I was thinking about the word restoration.  The simple definition of this word is to bring something back to its original condition.  However, I don’t merely want to be restored back to the way I was.  I want to move beyond restoration and grow and mature into someone stronger and better.  I want to be new and improved. 

I’m fairly new to the world of social media.  There are some people that I lost contact with over the years and have reconnected with via Facebook.  A lot of these are friends of mine from Bible School, and I’m enjoying seeing what they’re doing now–20 years later.  One of these friends suffered a horrible tragedy just a year after we graduated.  He and his wife met during the Bible School year, fell in love and had a fairy tale wedding.  They were made for each other as they complimented one another beautifully.  Just three weeks before their first wedding anniversary, while she was five months pregnant, the van they were riding in was struck head-on by a drunk driver.  The van door slid open, she was thrown out and was killed along with the unborn baby.  I spoke to him a few weeks after the accident, and he kept saying, “Rebecca, heaven is so real to me now.  I want nothing more than to be finished with life and join my wife and baby in heaven.”  I saw him a few months later while he was still grieving but trying his best to put his life back together.  I heard a few years after that he met someone else and remarried, and I lost touch with him.

I found him on Facebook.  To my great delight I discovered that he is the founding pastor of a wonderful church.  I downloaded a few of his messages and was so blessed to hear happiness in his voice.  He is not the same man.  He’s not even the man he was before the accident.  He’s so much more.  I was trying to think of a good word to describe the change in him, and it camed to me–transformed!

I really believe that the LORD is in the transformation business, and we have a tremendous opportunity to join with him in this venture of His.  Many of us long to experience the LORD moving and working in the full manifestation of His power, and all it requires of us is to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face, turn away from our sin, and then He will hear us and come and heal our land.

Another of my Bible School friends posted this as his status recently, “The prayer that sparks revival begins long before the countryside seems to awaken from its slumber in sin. It starts when men fall on their knees and cry out to God. That’s where true intimacy with God takes place and we begin the journey of being transformed into the image of Christ. And as men are transformed, the course of a nation can be changed.” – Wellington Boone

True intimacy with God begins when we humble ourselves and cry out to God in prayer.  May God pour out a spirit of grace and prayer upon us, so that our hearts and His heart can join as one.  Then we will see transformation not only in ourselves, but in our nation.