Sonshine for the Soul                July 20, 2010
 
Channel 7 News On Your Side.  Most local television stations have investigative reporters who take on challenges of helping people straighten out a problem situation they have faced with a company.  This time, the challenge was a little different.
 
On a recent newscast, the story was told of a young man who had taken what he thought to be an empty envelope, and ran it through the shredder.  He didn't give any thought to it, as this was what he usually did with opened envelopes when finished with them.  Some time later his mother came home and inquired about the whereabouts of the envelope.  It was then that she learned, to her surprise/shock, that the envelope had been shredded.  Being surprised by her reaction, he was the one more shocked at learning that inside it, it contained four $100 bills.  Quickly he took off the shredding device and looked into the basket of shredded strips, he recognized the all too familiar green color of the bills. His heart sank.
 
What can you do at a time like that except to feel terrible that you just saw $400 go down the drain.  Not knowing what else to do, hey thought to call their local tv station's investigative reporter to see if anything could be done to salvage the money.  Almost too good to be true, research found that there is actually a division of the U.S. Treasury that repairs torn or damaged dollar bills.  A box of the sliced bills were sent off and this unique group of men and women were able to piece together all of the strips and  restore all of the money back to their original condition, carefully, painstakingly every piece of each individual bill, as if none of this had even happened. It was amazing.
 
In giving it thought afterwards, it reminded me of the pieces of our lives.  Sometimes broken and torn apart and we are dumbfounded to know how to make it right again, when we try to fix it ourselves. To me, God is like the restorer of the dollar bills. He takes the brokenness of our lives and, unlike the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty, He is the One who puts us back together again.  And in His eyes, we are whole.  When we take our brokenness and surrender at His Cross of grace and forgiveness, the Lord will bring us back to that place of righteousness, that can only be found in Him.
 
I think we can all attest to the fact that we find ourselves going to Him for needed repair or overhaul.  It is nowhere to be found in the Bible that there is a line that we can cross, where eventually, He's fixed us one too many times and there is no more to be done, except to leave us broken.  Yet, I know, I've acted, at times, as if God shouldn't fix me (again) - "I wouldn't have," or as if there was a limit to His forgiveness or grace. Acting in that way is prideful, and is being disobedient to the Lord.
 
Our responsibility is to go before Him, desiring to be cleansed and restored, and knowing our God will always be there for us.  How can we be more Christ-like in our thinking, in our behavior, than to surrender ourselves before the Lord, and wait and watch as He transforms us.  Of course, we also need to be willing to change. He loves us too much to leave us the way we are, when flesh rears its ugly head, and we act anything but Godly.  We don't have to accept our "flesh" as being all we can be -you know, an attitude of "that's the way I've always been..." 
 
Though that may be how you've felt sometimes, it's a lie of the devil himself.  Remember, he is the "father of lies."  You can't trust anything he says or does.  When you turned to Jesus Christ as your Savior, satan no longer had power over you.  You are a child of the King! Just being reminded of that fact, you should feel His peace embrace your heart.  The free will that we have is a choice, to act upon it, in a Godly way, or not.
 
If you are feeling troubled, right now, or you have felt that way for a long time, please be encouraged that you are loved and precious in His sight.  The Lord will equip you, through His Holy Spirit, to have the victory over your broken pieces for He is the Great Physician...By His wounds you are healed.
 
I want to leave you with some verses of Scripture that I pray will encourage you.  Don't wait too long to go before God's throne of grace - He is waiting for you, loving you unconditionally, and to set you free.
 
From the New Living Translation ~
Matthew 28:20b:  "...be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Psalms 147:3,5:  "He heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds. How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension!"
James 4:7-8: "Humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you."
2 Corinthians 12:9b: (The Lord to Paul) "My power works best in your weakness."
Romans 12:2: "...let God transform you into a new person..."
 
God bless you, my friend!  Love, in Christ Jesus, Susan