Restoration

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for John. Thank you for his heart to serve, Lord. And Lord, you’ve placed something on his heart to share with all of us. May your words come through in his voice. Lord, just bless him today. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Getting Prayer This Morning

Amen. Good morning. What a good morning so far. So far.

I’m going to be vulnerable with you for just a minute. Somebody pointed out to me that a few weeks ago I was speaking and I just felt like stuff. Have you ever felt stuff? I was just going against it. I didn’t address it. I didn’t deal with it. I just stood up and started speaking, and it was great, because I’m an excellent orator. But a couple of people came up to me afterwards and asked, “Were you kind of battling through something?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Yeah, don’t do that. Get prayer.”

I had things happen recently with my job, and with the security of what I know is coming tomorrow, and that all went out the window very recently. Some things just shifted up, and it hit me really hard. I woke up this morning feeling really uncertain and unsure. And then I thought, “Oh, I remember something like this happened the last time.” So I came in and I sought out three different people, and I got prayer from three different people, because that’s how this works. That’s how this relationship thing works.

My favorite part is that I shared with Alf when he walked in the door. We’ve missed Alf and Pam. They’ve been out traveling. Welcome back, Alf and Pam. We love you. I shared with Alf, and he chuckled. I love it when he chuckles at my discomfort, because every single time, he chuckles like somebody who can see God is right around the corner about to do something. And you know what? He’s never chuckled at my discomfort without there being God right around the corner about to do something, and a testimony that I could walk through. I would tell him in the past, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay rent,” and he would chuckle. Then I would come in a week later and he’d say, “Hey, so how did it go?” And I would say, “Yeah, God came through.” I would tell him the story, and it was funny, but if he chuckles, then I know we’re good. If you ever want to be reassured by something, share your pain with Alf, and if he chuckles, you’re good.

The FIRE Values So Far

We are talking about the FIRE values. The FIRE values were presented by the Harvest Alliance group of churches. God led Alf and Pam to pursue this Father Heart message, and through that he encouraged them to participate in the Harvest Alliance group of churches, which has a lot of emphasis on the Father Heart message. They put out these FIRE values, which God led them to adopt as our values as well. Then there’s been a leadership transition, and God has impressed upon our leadership group to reaffirm those values, and our commitment to the Harvest Alliance group of churches and what God’s doing through that group, because it’s the same God leading through Alf and Pam as it’s the same God leading through the rest of the leadership team.

So we’re working through these. We just started three weeks ago, or two weeks ago we did the F, which is Father’s love revealed through Jesus. Jesus does two things significant in this. Number one, he perfectly represents the Father’s love. Everything he does is exactly what the Father would do. He only does what the Father tells him to do. He perfectly represents that. Jesus does something else as well. He perfectly represents what it’s like to walk as a son underneath the Father. And I have this amazing truth for you to receive today: when you walk in your true, full identity as a son and daughter, you also perfectly reflect the love of the Father. That is the way this works. Christ is formed in us, and that reflects Christ, which reflects the Father, and we are one with him in that mission.

So, F, Father’s love revealed through Jesus. I, intimacy, his presence and hearing his voice. Patti spoke on that last week, and it was excellent. Jonathan Boettcher did the F, and it was excellent. It’s on YouTube. You should go and watch it. Patti did the I. If you weren’t here, you should watch it. That’s when God’s relationship really takes off. You can know that God is your Father. You can understand that. I watched an older show from about ten years ago called Blue Bloods. It’s about a cop family from New York. In one of the episodes, Tom Selleck, who is the police commissioner in New York, discovers he has a new grandson that he’d never known about. It was a child of his that had died, and then it was his kid and nobody knew about it. Now he’s older, and they meet. When does the relationship happen? The relationship didn’t happen the first time, when they just knew about the relationship, when they each discovered that they were related. That doesn’t create relationship. It’s when they actually sit at the table together and start talking that there’s relationship. So intimacy with the Father is when the relationship really takes off. That’s when we have the opportunity to start really learning and walking in this identity of sonship.

What Restoration Means

So today we’re talking about restoration of the heart and soul. I want to talk about what restoration is, how we go about getting restored, and what the purpose of it is, in that God desperately desires to have a full, harmonious relationship with you as a son and a daughter. Amen.

Restoration, by default, means something isn’t quite right. Something that is in perfect condition doesn’t need to be restored. I have sad news for you. Coming to Christ makes you a new creation. God comes into you. He wipes away all the sin. You’re perfect in his eyes. And yet in the corners of our hearts, sometimes there are doors that remain closed, of some hurt or some wound or something. As we continue walking out the ideas, the theories, the thoughts that we have that relate to those, we end up in a position where we start creating new wounds and hurts and carrying on, and those patterns continue in our lives. God wants to deal with those things. He says that he’s changing us from glory to glory.

When I talk about restoration, I want to make one point really clear. I use these words interchangeably, restoration and redemption. I remember somebody going through a situation in their marriage, and we were talking about God restoring their marriage. They didn’t want that, and the reason they didn’t want it is because it didn’t work before. It looked good to everyone else.

The 1971 Vega

The 1971 Chevy Vega was an awful car. It looked great right off the showroom floor, but it had this awful engine. It had no sleeves in the cylinders, and the engine seized very quickly. They were awful. But they had a sturdy frame and a large engine bay, and they were really easy to work on and really cheap, and they would fit a small block V8 engine, so you could hot rod them. They became a favorite to hot rod. These things are available today as collector’s items. They’re very valuable.

When God says that he can restore you, he’s restoring you to his vision of you. It says in Jeremiah that before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you. What does it mean that he knew you? For him to know you at that level means that he has a picture of who you are, of your character, of your identity, of what makes you tick, of what you’re good at, of what you’re not good at. He knew you, and he’s had that picture of you all of your life, of who you’re becoming, not necessarily who you are or who you were. He wants to continually move you. It is his desire to walk you into that harmony with him, because the closer you get to walking into that harmony with him, the more full and free and free-flowing the relationship with him is going to be. God’s ultimate desire is to walk in perfect relationship with you.

Reconciling the World

2 Corinthians 5:18 and 19. “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them, and he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.”

Reconciling the world to himself means this. He started with a perfect world. He started with Eden, and man walking in perfect relationship. God set things up the way that he wanted to have relationship with people. He didn’t set up a scenario to fail. He didn’t create something that was just a starting point. He created the end goal. And then we fell. Then God sent the message of Christ to reconcile the entire world. Everything that was wrecked through that curse, through that sin, everything that was destroyed from that, God wants to restore back to the full, perfect relationship. That’s our hearts, that’s our minds, that’s our relationships, that’s the world around us, even the animals and the birds and the trees.

So if we can look forward to where we’re going, if we get the idea that God is moving us from glory to glory, that he’s moving us towards this perfect image that he has of us, then we can begin to see where there are areas in our life that aren’t measuring up. And we get to give those up to God to restore them. Doesn’t that sound great? God is not interested in giving you shame. God is not interested in exposing your flaws. He’s not interested in showing that you’re weak. He is interested in being strong where you’re weak. He’s interested in pouring his love in where there are holes and where there are hurts. He’s interested in restoring relationship. So if we talk about being vulnerable, if we talk about restoration, if we talk about exposing the hurts in our hearts, understand this: God loves you. He wants you to be restored, and that does not include making you feel really bad first.

Step One: Identify the Problem

There are four steps to restoration. Number one, identify the problem. The first question I’ll throw out there for identifying the problem is, where in your life is God’s love not freely flowing? Anywhere that God’s love is not freely flowing from your life is an area that you can talk to him about. Now, here’s the really cool thing. Every one of these things is not some place where you’re flawed and failing. It’s an opportunity to go back to the Father and say, “Father, I want to talk to you about this.” This is why we have F first, then we have I, so that we can begin building that relationship that is based on communication with the Father. Now we can find the things in our life that we need to deal with, and it’s not on us to just go and fix it and come back when we’re better. Now you can build on those other things, and you can walk in that intimacy, and you can walk in that conversation for him to help walk you through whatever the issue is that’s in your life.

This is a difficult topic, restoration, because it can touch so many things. There are people who have hurts and unforgiveness, deservedly so. They’ve really been hurt. There are people who have been abused. There are people who have lost loved ones. There are people who have had unexpected disasters happen in their life, and they’re asking God, “Why?” And there’s a lack of trust. There are people who have difficulty in relationships with their loved ones, with their family, with their children. There are all kinds of things in this world that God wants to restore through Christ. There are all kinds of things that can knock us down a little. There are people who believe lies about themselves, that you’re not worthy, that you don’t deserve God’s love, that you don’t deserve people’s honor. But God wants to deal with those things. He wants you to come out of believing lies. He wants you to come out of having hurts. He wants you to come out of having unforgiveness. He wants you to come out of those things, not necessarily all at once, but piece by piece, from glory to glory.

So, where is God’s love not freely flowing? If you’re not entirely sure where God’s love isn’t freely flowing, and you’re married, ask your spouse. They’ll gladly help you out. They’ll give you one or two things you can put on a list to talk to the Father about. Sometimes we need a fresh perspective to see where we’re flawed. Sometimes you need somebody who can speak honestly to you about the things that are going on in your life. So allow outside people to share with you what they see, and don’t take that as criticism. Take it to the Father. “Father, what do you want to say about this difficult thing someone said to me?”

Where are the results different from your intentions? Have you ever had a conversation with somebody that was meant to build a relationship and instead it tore the relationship down? Yeah, that’s tough. Well, if you don’t like the fruit, go back and look at the root. There’s something in your heart that you get to deal with. You don’t necessarily need to fix it on your own, but take it back and ask the Father, “Father, what are you saying about this?”

What have you already been trying to fix that’s not working? You go and check out self-help books, and you go through the processes and try to learn new disciplines, but somehow the same things keep happening in your life. Well, I have news for you. God wants to help you with those things, but he wants to do it in relationship. He wants to be there with you. You don’t need to get the self-help book. You get the God-help book. That’s called the Bible.

Now for the quote. A famous person I know said this. “Sometimes we need a new spiritual perspective. Just knowing the word of God alone will not set you free. If it is still just on the information level with you, it will not produce change. The information must become experience.” That’s from Alf Dyck. This last week I was chatting with them about these values, and while they’re traveling, they took time out for Alf to give notes to Pam, who sent me a big long email, and it was awesome. They’re such a wealth of information.

Step Two: Open the Door

So, number one, identify the problem, and sometimes you need a fresh perspective to identify the problem. Number two, open the door and invite Jesus and the Father in. This is the active step that we have to take, and this is where it’s vulnerable. Doors in our hearts work in two ways. They protect us. They keep us safe, but they also keep everything else out, including the Father and his love. We’re going to talk about the fact that we find restoration by receiving his love. I’m going to go ahead and just give you the end. So if you have a closed door, that’s hard. The Father is so patient, and he loves you so much, and he doesn’t want you to feel shame or guilt. He wants to see you with that issue in your life dealt with, but it requires that you open the door. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” but you have to open the door.

Isaiah 61:1-3. Jesus actually quoted this at the beginning of his message. This is the ministry of Christ. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to open the prison to those who are blind. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn. To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.”

We had a word this morning that God wants to show his glory by how much he loves his sons and daughters. God wants to pour out his love into you and into your hearts with such fervent passion. He gives us the oil of joy. He gives us the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. These are the things in our life that cause us to mourn, the things that cause us to fail, the things that cause us to stand back, the things that cause us to hesitate when we should move forward. Those are the things in your life that impact your relationships.

I was going to share this earlier. We all have issues in our lives. We all have things that we need to deal with. And just to be completely clear, I’ve stood up here before and I’ve told you all that when God’s love flows through you, amazing things can happen. I’ve shared with you that God has dealt with my heart in such a way that I do not get upset when people cut me off in traffic. I bless them. I say, “Welcome to my lane. It’s a good one. I hope you enjoy it.” And I bless them. The other day God reminded me that I have some serious work to do with people who can’t zipper merge. People who try and get one car extra in zipper merging, I will get into an accident. I don’t like it. It’s just wrong, and love is not freely flowing from me in that moment. Patti was sitting next to me the other day as I put that on full display. And then we ended up side by side with the person that I pushed out of the lane, for like thirty minutes in traffic. I got to learn, and was reminded of myself, that I need to love that person. I need to not be judgmental about somebody else’s inability to follow really basic rules. Wrong tree. Yeah, wrong tree. That’s the wrong tree.

So when you find those moments, like me driving in traffic and seeing that thing and realizing that there’s an issue, it was really apparent to me that I had twice in the last month used that as an example of how God had worked in my heart. And then I’m sitting there in traffic beside this guy and I realized, man, I need to do some work on that area in my life. At that moment we have the opportunity to submit. We have the opportunity to say, “Father, I recognize that I am not doing it the way that you want me to. I’m not pouring out your love the way that you’ve poured your love into me. Show me where I can do something better and move in a better direction.”

Step Three: Repent and Forgive

Which leads us to the next thing: repent and forgive. We identify the problem, we open the door and invite the Father in, and the Father loves you. He wants to move in. He wants to fill up those empty spaces. Then we repent and forgive.

If you’ve been harmed, if you’ve been hurt, if there has been a lack of justice, I often think about the concept of justice, and that in this world justice seems so futile. Somebody murders somebody’s kid, and they’re on trial and they’re going to court, and the prosecutors and the defendants are arguing about the sentence and how long they should get in prison. They’re asking for the maximum, whatever it is, because they caused pain. What they’re trying to do in that scenario is take this scale and throw something bad on one side to counter something bad on the other side, and you just end up with a lot of bad. That doesn’t feel like justice to me. I understand that in our society there needs to be accountability, there needs to be consequences so people make better choices. I get all of that. But in our hearts, once that final verdict is read and once that final decision is made, is it justice? Does the person go home with a heart that’s now healed? Their child is still missing. That relationship is still void. There’s still a hurt. That doesn’t really feel like justice.

But God’s justice is not that, because God’s justice has a different way of working. God’s justice is to restore. It’s to go back to that Vega, to look at your life and see what you’re becoming and get you back in harmony with that. When you’ve been hurt, when you’ve been wronged, you can either make the other person pay. That’s one option. But the other option is to take this to the Father, to talk to him, to let him work on your heart, to let his love pour in, and to give up, to forgive, and let his love flow into you. If we don’t forgive, we’re denying God’s restoration in our heart. We’re saying no to God. So God’s justice is restoration. Unforgiveness is rejecting restoration. Even if the other person still holds offense, you don’t have to hold your end. You can put it down and you can let God work on your heart.

At the end of the day, how many of you have read through the New Testament and seen the words of Jesus, and all these times that he’s asked these really difficult questions to sort of challenge him? And he’s able to answer in such a profound and amazing way. Have you seen that? He just has such wisdom. He turns the question around, and you know what he’s doing in all of those situations. I think somebody said there are something like 180 questions that Jesus asked through the Gospels, and he directly answers three. All of the others he turns around with a story, with a question, with something else, and sends it back to that person. What he does is turn the question on their heart. Where is their heart? At the end of the day, that’s the thing that matters in my relationship with God: where’s my heart? Is my heart right with God? Is my heart pouring out what God wants me to pour out? Is my heart holding on to resentment? Is my heart holding on to hurt? None of that involves the other person in my offense. None of that involves the other person who did me wrong, or that I need to build relationship with, or anything else like that. Those people don’t come into account when it’s me and my heart and my communication with the Father.

The way that relationship with God is supposed to work is that we get love from the Father this way, and we pour love out this way. It’s this heart that is the crossroad between the love that God gives me and the love that I pour out in my life. The more that I walk in that perfection, the more the Father is revealed in my life and in the world and in everybody else that’s around us.

The word and the Spirit work together to renew the mind. When we repent and when we forgive, that’s when we’re choosing to think a different way. We’re choosing to give up on a way we’ve been thinking. If it’s about a justice thing, where we think somebody else has to pay, somebody else has done me wrong and I’m having a hard time forgiving them, then we come up with a framework of belief that says, “I’m going to withhold relationship. I’m going to lock that person away. I’m going to protect myself from them doing that to me in the future.” We create a belief system around that issue that’s waiting on justice. When we accept that God wants that not to be the way that we live our lives, that our heart is open, that he is talking to us, that he’s fighting our battles for us, when we live under that, then we have to change our thinking. The word and the Spirit work together to change our minds and show us what’s true. Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.”

So we transform our minds. We repent. Sometimes repenting isn’t just saying I’m sorry for something that I did to someone else. Absolutely, be quick to do that. Be quick to say sorry. There’s no shame in that. That’s how we build relationship, by saying sorry quickly. But sometimes it’s saying sorry to yourself. Sometimes it’s saying sorry to the Father for believing a lie. If you have had somebody speak over your life something that says you’re not worthy, that you don’t deserve God’s love, you don’t deserve his grace, you don’t deserve success, “Nobody in your family has been successful before, why do you think you can do it?” If you’ve ever had something like that spoken over your life, and you begin to think that, and you begin to make decisions based on those things, God wants to take those lies out. In doing that, you may need to say, “Father, I’m sorry for believing those things. I’m sorry for doubting myself. You said I was this, and I was believing that.” So repentance is sometimes saying sorry to the person you offended. Sometimes it’s saying sorry to yourself, or to the Father, if you’ve been believing a lie.

Step Four: Receive

The fourth step is receive. Restoration is an act of receiving, not our own efforts. We receive truth, a renewed mind. We receive healing by receiving his love. Romans 5:3-5: “Not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

So, you’re going through difficult things in life. You have something in your life that needs restoration. You take it to the Father. You open up your heart, and he pours in his love. Our tribulations bring hope. Hope brings God filling us with his love. Amen? That’s exciting. That’s a great promise.

Forgiving My Father

There’s a story that kind of ties all of this up for me. I’ve talked to God all week, two weeks, about how I should share on this topic of restoration as a founding thing. I really feel like the foundational principles, the values that our church embraces, should be pretty simple to understand. They shouldn’t be overly complicated. We should all be able to understand them and explain them to each other. So I really wanted to teach on the topic in a wholesome and full way, and discuss all of the different ways that we may need restoration in our lives, and give everybody something that maybe they could find that they relate to in their heart. But God really impressed on me that there was this one story that I needed to share. So I’m going to share this. The worst thing my father ever did to me.

I was sixteen, and I was an average student at best, because I didn’t care. I would come home all the time with report cards that were like C’s and D’s. “John talks too much in class. John does this. John’s not paying attention. John’s not even trying.” At the end of the year, I would do like two assignments and one test, and I would nail it, and my grades would go right up at the end. I would finish the year with a B-. The teachers would write in my report card all the time, “If Jonathan put in as much work throughout the whole year as he did in the last two weeks, he would be an A student.” And I didn’t care. I wasn’t motivated. School subjects didn’t interest me. In Grade 11, I got into the complex sciences, physics and chemistry, all this stuff, and I loved it. I loved unpacking it, and I got straight A’s. For the first time, I brought home a report card that was straight A’s. A family friend that I had known for years, from Australia, was also visiting our family. So I got to walk out in front of this family friend that I had a great amount of respect for and proudly present my father with my report card. And I did. He pulled it, and for the first time, he didn’t look at the letter grades. He read the comments.

You see, another thing happened when I turned sixteen, and that is that I discovered that I could be a little bit larger than life and be cool, but yet push people away from me. As a defense mechanism, I was the class clown. I made everybody laugh. I cut up in class. I talked to people, and I pushed people away by being somebody that they were all attracted to. It seems counterproductive, but it’s very effective. So for the first time, my dad didn’t read the letter grades. He read the comments. “Jonathan’s disrupting in class. Jonathan’s talking too much. Jonathan’s doing whatever.” He read all the negative comments, and he looked at me with such disapproval and said, “Looks like you got a lot of work to do, son.”

I was so embarrassed and so devastated, and I don’t know why, because I had a good relationship with my dad. He was a good guy. There’s no particular reason why this set me off so bad. But I was devastated. I was so hurt. I got up. I said, “Okay, that’s great.” I still had my backpack. I had come in so excited to share this with him. I was going to go upstairs and put my backpack away, and the house had three levels. We were in the basement. I had to go up two flights of stairs into this attic bedroom that I had. As I left, I said, “That’s it. I’m leaving home. I do not want to have a relationship with this man.”

I had been taught from a young age that I could hear God’s voice. I didn’t really know him as a father, but I knew him as God. I knew his voice when he did talk to me, which wasn’t all the time, but he talked to me. He said, “Okay, John.” He wasn’t arguing with me. He said, “Okay, John. How are you going to pay for that?” I’m sixteen. I worked while going to school, full-time high school. I also worked a full 40-hour week at McDonald’s. In 1990, that didn’t pay very well, but it was income. And I thought, “Okay, well, I’m going to need to save some.” He said, “Okay, how long is that going to take?” “I don’t know, God, probably a couple of months.” He said, “Okay. How are we going to handle your dad for a couple of months? Are you going to live in the house and not talk to him?”

By this point, I had got up to my room. I said, “God, I know what you’re asking me to do. You want me to forgive my dad. But I can’t do it. I can’t forgive him. But God, I know you want me to.” Then I said the strangest thing. I don’t know why I said it. I just said, “Father.” I didn’t say Father, because I didn’t know him as Father. I said, “God, I’ll do it. But you’re going to have to do it for me. I’m willing, but you’re going to have to forgive him for me.” And then I collapsed on my bed.

For the first time in my life, I felt the tangible presence of God. I don’t know how to describe it other than weight hit me. It was like a blanket and hot oil at the same time. At the moment that hit me, my mind was flooded with Christmas presents, with my dad smiling as I’m opening them. My mind was flooded with day trips that we took as a family, with funny things that we did on family vacations. There were just tons of memories. Life-giving memories, happy memories. It was just fast. Within about two seconds I wasn’t upset with my dad anymore, and I was blown away. God did the forgiving for me. He wiped away my hurt and my frustration because I was willing. Because I was willing to let him come in and restore that part of my heart.

From that day to this, I can’t remember. I literally cannot remember the negative things that happened with my dad. I know that there’s some. I remember this story, but God removed those things from me. I’ve never heard anybody talk about that. I thought forgiveness was something that I would have to work really hard at. And sometimes forgiveness does require effort from us. Like lifting weights, we pick up an offense and then we put it back down, and we see how long we can go without picking it up again, and then we put it back down, and sometimes we go through that. But I’m going to tell you something today. When God’s love is poured out, it can do the work. In whatever you’re facing in your life, and whatever issues are happening in us.

Closing

I’ll close by saying this. Further hurts are going to happen. You can get yourself to a perfect relationship, walking in perfect harmony with God, fully restored to a harmonious relationship with the Father, and then somebody else can’t zipper merge. And hurts are going to happen. So we have to become experts at this, at learning how to quickly identify what the issue is, quickly opening up our hearts, quickly repenting and forgiving, and quickly receiving the love of God so that we can continue to walk in harmony.

That’s a foundational value of this house, that we walk in harmony with the Father. And this is the crazy part: we get so much benefit out of him walking in harmony with us. But he’s the one that wants it. God wants harmonious relationship with you. God wants you to be close and to embrace him, and to not be fearful of him, but to have those intimate, regular conversations with him. God wants you to walk. He doesn’t want you to continue feeling pain. He doesn’t want you to continue battling shame. He doesn’t want you to continue battling the things that have been holding you back. He wants you to walk in that fullness. He’s still viewing the hot rod version of you that he’s still building. Amen.

So, I hit it right when the kids are ready. We’re going to close in prayer. I want everybody to stand up. Two things. Number one, prayer team, you can come up here.