I’ve been thinking of the story of the woman in 2 Kings 4:8-37. She had recognised that Elisha was a holy man of God and had built him a little room to stay in and he recognised her kindness and prayed that even though her husband was old she would have a son; and she did. Then the son died. And she laid the boy on Elisha’s bed and sent for Elisha to come and pray for him. The man of God was 20 miles away but he came and prayed, stretched himself out on the boy and life returned to him. God restored the boy to the family.
Was there any reason for God to restore the boy or is restoration part of Who God is?
We see Jesus restoring life and health all through the Gospels.
God even restores time.
Joel 2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
We see the Word restore in Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
(This word want can be translated as I shall not want, I shall not lack, I shall not fail)
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
I was listening to a sermon today where Pastor Jeremy Pearson was sharing about how when Jesus fed the 5 Thousand, He told the people to sit or it could be translated, lie down in a place where there was a lot of grass.
He was revealing Himself as the Good Shepherd to the people, that they would not want.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
restORE
- return (someone or something) to a former condition, place, or position.
“the effort to restore him to office isn’t working”
- repair or renovate (a building, work of art, etc.) so as to return it to its original condition.
“the building has been lovingly restored”
In Queensland Australia there are these houses that were first built by the settlers called queenslanders, with big rooves to deal with the heat, floors raised above the ground on stumps to allow for airflow and minimise flooding and big wrap around verandas.
When they are restored and renovated they are stunning and command a premium price.
Modern appliances are added to their unique features; hardwood floors, arches over doorways, and unique window hoods.
I remember a story Katherine Ruonala tells of a situation that was really muddled up to the point where she felt like it was ‘scrambled eggs’. She hadn’t told anyone that but at that moment a friend who was coming walked through the door and said, ‘you know God can even unscramble eggs.’ It was like a word of knowledge to restore hope to the situation.
In her book Double for Your Trouble she shares the story of a family who went to the Healing Rooms run by John G Lake, to get help for their son who was born disabled and with a misshapen head and they were told he would be a vegetable for life. They were told by other pastors that God no longer did miracles, but somehow they heard of what was happening with John G Lake and they made the journey. They continued to get prayer for their son everyday for weeks until he became completely normal and was able to go to school.
God wants to satisfy our mouths with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagles . . . Psalm 103
I just heard a testimony of a young girl healed of autism as the preacher prayed over her mum, ‘I release complete shalom into this situation’.
I knew shalom meant nothing broken, nothing missing, I didn’t realise it also meant the spirit that breaks all chaos.
From that day forward the girl began to improve, over the course of a year until she was completely healed. Previously she had hidden under the bed for hours during thunderstorms and could not be brought out and after the prayer she stood at the door and said, “I used to be scared of these, but I don’t know why.”
Are words of life, stronger than words of death?
It was my job to choose. To choose to align myself with God’s words of life in His Word, rather than a doctor’s negative reports or anything else anybody else had said.
I remember talking to someone once about the importance of our words, after sharing some of the below stories with her and she was like, ‘really? Words can have that much power, really? I just don’t get it.”
And yet God says our Words do have that much power, they are like a bridle that steers our life, the rudder of a boat, a flame that sparks a forest.
One of the Scripture verses Mum had us memorise as children was, ‘Our tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat it’s fruit’
I had a dream recently where a friend of mine who had been struggling with some issues, suddenly stood up and said, “I am not struggling, that is not my identity, I am processing these issues, and that’s how you are to refer to the situation.”
I listened to a woman who had been in a mental asylum and taken every med prescribed to her, and not seen much difference decide that she was going to say what the Bible said about herself. She started speaking out that she had wise friends, that she had a spirit of love and not fear even though she thought it sounded silly and gradually her life began to come into alignment with that.
When I was pregnant with my third child as I was nearing my due date so many people at church kept saying to me, ‘you must be so uncomfortable’. And I was agreeing with them until my husband said, ‘No she shouldn’t be uncomfortable, God made her body to do this.’ I decided to bless my body and baby to be comfortable and the last two weeks of that pregnancy were the most comfortable out of the whole pregnancy.
I heard a story from John Bevere of a man whose wife gave birth to son in a developing country, and the doctors said he would be a vegetable. Every day that couple spoke life over their son, blessing his brain to develop and by age 18 he was out there playing golf like and John would never had known that he had been disabled had he not been told.
A pastor of our homegroup shared how a single Mum had a daughter who just wasn’t sleeping and the whole family was ragged with exhaustion, so every night they began to pray for that girl for half an hour and within 3 days she began sleeping through the night.
The Bible says the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. James 5:16
Maybe you could look at prayer like cleaning, in their natural states, our homes fall into disarray, dust gathers, cobwebs, mould, and in our lives things can gather, sickness,
God has chosen prayer to restore order in the earth.
Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Justice, health, restoration, peace, hope, especially as we begin to understand that Jesus paid for all of this on the cross.
I remember a dream that a lady called Patsy Camanetti had and shared at a conference. In her dream many horrible atrocities were happening to children and the poor in big building and she kept begging God to come and stop it in her dream. The dream kept repeating itself over and over and on more than one night and one day as she was crying out to God, why would he not stop it, he responded that He could only stop it in direct proportion to the prayers of His children.
It is God’s desire to have His goodness follow us all the days of our lives.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Psalm 23:6
The word for follow here is the word run after with intent to bless
Another simmilar word, Gimel, is found above Psalm 119:17
Who brings our chaos back into order? Who makes the orphan a son or daughter? The King of Glory the King above all Kings – This is Amazing Grace. Even without the help of a toddler my house only degenerates, dust gathers, food gets mouldy or rotten.
When God found His world degenerating in Eden after sin, His plan was to bring chaos back to order, and to make us sons and daughters with a spirit that cries Abba Father. It took a process but God did it.
Without His Divine Power at work in our life we can be sure they would degenerate too, BUT He has placed His resurrection power inside of us to bring chaos back to order in our relationships and our very bodies, even where degeneration or bacteria or viruses have devastated them.
The way God made our bodies is so amazing. He made them to heal, I was just thinking about how amazing it is that broken bones can heal. Just imagine if once breaking a bone you were forever condemned to live with it broken.
I heard Louie Giglio’s How Great is Our God talk where he was sharing that at 5 months gestation all these thousands of optic nerves have to perfectly connect from one side of the brain to the other in order for the baby to have sight. If even one goes astray; there are problems & that’s only one of the amazing miracles.
Every 3 seconds 50 thousand of our cells regenerate, & I’m blessing them to regenerate perfectly healthy with no mutations or damage AMEN
I thank God that even though healthy diets can help, only He truly really healed my gut, causing it to come back into perfect alignment after Salmonella, mould poisoning & IV antibiotics left it leaky.
I heard a testimony of a young girl healed of autism as the preacher prayed over her mum, ‘I release complete shalom into this situation’.
I knew shalom meant nothing broken, nothing missing, I didn’t realise it also meant the spirit that breaks all chaos.
From that day forward the girl began to improve, over the course of a year until she was completely healed. Previously she had hidden under the bed for hours during thunderstorms & could not be brought out. After the prayer she stood at the door and said, “I used to be scared of these, but I don’t know why”
I’ve barely skimmed the surface of Scriptures around the topic of restoration, as many of them are in the historical context of the Israelites, but I hope I’ve helped establish for you that restoration is part of God’s nature.
This is so good Elizabeth. Thankyou for writing out what the Lord is saying.