As the Lead Pastor of Local Church, I wanted to equip our core team with a few resources as we prepared to plant. Restore was at the top of that list.

Restore positions a person to receive from the Lord by abiding in His Word together with others. Each week builds on the last, but the central exercise of each lesson is to simply listen to the voice of the Lord through His Word. As a person practices this and takes time to reflect in the group, the Lord brings a greater awareness of His love, forgiveness, restoration, and hope to the particular brokenness of one’s own story.

Community is a popular word lately--but do we really have it?

The world offers a multitude of communities: Facebook groups, clubs, and notifications in group chats that affirm that you are in, that you are connected, that you are part of something.  But are notifications and pixels real connections?

Our groups can be connected only by taste in music, or the latest film, or our opinion on sports. While those things are nice, are they enough? Can those connecting ties hold the weight of struggles with sin and suffering?

“I had the privilege of attending the Restore Weekend Retreat with some of our church leadership. What an amazing time of being together with others as we experienced Jesus as a family!

God had something very personal for me during this time, as I came away with two lasting gifts for my heart. First, I received a deep and lasting encouragement in the presence, promises, and power of God for both my life and the life of others. God has allowed me to hold onto these realities for myself and believe them for the good of others.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Love makes the world go ‘round.” But if that’s true, why is it so hard to find love?

You may long to be loved, but you probably also struggle with wondering whether or not you are worth loving. You desire deep friendships but also struggle to love others who are different from you.

Why is it so hard to love? Why is it so hard to be loved? Is the love we’re yearning for real, or is it merely a romantic notion that can only be found in movies or novels? 

Does your life feel like a battlefield? Maybe it feels like everything is warring against you. Your struggles surround you, the booms of past failures and hurts still rattling in your ears. Every time you think you’ve weeded out a sin, it pops back up again. It feels like a struggle just to survive.

In the midst of this chaos, we can easily choose to go numb, or to be angry at God. After all, if he loves us, and is in control, then why is life so hard? But we forget we have an enemy--several in fact.

Participating in Restore enabled me to see the story of my life through new eyes.

The past was in the past, and I could not change it. However, re-examining the patterns of responding in my past which influenced my present, learning that many of the struggles of my heart were common to mankind, and understanding that I was created for communion with a God who has entered into the broken world in which I live, helped me to reframe my story in the light of God's redemptive story.

In Restore, I tasted the sweetness of…

Have you ever looked over a landscape covered in clouds? Everything has a grey coldness to it; everything feels far-off and distant. You know that the hills are over there, and you know the tall trees are beside them--but you can’t really see them. They are so faded, you wonder if they’re even in your world, or just illusions far away. The only constant thing is the fog, shrouding your window, covering all else.

Have you ever had the same feeling when you were trying to look at God?

Has he ever felt far-off, and distant? You know that his love is there; you know his transforming power is there--but you can’t really see them.

Restore: Changing How We Live and Love released today! This Study Guide is the fruit of almost 25 years of ministry and over 7 years of seeking to understand how God’s story offers hope and help; and it’s breathtaking to see it arrive in such a physical way. God has had His hand in this whole process, and we’re grateful for His kind and faithful leading. 

We’re passionate about this work, as we believe it fills a great need in the church--if not, the book wouldn’t have been written! But don’t just take it from us…

How confident are you in your God?

We believe that He exists, and we know in our minds that He loves us. Yet we are still overwhelmed by life, and unsure how the Gospel makes any difference. We struggle, and the questions rise. “Why does God feel so distant? “Does God really love me?” “Does He even know what’s going on in my life?”

We know about God’s love, but we don’t experience it…

“I’m so overwhelmed.”

Have you thought this lately? Has it felt like everything is piling on top of you, making it hard to concentrate, and even hard to breathe? Whether it is worries about a job, our family, or the future; everything can feel like it’s just too much. We look ahead and are overwhelmed with the uncertainty of what’s to come. We look back at our lives, and are overwhelmed with the struggles we’ve had.

What do we do with the things that overwhelm us?

Growing up I had a longing for things to be different, better, deeper.

As a girl, I would collect materials from around the house and use them to build additions onto my dollhouse. I thought, “With just a little will-power, creativity, and work, I can make this the DREAM house it was destined to be!” I would work to the best of my ability, only to be let down at the end, when my finished product never turned out the way that I had envisioned.

I was left discouraged and let down.

Do you know your own story? 

At some point, we all ask, "Why am I here? What’s my purpose? Why did these things happen to me?”

But rarely do we know the answers.

We can feel lost—drifting about aimlessly, in an ocean with no rudder, not sure where we came from or where we’re going. But it’s not only our stories we feel lost in, we can be confused about God’s story too…

Church leaders often grow weary dealing with constant waves of suffering and sin. The challenges of ministry are overwhelming, demanding, and relentless.

How do you approach caring for others? In this article, Robert Cheong dives into four essential elements to help balance the ways we approach relationships with others.

It can be difficult to wrap our minds around life, let alone ourselves. When he reflected on how intimately God knew him, David declared that such profound awareness was too wonderful for him; it seemed unattainable (Ps. 139:6).