Restoration

On November 3, 2012 at 9:01pm, I sent an email to a friend because I had a word for him. He’s someone that I care very deeply about, and I knew that he was going through a tough time. He’s not a complainer, and he hadn’t told me that he was having a tough time; he hadn’t asked for my help, but there are times when God will tell you to look out for someone, to reach out with His love, and let them know they’ve got a strong arm to hold onto. We can ignore what God is asking us to do and we can say no to Him, but it doesn’t really matter if we do because He’ll just find someone else to do what He’s asked us to do. If we say yes, and keep praying and lifting that person up, we’re doing what God has asked us to do, and that’s all He ever asks of us – to be obedient is to do what He asks us to do. God is not a crazy task-master – although I do call Him crazy sometimes between the two of us because he is always doing things that blow my mind – and the things He asks us to do are always things that He helps us with, so reaching out with love and giving someone a word from Him is something I can do. It’s hard sometimes because you don’t know how people are going to receive what you have to say - they may ignore you or think you're crazy or think you have some other hidden motive - but He says that’s ok and all we have to do is be obedient and give the word and the rest is between Him and that person.

I know I sent the email on that day and time because I keep all of my emails in my email files. It comes in handy for work when you think you sent something to be able to check if you did or not when someone asks for it. Rather than saying, “I sent that to you!” and getting angry, I can check and see if I did or not. If I did I can forward it along, without the anger, and just say I hope they receive it this time. It also comes in handy so I don’t repeat myself. I write a lot of emails to people for work and in my personal life, so it’s good to know what I’ve said so I can build on it or refer back to it rather than just saying, “I don’t know if I told you this, but. . .” It also comes in handy when the Lord gives me another word for someone, based on a word I’ve given them in the past, so I can say, hey, remember that word I sent you? It just came back again and this time it’s even better.

The word I sent to my friend on November 3, 2012 at 9:01pm was from Joel Chapter 2. I titled the email “A Promise Of Restoration,” or rather I should say that’s what the Lord told me to title it. When I looked it up when I started writing this post, I didn’t remember what I’d called it or when I had sent it, so I just did a search for “Joel 2” because I knew the Lord had given me that message at some point for this friend. When I found the email, it came up with a note that the message was starred, meaning that the star icon had been highlighted next to the email. That was really great to see because I hadn’t done that, so it was just another confirmation that this message was definitely from God and not from me.

November 3 was a Saturday, and yesterday was a Saturday too. We’re coming close to June, so if we look at the days, June 3 will be seven months away from the time that I got the first message. Seven is a number of completion for God, so that does mean something. He doesn’t play games and He’s always doing things with timing just to let us know there is a Master Plan. I play with numbers a lot in my head and He knows that. My father was an engineer and I grew up with the idea that you could make sense out of the world with numbers if you could figure out the pattern. I add them together and look at days and times, and the patterns are there. God knows I love to do that, so He’ll show me where they are. If you look at the days purely from a number point of view, November 3 is 11/3 and May 25 is 5/25. If you take 11 and add 3 you get 14, add the 4 and the 1 and you get 5. Or you could add all the numbers individually, 1 plus 1 plus 3 equals 5. 5/25 is all fives – there’s the 5 for May and then the 25 is 5 times 5. Then go to 5/25 and do the same thing. 5 plus 25 is 30 – that’s the 3 for November 3. Try it a different way and add 5 plus 2 plus 5 and you get 12, add the 1 plus 2 and you have 3 again. No matter how you do the math, they reflect each other. Welcome to my world.

It may sound crazy to you that I go through all of this, but there’s a reason for the craziness. It seems crazy sometimes to be hearing a word from God – who am I kidding, it seems crazy all the time when I really think about it, especially for someone like me who spent most of my life thinking that anyone who prayed or talked to God was as crazy as a loon – that is until I was in a bind and then I’d be on my knees just as fast as I was able. The amount of times that God answered prayer in my life before I was born again is staggering considering that I never really bothered to pray. I’d get to a certain point in a mess I’d made and I’d cry out, “Please help me!” and He always did. Now that’s crazy – why would He bother to help someone as clueless and stubborn as that? But as I said before, He is crazy, but in a really wonderful and miraculous way. Because He does bother, and because He knows I’m listening now, in addition to giving me a word for myself, He’ll give me a word for someone else sometimes, and because it’s hard for me to believe sometimes that He would bother to do that, I need all the confirmation I can get.

So almost seven months ago He gave me a word from Joel 2:25-27, “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, my great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you; and My people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: I am the Lord your God And there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame." That was from the New King James Version (NKJV), but He also had me include the Contemporary English Version (CEV) because the message was worded more specifically for my friend. The Lord had given me other messages for him, and in the first one He gave me He had shown me that He was referring to my friend as Israel, and the CEV does just that: "I, the Lord your God, will make up for the losses caused by those swarms and swarms of locusts I sent to attack you. My people, you will eat until you are satisfied. Then you will praise me for the wonderful things I have done. Never again will you be put to shame. Israel, you will know that I stand at your side. I am the Lord your God—there are no other gods. Never again will you be put to shame."

In the email I sent to my friend, I wrote about my experiences when I was first born again because that’s what the Lord had said to talk about. Parts of that message are things that I’ve written about in different ways in this blog, and they’re messages that God knows it’s important for people to hear:

"I was remembering today that in the first few months of my being born again, I felt as if things weren't moving fast enough in a positive direction. It seemed as if I had lost everything and that there was nothing good to replace it. There were good things, but I had lost so much and was still in such an emotional place of despair from that loss, that it was difficult to see the good around me. Negative things were happening also. I had moved into a new apartment and suddenly lost the last few small pieces of income I had so I was unable to pay my bills or my rent. That was something that had never happened to me before, and I could not understand why God was allowing this to happen now - wasn't I walking with Him? Wasn't I doing the things He wanted me to do? I was going to church and volunteering with the ministry. It didn't make sense that things were not immediately getting better and instead seemed worse.

There were some things that God needed to show me during that time that were important for the building of who He wanted me to be and for the taking away of parts of the old self that were holding me back from my best self. Pride was a big one that needed to be taken away, but not in the way that we normally think of pride as being a positive thing. The pride that I had came from thinking that I had to rely on myself and that I could not admit that I needed God's help. I also learned that the pride I had came from a place of fear - fear of looking weak, fear of being foolish - that was rooted in low self esteem. I had put a mask on for so long to prove to everyone that I was ok, when in reality I was shy and stressed and scared and deeply needed approval. Going through the challenges I had in those early months and the years since then have helped me learn how much God loves and approves of me for who I am, not for who I pretend to be, and that if I allow Him to help me, and ask for His help in all things, I am stronger and wiser and no longer in need of pretending to have it all together because He has it all together, and with His help I can do all things."

After I included the passage from Joel 2:25-27, I continued on with this:

"The next section begins in the NKJV with 'God's Spirit Poured Out,' which is a wonderful promise, but the CEV is a very different wonderful promise: 'The Lord will work wonders.' These promises follow a call from the Lord in verses 12-13: “Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm." (NKJV) The CEV has this: "The Lord said: "It isn’t too late. You can still return to me with all your heart. Start crying and mourning! Go without eating. Don’t rip your clothes to show your sorrow. Instead, turn back to me with broken hearts. I am merciful, kind, and caring. I don’t easily lose my temper, and I don’t like to punish."

And then I wrote something to my friend that the Lord wanted him to understand fully: “You have already turned back to Him, so these promises are for you.”

There are times when we will go through some very rough times. It is the nature of life. After I was born again it was so tough that it made me think that maybe I hadn’t really been born again, or maybe God had not accepted me and had left me to the locusts to devour. But that is not how God works, and that is what He needed me to share with my friend, and what He wants me to share with you as you read this. When we turn to Him, He accepts us fully, just as we are, and He begins the restoration process from there. He's not like the person who buys a house and then starts complaining that there are problems and so the deal is off. When He went to the Cross, He knew the whole story of each one of our lives, and He went anyway, knowing a time would come when we'd turn back to Him and He'd have to help clean us up and start rebuilding our lives anew. There may still be tough times, but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love us or that He has decided we weren’t worth saving. He already went to the Cross for us, knowing that we would do just what we did in our lives, and all He asks is that we turn to Him and ask for His help from our heart.

 
Yesterday when I was at one of my favorite thrift stores, I found a men’s t-shirt with these words: “Turn to me now, give me your heart. Joel 2:12” I have a photographic memory for things that were said and done - something else the Lord restored to me after I had almost ruined my mind with years of partying - and I knew that I had sent that same message to my friend. The scripture was written differently than I had ever heard it before, and when I got home and looked it up I could not find a translation that phrased it that way, but I like it so much. The t-shirt is very artsy – I have some graffiti artist friends from church who work in the fashion industry, and it looks like something one of them would have designed. It’s not your run-of-the-mill t-shirt – it’s something special for someone who God wants to know is special to Him. There was no price tag on it, but the man who works there always gives me things for ridiculous prices, even when there are price tags, and he gave me the t-shirt for a dollar. It was hand screened and hand made - unique and one of a kind. I know from my friends that t-shirts like that can cost at least $50, and depending on who did it they can be much more. It is something special for someone who is special to God. We are all special to Him, and He tells us things that are specifically for us and gives us gifts that are specially designed for us to show us how much He loves us and is thinking about us as the unique individuals He made us to be.
 
I wrote something else to my friend in that email I sent him on November 3: “ I spent the first year of being born again weeping at the altar, broken hearted, recognizing His great love and mercy, and weeping for my lost past and the waste of those years the locusts devoured. Deuteronomy 10:16 describes it this way, "Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer." I was always very stubborn, and when I allowed Him to work deeply in my heart and to uncover what was hidden there, He took away the hardened places and He taught me to be stubborn for Him.”

When we turn to Him, He takes the things that are part of us, the parts of our personality that make us unique, and He makes them into something beautiful that can help us to keep turning to Him and reaching out with His love to others.

The Cicadas are returning again this year after a 17 year absence, and some people call them locusts, but they’re very different than locusts because they don’t devour everything. I read an article from the New York Times from May 22 that was titled, “Finding Love At 17,” a play on words for the 17 year time period it takes them to come out from underground. The article described them as being “love bugs” that hatch and start courting immediately. Their distinctive sound is a mating call, and the article described them as being very romantic. The difference between a locust and a cicada is as far away as anything could ever be from anything else. In the passages of Joel, the image of locusts is used to describe a marching army that devours and destroys everything in its path. The cicadas are coming to bring love and that’s a message for my friend and for us all too. The years that the locust have eaten are being restored, and it’s time to receive love and blessings again.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan