We Are Restored

God can speak to you anywhere… through anyone… with anything.  Listen to this…

I was at a women’s retreat last fall and we had the privilege of taking part in communion.  We were in the middle of an amazing time of praise and worship and I walked to the table and took a small cracker and a little thimble-sized plastic cup with juice in it.

As I sat down to pray, I looked at that cracker… surveying it.  The cracker was:

• burned around the edges…
• bumpy with a few holes in it…
• jagged on one side…
• badly misshapen…
• completely undesirable…

I spent a long time staring at the cracker and had an unexpected and profound thought.  At that moment, the cracker represented me!  With tears streaming down my face, I asked God how He could possibly love someone as imperfect as me.  Someone…

• so bruised and beat up by life…
• with bumps in all the wrong places…
• with gaping holes in my life…
• who had things taken away that can never be returned…
• who is nothing to look at… undesirable by the world’s standards…
• that had been broken over and over again…
• abused and used up…

I was sobbing uncontrollably now because gazing at this cracker was like looking in a mirror and I didn’t like what I saw.

Through my tears, my eyes moved over to the grape juice and I noticed it was a deep red… a representation of the blood Jesus spilled for us.

I heard God say (not audibly) “Because of the blood of Christ, that cracker (Carey) is the most precious and desirable thing in my eyes.” I responded in prayer, “But the cracker is hard and jagged and if bent… will break.  It’s worth nothing!  How can it hold any value?”

Isn’t that who the world tells us we are everyday?

God told me to put both in my mouth at the same time… the juice and the cracker.  So, I did… and guess what happened.

I felt the cracker become soft and pliable.  It didn’t feel jagged and rough and was no longer easy to break.  In my mind’s eye, I imagined the cracker taking on the deep red color of the juice and so the burned edges were no longer distinguishable.

And I realized that because of the blood of Jesus Christ, I am restored.  I am no longer who the world tells me I am.  Instead, I am a child of God made clean through the cross.

Brothers and sisters… your identity is restored in the same way. Receive this truth.  Soak in it… again.  Let it seep into the marrow of your bones.  Because of Christ, you are restored.

Tell the world to take a hike…