Can God Restore Me?预览

 Have you ever trusted in a product or service later to find out you had been duped? You buy bottled water for its purity only to discover it’s from a tap in Milwaukee. Or you wear an armband promising better balance along with intellectual clarity, sounder sleep and agelessness. You want to believe it’s all true, but reality tells a different story.

That’s what happened in the case of the Piltman Man, the archeological finding that promised to provide the “the missing link” for evolution. In the middle of the twentieth century, this landmark discovery was found to be a complete hoax. The skull that was celebrated as a human mediary between ape and man actually originated from an orangutan. It had all been a farce to perpetuate the authenticity of a desired outcome. 

John the Baptist finds himself in a dungeon, fearing just such a predicament. Everything that was once transparent and absolute becomes clouded. The herald of the Savior questions his own calling and judgment. Did he make a mistake? Because sitting in a dungeon is not how he calculated fulfilling his purpose. 

To settle matters, John sent his disciples to Jesus. He wanted to know if he’d been duped by a con-artist or if Jesus was the Savior he announced. 

John was locked up in a dark, flea-infested, stench-filled dungeon indefinitely. It’s the kind of place you and I have likely only read about. But we can sympathize with how he acquiesced into questioning everything he’d ever known and believed. What is important to note is the response from Jesus. In essence, he calls upon John to compare what the Scriptures declare the Messiah will do with reality. Yes! John got it right even though he couldn’t see through the darkness of his own experiences. 

Sometimes life takes turns and swivels we never expected. We can have our own dismal dungeon experiences of life. I have a friend today whose life took an unexpected turn. She left town with the children, quit her job and returned few calls. I don’t know details, but that woman is having a dungeon experience of epic proportion. 

Of this I am certain: if God can restore John the Baptist, shaken in the dungeon about the very identity of Jesus, He can restore my friend in her catastrophe. 

Whenever you find yourself in a dungeon experience, your God will restore you.