Before and After

This morning, a single word spoken by my pastor caught my attention.  It’s not a word that I hear very often in a sermon, but I have heard it said about houses.  You see, in the past 5 years, I have had a significant amount of work done on my house.  It started with the kids removing the stucco, putting in new windows, changing the location of the front door, and putting on new siding.  The next project would be to gut the basement, take out the twirly stairs, build a staircase, remove a support column, insert an I-beam through the side of the house, reconfigure the bathroom,  and finally create an awesome living room and 2 bedrooms.  The next year brought changes to the kitchen.  This included gutting the area, removing the closet in the bedroom to make room for an island, installing new cabinets, leveling and then laying hardwood flooring, and finishing off the staircase with a beautiful banister.  I look at before and after pictures of these projects and am amazed at the talent of my children.  Watching them, especially the “foreman”, Jeramy, solve the problems that come with working on old houses and then creating something so awesome brings tears to my eyes.  That brings me back to the word that was spoken this morning.  The word was “renovate”.  As I thought about the word, I contemplated its meaning and how different it is from the word, “restore”.  I looked up the definition of these words and surmised the differences.  Restore means to put back into its original condition whereas renovate means taking something and making it better. 

I don’t see God as being in the business of restoring.  He doesn’t want us to be in our original condition.  Our original condition is sinful.  God is in the business of restoration.  He takes the person that we are and changes it to make us better than the original.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  We are made like new.  Just like Jeramy is able to take an old kitchen and basement and them into something beautiful and usable, God takes our old selves and makes us into something beautiful that he can use.  Don’t pray for God to restore you.  Pray that He will renovate you!!