Stop praying for a Job type restoration, if you aren’t willing to go through a Job type test. See, we want the restoration but to get to restoration, there has to be something that happened prior to that caused either damage or brokenness. That’s where we fail. We can’t pray for restoration, unless there’s something damaged and/or broken. In my latest book, When the Vows Break 3 (shameless plug), I wrote on recovery and restoration. First, you have to know there’s a difference in the two because many times we tend to want to skip the recovery part. However, recovery is the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. Whereas restoration is the action of returning something to a former owner, place, or condition. Let’s say you own a building and the building catches fire or there’s been some damage done to it. After the fire, the building is in the hands of the fire department and until you regain possession of it, you can’t restore it. Well, the only way God can effectively restore us, we’ve got to be in God’s possession. We do that through recovery.
Let’s face it, we sometimes walk away from God. That’s because we face stuff that seems like punishment or we have abandonment issues. With abandonment issues, even physical, they play into our spiritual. You can be honest because when God doesn’t answer, when we think He should, we feel abandoned and we turn away from Him. We’ll stop going to church, stop praying, stop tithing and fasting etc. That’s okay, God doesn’t leave us, even when we leave Him. However, for God to perform restoration, we have to be in His possession. Job, he went through unimaginable loss, after which God restored everything he lost. Yet, before he got to restoration, he had to recover.
Job’s recovery was a process and it hurt. He had to go through detox (he had to lose some stuff), anger (he cursed the day he was born), crying out to God, pleading with God, arguing with God, the why me (Job asked why aren’t the wicked punished), understanding, recalling former things, being challenged by God and then apologizing to God. Once we make it here, God isn’t done because then, He’ll require something of us. For Job, he had to pray for his friends. Afterwards, though, Bible says in Job 42:10, “When Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes. In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before!” Yes, we can get to restoration but there’s a process and a cost. And if you want to know if the process is worth it … it absolutely is.
Lakisha, the Author 