I had always thought the goal of spiritual warfare was to persuade God’s people to do bad things. While Satan certainly is in the business of leading God’s people into sin, Restore was helping me to understand an even more perverse goal of the enemy. He is daily trying to cause me to doubt God’s love for me.

It has been his goal since the beginning. 

I felt the force of these lies during the early months of my pregnancy. I was plagued with fear about potentially losing the baby. Every twinge or ache caused panic to ripple through my body.

As a pastor, it gave me great joy to watch the people of MCC engage with the material and be equipped to abide in Christ. People experienced communion with God through his word and were given tools to keep abiding in Christ.

Months later, we are still talking about and utilizing the concepts from that conference. The people of our church still look back and remember the impact of the time we had together.

One of the greatest joys I’ve experienced in life and ministry is entering into other’s stories.

However, it’s also been one of the hardest things, learning how to know how to help others see and savor God in the midst of their struggles with sin and suffering. It can be difficult to help them instead see their own story in light of God’s big story.

I have found Restore to be an excellent, thoroughly biblical, and gospel-centered tool that has helped me personally see and savor God more by helping me see my own unique story through the lens of God’s story.

Simply saying “Jesus is the answer” doesn’t address the challenges this present evil age presents to growing as a disciple. Saying these words doesn’t adequately show how Christ makes a difference when we’re overwhelmed by life’s struggles. Knowing Christ is the answer doesn’t automatically explain how we should care for one another. It doesn’t offer ways to get a larger percentage of the church into the small group ministry.

When we declare that Jesus is the answer in a simplistic way, his gospel will not be concrete or relevant enough to answer our questions about life and ministry.

Pain often leaves us feeling misunderstood. Satan has a way of making us feel as if our struggles are unique.

I had experienced this whenever I shared with someone about the assault. I resented their empathy. “What do they know? They don’t know what it’s like.” My heart could be remarkably callous towards others trying to encourage me from a place of understanding. Since the people caring for me often hadn’t experienced abuse, I easily brushed off their sincere encouragement with “they don’t get it.” 

I made a strategic decision a few years back to replace the word counsel with the word care.

I didn’t send out a memo or make campaign signs. I simply began to intentionally use the terms “care” and “caring” everywhere I would have used the words “counsel” and “counseling.”

 My husband and I were hardly out of the honeymoon phase of marriage when I started to reflect about being raped as a teenager. Even now, behind the safety of a computer screen, the word “rape” makes my body tense up. Familiar emotions wash over me. “You weren’t raped. You couldn’t have been raped. That didn’t happen.” But it did. 

We as a church had gone through several cyclical seasons of deep hurt and loss over a number of years. We had hit an emotional and spiritual wall and it was evident that not dealing with this deep pain and hurt would only perpetuate and devolve future ministry.

Robert and Karen’s spirit filled wisdom and grace was exactly what our leadership needed…

Throughout the summer, staff continued to talk about the impact Restore had on them individually, but also collectively, as it made them more understanding of each other and ultimately a better team. I would highly recommend Restore as a means of coaching and caring for your staff.

This is where we’re headed. This is our ending. And knowing that ending shapes our stories today.

Because we know how it ends, we can have courage and persistence to press on through our struggles. We know our struggles won’t last forever--we know we will rest in joy one day. This consummation gives us hope that all will be made right--even our hurts and scars, even the injustices in the world. He has promised that He will make it all new. This consummation gives us assurance.

Someday, your journey through brokenness will end.

I had been a “professional” Christian for a long time, serving in the church, and I wanted to relearn what it meant to simply be a Christian. I longed to find rest in my identity as a beloved child of God. Walking through the Restore material helped me to do just that. 

Does Jesus make a difference in our lives before we die?

There’s plenty of things we know in our Christian lives. We understand that God made us, that sin bent us, and that we needed Jesus’ blood to reconcile us. But sometimes, this all feels far-off to us. Jesus worked to fix our past state, and He’s preparing heaven as our future state—but we’re not sure how He impacts now.

But Jesus isn’t just about getting you into heaven. He’s concerned with more than the end of your life. He’s come to give us life now, and to give it abundantly (John 10:10). Jesus transforms our lives right now, through allowing us to live in God’s promises, presence, and power.

Restore is a rich, intentionally biblical way to engage marriages. It’s effective for every phase and stage of life and marriage, precisely because it is rooted in our stories, which are constantly unfolding, and God’s story, which is pertinent to any moment on our timeline. And it can be returned to again and again because our stories aren’t static.

You shouldn’t stop in the middle of a story. 

Would you ever turn off a movie right in the middle? If you did, then you stop when the team loses, when the bad guy wins. If you turn off Lion King in the middle, then Simba is stuck trying to sing his hurt away, and Scar remains king of pride rock. If you stop Avengers in the middle, Thanos wins, and half the universe is gone. We all know better than to stop a story in the middle.

But sometimes we do that with ours.

I wanted to learn more about implementing gospel care in the local church, so I reached out to Sojourn Church Midtown. Even though I was from out of state, Robert and Karen Cheong availed themselves to me and a friend when we were attending a conference nearby Sojourn.

What happened that day with the Cheong’s was significant for us; not only did they share lots of information (which we came in search of), but they personally cared for us with the love of Christ (which we didn’t ask for, but needed).

The most dangerous problems are ones you don’t know. 

Imagine you’re preparing for a long car trip, the trunk stuffed full with your suitcases, your passenger seat full of travel-snacks, and your mind assured that your car is in perfect condition. But it’s not. There’s something wrong with the engine. And you don’t know. As you drive, you may get frustrated with the weird noises and odd smell; but you’re sure nothing is wrong with your car. So you’re frustrated at the hurt to your ears and nose you’re experiencing--but you’re also in great danger of your whole car catching on fire. Something in the car’s design has gone wrong. Being ignorant of the problem puts you in danger.

God designed us to know and experience love. We saw last week how we are made to walk in communion with Him, in His peace, but we can be filled with anxiety. We were intended to experience His love--but so often, we don’t. What happened? 

Our world has broken down.

Obviously, every pastor and every church has a desire to shepherd and care for their people well. All pastors want to live faithfully into that Biblical mandate, but what Robert helped us do was to bring a robust biblical and gospel-centered framework to our efforts.

During his consulting visit, we were able to develop a plan that was not only pragmatic, but more importantly, a plan that flowed right from Scripture.

“What am I doing here?”

The thought floats across Sarah’s mind yet again, as she folds yet another load of laundry. Every day feels the same, and she’s not sure of her purpose. She feels like she’s always behind, always running to catch up--but not even sure what the goal is. So she fills her life with busyness, to try to find a purpose. She runs from errand to appointment to soccer game--but she feels like she’s drifting in slow motion. That nagging voice in the back of her mind keeps asking why she’s here or what she’s supposed to be doing.

Maybe you feel like Sarah today. You’re not sure of your purpose--is there a reason why you’re here today? Are you here just to live, work, and then disappear? Is that all there is to your story?

There is more--but we can only understand it through God’s story.

When I first entered into the Restore experience, I was entering one of the most challenging seasons of my life.

My reality was one of ever-deepening depression and disillusionment driven by ministry trauma and the way in which my heart was responding to that trauma. My day-to-day relationships in the ministry I worked for at the time were characterized by betrayal, manipulation, and a passive hostility that seems to breed particularly in ministry contexts. I showed up to Restore with my emotions locked in the basement of my heart.

When we started, I struggled to connect with Scripture, to connect with other believers, and to see how God could be at work in my life. I battled fears of being transparent, the temptation to hide behind nice platitudes (“How are you?” “I’m fine.”); all the while, I was desperate for relief from the relational pain I was experiencing in ministry.

Every virus has a Patient Zero--the first person who got sick with that virus; the first person to spread it. Once a virus becomes widespread, affecting thousands of people, the hunt is on. They need to find Patient Zero. Once scientists find this first person who got sick, they can learn how and when that person caught the virus, and how it spreads.

Humanity has its own virus--one that manifests itself in many ways. A real virus hijacks your cells, and uses the same systems that produces new healthy cells, to produce more of the virus. It warps what was a good thing. The same thing has happened with us. We have “common struggles,” things that are natural, normal things, but can be twisted by sin and hurt to harm our souls.