God of Redemption and Restoration

Redemption: salvation; deliverance upon payment of ransom; rescue; repurchase, as of something sold

Restoration: renewal; revival; reestablishment; a return of something to a former, original, normal, or unimpaired condition; compensation for something taken away or lost

We have redemption through Christ's death - His blood was the ransom paid to free us from the bondage of sin. That's probably the simplest and most foundational principle to any follower of Christ. Recently, I've been learning that God's redemption goes way beyond just salvation. When He repurchased us from the hands of the enemy, He is not only redeeming our lives from that point forward, He redeemed our ENTIRE life, including the years before we knew Him.

Sofia shared a testimony that she heard recently about a pastor who did not start living for the Lord until his 40s, and he felt somewhat regretful that he did not live out the potential that God had for him and wondered where he would be in his spiritual walk if he had started living for God in his 30s or even 20s. The Lord told him, 'You would be exactly where you are today.' I was so amazed when I heard that. God is not bound by the limits of time - He created time. There is not a formula or rule that says you have to be living for God for a certain number of years in order for you to be at a certain stage. Of course that doesn't mean we just waste our lives away and wait until we're retired to start living for Him, but it just goes to show that once you've made that commitment to Christ, He redeems all the time that was 'lost', and prepares you for the work that you have to do despite your past, despite the fact that you're inexperienced, despite your weaknesses.

After God redeems our entire lives and we are completely His, He then works continuously to restore things that had been lost or taken away. My sister shared another thing with me recently that was really powerful - an example is in the Old Testament law, when someone steals an ox or a sheep, he must restore more than one ox or sheep to the person he stole from. When God restores, He doesn't just restore things to the way they were - He makes them BETTER! It is almost unfathomable - it's so incredibly awesome. If people (me included) fully comprehended just how awesome God's love is, our lives would be drastically and radically different.

Sometimes I look back on my 27 (almost 28) years, I can find so many points in my life where I wonder 'what if I had chosen a different path', or 'I wish I had been able to experience that'. No, we cannot go back in time and re-live our lives. And we may never know what would have, could have, or should have been. But what I am finding more and more these days is that God doesn't erase or condemn us for our past, our past now belongs to Him because He has redeemed us - He can use what's in our past for good, for His kingdom. Everything happens for a reason and while we may not see those reasons at the time or even now, He knows what He is doing, always.

Today I played the piano as accompaniment for my parents' small group - we presented a song during service. I thought I'd be nervous but it was actually really fun - to be able to play the piano for corporate worship. It's been over 10 years since I'd played the piano consistently, but the skills that I had developed now belongs to the Lord, and He remembers and is able to use them for His purposes. All those years of Chinese school that helped me to keep up my speaking and reading skills, I never thought they'd have any purpose other than to communicate with my parents and impress their friends, watch Taiwanese dramas, or get an easy A to boost my GPA in college. But God had bigger plans. Seven years after I accepted Christ as my Savior, He called me to a Chinese speaking church, something I'd never imagined.

I've had a few conversations with people recently about how God redeems the time and restores things that we've lost. A common thing that we seem to agree on is how we feel like we're kids again, like we've been given back the innocence that we've lost along the way. I think I shared this in a previous post - that there are certain things that God is allowing me to experience now, experiences that I've 'missed out on' when I was younger. And honestly, I have no doubt that God is restoring things in a way that is BETTER than what was and what might have been. Who would have thought that I would be back at my parents' house at the age of 27? Growing up, I never appreciated having my parents around, who wanted to hang out with their parents as a teenager?! But in college and for the years that I lived in the city, I loved coming home on weekends when I could and I missed being around them as I realized that it was just going to get more difficult to see them as I got older. Then all of a sudden, it's like I'm a kid again, enjoying being the baby of the family instead of the responsible older child. I get to enjoy hanging out with my parents, eating breakfast together on Saturday mornings while we share God's word, being a part of the same church, all the while being able to have my own privacy and no curfews :) None of this would have been possible back then - the timing that God chose to restore this area of my life is just amazing.

On top of that, God has also been restoring the types of friendships that I've always wanted but never had. All those TV shows that I watched growing up have groups of guys and girls who are best friends and do everything together. I think somewhere along the way, I just said to myself, I guess it wasn't meant to be. I figured it was too late to find a new group at the age of 27 - everyone already has their group of friends by now. I was totally fine with being around a group of girls most of the time, and occasionally keeping in touch with a few guy friends here and there. Furthermore, I was beginning to realize that being friends with guys was more complicated than I had originally imagined, so I was content with things the way they were. Then all of a sudden, it's like, God just hands me a group of new friends at church. I think one of my first thoughts when I started getting to know this group was - wait, am I actually going to have a group of friends with girls AND guys?! God is full of surprises. We're all about the same age - and while a lot of people our age are married or even have kids already - our group is mostly single, so it feels like we're a bunch of kids. Again, it's not something I'd ever imagined happening at this point in my life. Sometimes in conversation, my friends would be surprised that I don't know certain group traditions or things that the church has done for years because it really feels like I've known them for years rather than just months. One of the girls in the group said to me once, 'It was so strange - it's like you just appeared out of nowhere and now you're a part of the group.' LOL.

Another quick story about God's restoration that I think is really cool. When the Israelites returned from captivity and had finished rebuilding the temple, God said to them, 'Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? .... Be strong, all you people of the land, and work, for I am with you ... The silver is mine and the gold is mine ... The glory of this present house will be GREATER than the glory of the former house.' A lot of times we may look at the present and wish for things that were in the past, or complain that the good old days are gone. But there may be things that we cannot yet see, or that we can't see with our physical eyes - things that God is restoring and making more glorious. If we truly are living for God, then our lives (silver, gold) belong to Him and because of that, because He is alive and with us, that the present glory is great than the glory of the past.