Renewal, Restoration and Redemption

UV 2859/10000 Renewal, Restoration and Redemption
In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old:
Amos 9 v 11
Job lost everything at one time but did not lose faith and hope in the Almighty. He is the God who restores the broken, the fallen, the ruins. When we run our lives, we ruin it but when He runs our lives, we really run. But even when we fall, He picks us up. He sets us back on our feet. He raises us up from debacles and disasters and restores us to our pristine glory for His name’s sake. The tabernacle in the uni-verse is a metaphor for the temple of the Lord. The tabernacle or temple of residence of the Lord in and with David had fallen when he committed adultery but the Lord forgave his grave sin of adultery and complicity in murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, the Hittite. The anointing of the Holy Spirit that enabled him to personally and intimately relate to the Lord as no man had ever done before was restored to him. The joy or assurance of salvation was also restored to him. David’s walls or boundaries of behaviour had fallen short of the glory or greatness and righteousness of the Lord. The Lord sent pointed and hidden warnings and admonitions and David heeded. He repented from his heart and restored it to be that of the man shaped after God’s own heart.
Likewise, even when we fail or fall, the Lord promises to repair the breaches, the leakages in our lives, the cracks in the walls of our lives. Not only that, the Lord amazingly promises to do better for the faithful than at our beginnings when we had not yet lost our first love. Jerusalem once lay in ruins but the Lord used Nehemiah to raise up the walls and to re-build the ruins. He raised up a new king Cyrus to support the move of the exiles to return to the ancient city and re-build it.
In whatever area, we have experienced loss – in our families, with regard to our children, our career, our health, our finances, our friends, the Lord promises to re-build it. We only need to continue to trust the Lord and His promises even when things lie devastated or ruined. Sometimes, even our faith gets shattered by certain experiences and encounters. But our faith too is restored by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The one thing we need to do like Job is to never break faith with the Lord and in His infallible word. As we anchor our faith and hope in Him, He will begin the work of restoration, of enabling the re-building, of strengthening from within, of causing changes for the better in whatever is the area of our need, of healing us and renewing our minds and our spirits. As long as our Redeemer lives, nothing and no one is irredeemable.
Prateep V Philip