt like a failure. I remember feeling rejected and unwanted as if my life could never amount to anything beautiful again. I often described it as feeling like the last puppy in a basket---the one no one wanted. 

And yet, God wanted me. In fact, during this time when I felt the most unwanted and worthless, He had chosen as my time of restoration---a season where He ordained to heal the things that were hurting me and transform me into the woman He originally created me to be. 

Even though I might not have understood this process at the time, today, I can say that it was one of the greatest blessings of my life: when God saw my brokenness and took me through His restoration process. 

Today, if you are in a time of restoration, I encourage you to submit to it. 

Allow the Holy Spirit the freedom and control to do whatever He needs to do in your life. Trust Him, as your Creator, to see beyond the brokenness and see the potential. Allow Him to work and see all that He has in store. 

 Adessa Holden is an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God specializing in Women's Ministry. Together with her brother, Jamie, they manage 4One Ministries and travel the East Coast speaking, holding conferences, and producing Men's and Women's resources that provide practical Biblical teaching for everyday life.

When asked about herself, she'll tell you "I'm a women's minister, a sister, and a daughter. I love to laugh and spend time with people. My favorite things are chocolate, the ocean, sandals and white capris, anything purple, summertime and riding in the car listening to music. It is my absolute honor and privilege to serve Jesus and women through this ministry."