Restoration Day 4: Let Him Draw You Near! Submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:7,8). We hate the word submission. However, the word is not a bad word. The meaning is “to stand under”. You can never stand against your enemy until you submit. God has absolute authorities and delegated authorities. We must learn submission. No greater faith have I see in all of Israel than the one who understood authority (Matthew 8). In the process of our restoration and renewal, certain things must be restored to us in order to make the process complete. Here are three key factors that move us toward restoration: 1. He restores intimate contact with Himself and others. Relationship is difficult for many Christians simply because our society breeds fear of intimacy. We protect ourselves. We don’t want to get hurt. We don’t want to allow our emotions to be seen. And to complicate matters, those who have experienced broken relationships in the past don’t want to chance future intimacy. But the simple fact is that we need one another. We need God. Without one or the other, we will never enter into the fullness of restoration. We must begin to allow God to make us intimate communicators with Himself and then each other. We need to begin by embracing an intimate relationship with God. The classic analogy is Mary and Martha (see Luke 10:38-42). We get so caught up in what we are to do that we forget what we are about. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus until she knew her destiny. Once she knew the purpose of her life, then she could go do the dishes with Martha, or anything else that needed to be done. She did not neglect the task. Through intimacy, Mary simply gained what she needed for her life and then tended to the business of the house. God is calling us into a new intimate place. From this intimate place, we gain our new strategies for moving ahead. But the intimacy is not for ourselves alone. Just as God wants to restore us as individuals, He is equally interested in restoring us as the Bride of Christ. For that reason, we must allow Him to bring us into intimate relationships with one another that will thrust us forward into our biblical destiny. 2. He begins to restore our Father/child relationship. When we do not know God as Abba Father and have not yet come into the spirit of adoption that God has for us, we really do not have the relationship needed to grasp our restoration and the inheritance that comes with it. This is important to understand. Many times God starts by dealing with our earthly father and authority issues in order to restore the Father/child relationship that we have with Him. In cases where our fathers have abused their authority, or did not take their proper role in the family, God must restructure our thinking, but we must let Him. He is neither an abusive Father nor an absent Father. He is a loving Father who cares deeply for us—so much so that He has a plan of restoration for our lives. We need to allow Him to bring us to that understanding. Once those issues are in order, the word of the Lord over our lives can begin to spring forth. 3. God restores our childlike faith. God sees all the war and wilderness places that we have been in. Through those times, He begins to increase our measure of faith. As this childlike faith begins to arise, the glory of God rests upon us. I have always considered myself a man of faith. I lead meetings all around the world filled with great faith and expectation of what God will do. Ask the Lord to create a scenario for you to ask Him for something simple. Ask, believe and watch Him restore your faith.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 17:03:20 +0000