“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me”
(Psalm 51:10-12)
A childhood friend of mine posted a story on Facebook that I found very interesting. He had just purchased a beat-up and rusted-out 1968 Camaro that he planned on renovating as that is a hobby he has picked up over the years. He loves refurbishing and restoring older model cars, especially the late 1960 model Camaros. Well, his wife saw the car he had just purchased and laughed at him. She was so condescending about it that she nicknamed the car “Doo Doo Brown” thinking in her mind as to why her husband would waste his time and effort in attempting to resurrect something that was past the place of redemption.
My friend did not mind her criticisms and opinions about the car because a few years prior he had brought an old, beat-up, and rusted-out 1968 Camaro back from the dead. He knew the parts that he would need to put into it. He understood the process of how to clean the mold from the interior and to reupholster it to look “clean & mean” from the inside. He knew how to rebuild the engine to its original specifications and to install it with the right engine accessories to make it “purr” like it did when it came off the assembly line so long ago. He had the acumen to know how to blast the rust from the original paint job and to give it a clear paint-gloss finish so that eyes would appeal to it and people would affix a sincere attraction to something that was once beat-up, broken-down, and in all intents and purposes practically dead.
My friend really wasn’t too concerned with what his wife thought because within his Facebook post he showed a picture of battered Camaro he had just purchased, but just beneath it was the Camaro that he had refurbished a few years prior. He explained that his wife had said the same thing about that Camaro when he brought it home because it looked like it had been robbed, beaten, and left half-dead, but he gave it the proper tender-loving care it needed and guess who drives and parades in that car now: HIS WIFE!!! And this my brothers and sisters is a practical and real life replica of the restoration model of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
You see, we all came off God’s assembly line painted, running, working, revving & throttling our engines with a purpose that he designed before the foundations of the world. As he told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nation’s. (Jeremiah 1:5)” God knew all of our specifications because he designed them and he knew how our design and destiny would be intertwined to fulfill his purposes within the Kingdom of God on earth. But just like both of my friend’s ’68 Camaros, we were used up and nearly thrown out.
The issues of life had beaten us up so badly that our engine would not turnover as it once did. Depression, disease, and internal deprivation began rusting out our determination, busting out the windshield of our protection, and cracking the headlights that once provided us a path toward God’s righteousness. We couldn’t run anymore, our paint job went from glamorous to “gutter-plus”, and our entire body and being was already in demolition headed for the junkyard of hopelessness. Then somewhere along the journey, Jesus Christ saw how much of a wreck we were. He didn’t ask how we got there, if someone had wronged us, or even if we had inflicted the damage on ourselves, but he took us from the junk pile and began his restoration project.
He didn’t mind doing it because he had performed this same renovation for so many others that had asked to be restored by him. Yes, they laughed and heckled us and even disassociated themselves from us before Jesus pulled us into his repair shop, but now those same hecklers who used us as the backend of their jokes now want to ride alongside us because we are now “So Fresh and So Clean”!
I want to encourage you today to never place your perimeter or your parameters above the power of God through Jesus Christ. He has the most effective restoration model and he knows what to do to bring you back to his designed specifications and to get you restored and back on the road. Peace and blessings.
~Rev. E. Shon Hagwood
