Is Restoration Possible?

By Dustin Messer
Dustin Messer is a Priest at All Saints Dallas and a Constitutional Fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

“I feel lost.”

Those are the words that greeted me when I picked up the phone. Since separating from his wife a month into the lockdowns, my friend’s days were becoming more and more listless, even as he was becoming more and more lifeless.

His depression and anxiety weren’t helped by the incessant 24-hour news which blared in his living room.

While you may not share the same challenges as my friend, I’m betting you do resonate with his experience.

Haven’t we all felt the ground beneath our feet has shifted over the past few months?
       
Haven’t we all wondered if restoration is possible, or if we’re too lost to be helped?

This feeling of disorientation—personal, cultural—is nothing new for God’s people
.
The Prophet Jeremiah knew this feeling well. He was living in a time of cultural upheaval and societal injustice.

In his lostness, he remembered the last time he felt found.

In his hunger, he remembered the last time he felt full.

The subtext of his conversation with God is this question:  Can I be restored?

If you’re looking for restoration, the 15th chapter of Jeremiah is a helpful passage to consider. In vs. 16, Jeremiah remembers the last time he was found:
“Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

Being Found

Those first readers of Jeremiah would have immediately known what the phrase, “Your words were found” was referring to.

They were referring to Jeremiah’s dad, Hilkiah.
One day, Hilkiah found something in the Temple that revolutionized Judah:
He found God’s word.

It had been lost, and the people had become like the other nations without it. But once it was found, everything—society, business—and everyone—the rich, the poor—become transformed.

What happened at the micro level to Judah happened at a micro level to Jeremiah personally when he discovered God’s word.

From Genesis 1, we see that this is what God’s word does: it creates and it re-creates.
But it’s really only a half-truth to say that Jeremiah found God’s word.

In the most fundamental way, God’s word found him, as we see in Jer. 1:4:
 “Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Long before he was a prophet, long before he was born, God was searching for him.

Ephesians 1 tells us that that is the case for every believer.
Even before the creation of the world, you were chosen.
God predestined you for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ.

Your spiritual journey isn’t of some passing interest to God.

In his grace, He pursues you.

As the late Catholic priest John Francis O’Connor described it:
“As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and steady pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never-ending pursuit.”

Being Filled

Having considered the last time he was found, Jeremiah now looks to the last time in which he was filled.

Again, look at vs. 16 to see what happens after he finds God’s word:
“Your words were found, and I ate them.”
This harkens back to Jeremiah’s first encounter with God’s word.

Jer 1:9, “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.”

As a prophet, Jeremiah had a job to do:
speak God’s words.

But Jeremiah says he went further.

He ate those words which were given to him by God.

He wasn’t someone who just talked the talk.

Once the word was in his mouth, he didn’t just spit it out at people—”Do this! Don’t do that!”—he swallowed it. He took it in.

God’s word wasn’t just in Jeremiah’s mouth, it was in his heart.

Hebrews 6 talks of those who have tasted “the heavenly gift” and of “the goodness of the word of God “and of “the powers of the age to come,” but nevertheless fall away.

Maybe you’re someone who has tasted God.

Perhaps you’ve been reading the Bible, going to church, maybe you’ve even had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Yet, you haven’t taken any of it in to your deepest being: you’re still tasting.

In the buffet of spiritual advice, maybe Jesus is even your favorite dish—he’s the macaroni and cheese—but you’re saving some room on your plate, just in case there’s someone or something better after the rolls.

Well, “taste everything and eat nothing” is good dieting advice, but it’s terrible spiritual council.  
Jesus knew this, of course.

When Jesus looked at the massive crowds around him, he knew they were tasters, not eaters. they weren’t ready to go all in.

And so, Jesus looks them in the eye and says something that astonishes even his disciples, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Restoration

Jeremiah wasn’t like the crowds. He ate of God’s word. And yet, as he recounts this experience, he can feel the spiritual hunger pains.

You see, Jeremiah was in the place my friend was in when he called me.
He was lost, he was empty.

He had made one bad choice after another.

My friend’s first words to me were, “I feel lost,” but the last question he asked me on that call was, “can I be restored?”

Perhaps you’re asking that question. Jeremiah certainly was.

Here’s how God responded to Jeremiah.

Here’s the words I read my friend.

Here’s the words I want you to hear from the voice of God:
“Therefore, thus says the Lord: “If you return, I will restore you.” (Jer 15:19).

If you turn back to God, He is there, waiting to be found.

If you turn back to God, He is there, waiting to give you a fresh filling—of his word, of his Spirit.

Jeremiah was restored.

My friend was restored.

You can be restored.

Jason Huckabee

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