God Restores Relationships!

Good morning, my dear friends, family and even strangers! Grace, peace and joy to you this morning in the name of Jesus! I woke up this morning at 4:30 am. As you may have read in prior posts, the Lord begun asking me to rise while it is still dark and meet with Him to pray, and read His Word. He originally gave me a time of 5:00 am, but I struggled to get up every day and meet with Him, so I asked Him for wisdom. He told me to get up at 4:00am instead. Amazingly, I have had better success getting up at 4am than 5am. That is the wisdom of God, above and beyond anything we can comprehend. This morning, my son awoke early and had trouble going back to sleep...I woke up completely with him fussing. Then he peacefully nodded off, and a few minutes later, my alarm went off. God had helped me by allowing my son to be fussy to get me out of bed this morning. Here it is 5:38am and I am already having a wonderful day, having spent time with God already!

I want to share this morning that my God is a God of restoration. He is a God of mercy and compassion and lovingkindness. He is able to guide His children to make peace with one another. As I had written...I lied to my friend and had avoided her, then the Lord convicted me of my sin, and I repented and asked for her forgiveness. It is always hard to be in the position where you are relying on the mercy and grace of another to restore and maintain a relationship. I guess, in a way, all relationships require humility before others and being dependent on the good being present in their lives. I was anxious to hear whether my friend would indeed forgive me, or if she was going to stay angry with me. She has been a God-fearing Christian woman for mostly all her life, but we can all have times of being unforgiving and angry in our flesh. She certainly had every right to be upset. But instead, by the Spirit of the merciful God that lives in her, she wrote me a beautiful message yesterday. She simply told me how she understood what was going on, and that she loved me and missed being with me. It brought tears to my eyes, and I couldn't wait to see her at church yesterday.

I went up to her, threw my arms around her and just told her how much I loved her and appreciated her friendship and forgiveness. We hugged several more times during the course of the night, and it was just amazing how God can take something that my enemy intended for evil, and work it for good once again. If anything, our friendship now has a stronger bond than it did before. Praise God! Here is what God says:

Romans 8:28 (NKJV):

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

What Satan intended for evil, division and destruction, God turned into a glorious and deeper friendship between two of His children. This is a God who is not out to kill, steal and destroy, as our enemy is, but a God who wishes to reconcile, restore, and bring peace to the world through His Son Jesus Christ. He will come and pour out His wrath upon the wicked who refuse to acknowledge Him and His sacrifice for their sins, but this will be the choice of those people to reject the truth. It is not because He is an angry or vengeful God. It is simply because He is a God of justice in the highest regard. I encourage you today to ask God to show you His mercy and His tenderness, and ask Him to restore those things unto you which have been divided, broken, lost or damaged. Ask Him to show you that He is the God of restoration, and if He has not yet restored your soul unto salvation, ask Him to save you today. He is faithful to His Word, and will forgive you of all your sins...and you will experience peace with God, and abundant life. He will restore unto you what the locusts have eaten.

Joel 2:25-26 (NASB):

"Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; Then my people will never be put to shame."

Even what the enemy has seemingly destroyed, God can work for good, and cause it to be restored unto you. We simply must trust God and put our faith in Him, and seek Him first, and all these things will be added unto us. This is the word of the Lord that He has put in my heart today. May God bless you all with restoration and truth in your lives. Praise the God who is the lover of your soul, and your salvation!

Under His mighty wing,

Sarah