What's it Worth?

2Co 13:9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.

2Co 13:11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

The KJV says we pray for your perfection, but what pops out to me is the word restoration. If you look throughout the old testament the word restore is used on multiple occasions. Promising of nations, lives, families all being restored. So i began to think why did Paul aim for this perfection or being brought back to a place of complete restoration? Why did he say your restoration is what we pray for?

Imagine this you just move into a house, the people that owned it before you left some of their furniture in the house and said to just keep it. Upon looking at it you question whether you should even keep it because it looks so worn out and eh. But you decided to see what you can do with it. You then go through the restoration process and at the end of this process this piece of furniture is one of the most beautiful things you have ever seen. Turns out its actually an antique from the 1900's. Not only is it beautiful it is worth a lot of money. In fact it is now valued more than it ever has been. So think about this, when this piece of furniture was first bought I'm sure it was of much worth and it looked beautiful but as time progressed it began to collect dirt and it lost its shine, it lost its luster. So now over a hundred years later you come and you decide to give this ugly piece of furniture a chance to be something so you take it through this very strenuous restoration process with no promise of a positive outcome but just a hope. In the end what ends up happening is after the restoration process this piece of furniture is actually worth more than it was worth when it was first made. Its brought to a place of new riches the value of it cant quite be explained because it is worth so much.

Now i go back to what Paul was saying, "Your restoration is what we pray for" i think he is saying, "hey all you guys who have messed up and all this dirt added up and you feel so worthless God is wanting to restore you." BUT get this when God restores you he doesn't just bring you back to the place you were. He restores you and your value, for a lack of better terms, to greater than it was before. You've been restored to a point of complete renewal and because of all the ware and tear you've been through you can now do so much more because you know so much more. I think we as people just need to see that God has promised to Restore to us what we once had. If we can stand firm on his promise the things we can accomplish are ridiculous. Now if we continually let ourselves believe the lie of the devil that we aren't worth anything or we aren't good enough we ill just keep collecting dirt rusting and we just let it go like this the rest of our lives. I think its time to believe in his promise and receive restoration in our lives. Until you are restored you can not live up to all you were created to do.

OnEaMoNgMaNy