My Restore Story Chap 5: Jesus Restores Us With Love
Restore invites the participant to place their story within God’s story. Since the Fall, Satan has been fervently trying to deceive God’s people into believing that God has no grand story. And if he did, Satan certainly doesn’t want us to know that our own stories are intimately tied to God’s big story. But oh, how they are!
“You were not created to experience abuse.” These words breathed life into the emotions and bodily reactions to my grief that I’d been experiencing for months. I was not created for abuse, anxiety, or despair.
The abuse had left my body and mind feeling like foreign objects. It left me feeling like I was two people who were completely disconnected. If I wasn’t created for those experiences, it is no wonder why they had left me feeling so out of place. Abuse and the resulting sin and struggles that followed were rooted in the Fall, not in God’s good design for creation. Restore allowed me to align my story with God’s story. If my struggles were rooted in the Fall, then I could actually rejoice in the midst of suffering because the Fall isn’t the end of the story.
Jesus’ Suffering Love
Over the next few weeks, we recounted Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. We looked closely at Jesus’ suffering on the cross, how he took away our sins by absorbing God’s wrath. When asked how I saw God’s glory and love through Jesus’ life and death, the first word that came to mind was “grit.” I saw God’s persevering, enduring, steadfast love at the cross. In spite of brutality and rejection, Jesus was obedient even to the point of death. True love really does endure all things.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, my journal entries started to become a lot more hopeful during those weeks. Instead of feeling disconnected from my story, I felt as if God was breathing life into it, reviving it with his Word, restoring it with his touch. I felt a new solidarity with my Savior that I had never felt before.
Jesus died a violent, humiliating, bodily death—one that allows him to stand in empathy with survivors of abuse in an intimate way—and he rose again in all power declaring that sin, in fact, does not win.
The Joy of Jesus’ Presence
Even greater, Jesus wasn’t inviting me to look at the dark parts of my story alone. He gave me his Holy Spirit, the very presence of God. I began to notice all over Scripture invitations to experience God’s presence. What was lost in the garden, sought after throughout Israel’s history, and promised in the prophets is found in Jesus.
Jesus is God, and He became flesh and dwelled with us. And now because of Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit who is God and dwells with us. I began to feel joy! Because I had permanent union with Christ through the Holy Spirit, God’s presence was always readily available to me. It wasn’t something I had to achieve or earn.
Learning about Jesus’ desire to draw near to me by His Spirit and through His Word changed the way I approached reading the Bible. During the dark days of grief over the assault, I opened the Bible longing to understand why God had allowed this terrible thing to happen to me. I often felt like I was met with silence. Restore helped me to understand that Jesus’ offered up His presence freely to me in the midst of my suffering.
Instead of looking to the Bible for answers as to why, I began to read Scripture through the lens of comfort. All over the pages of my Bible were promises of renewal and hope.
While Satan was trying to keep my eyes down and my heart in despair, God was inviting me to look up at Him. When I felt the darkness of the rape, God was calling me into His presence. Where I’m safe. Where He is withholding nothing. Where there is infinite pleasure and joy.
These last few week we’ve been sharing how Restore has shaped one woman’s life, and helped bring the healing of God’s love into her story. Interested in having God’s story speak into yours? Check out Restore: Changing How We Live and Love today!
