Restoration: The Bounce Back

The episode explores the theme of restoration through faith and humility, emphasizing how God can mend broken lives and hearts. It discusses personal loss and the power of surrendering to God's process for healing. 

•  Discusses the promise of restoration in Joel 2:25 
•  Explores the steps of humility, surrender, and patience 
•  Shares a personal story of loss and grief 
•  Examines the challenges of coping with tragedy 
•  Explores the cost of pride and its impact on life 
•  Highlights restoration’s transformative power in the story of Job 
•  Encourages listeners to seek God's help in their own restoration 
•  Weekly Challenge: Ask Dad for a New One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Chapters

• 1:16 Episode Intro
• 2:26 Joel 2:25
• 5:19 Flashback: The Beginning of The End
• 10:44 God Restores Innocence Lost
• 11:58 The Life of Job
• 13:35 Pause for The Cause: Weekly Challenge
• 14:18 Outro and Prayer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Low Life Show, a space where we have conversations about the struggles of life, where we declare war on pride and walk humbly into renewed living with a surrendered heart. Where we take our past failures and turn them into a roadmap for you to live in peace and living the low life. Whether you're working through personal struggles or simply seeking a fresh perspective, this podcast will inspire and equip you to live low and let God lift you up. I'm your host, dl, the Low Life, a reformed professional dirtbag who's here to tell you that I now live a life of peace, transformed through humility. Join me, let's get low.

Speaker 3: 1:16

What's good, welcome back to the Low Life Show. I am DL, the Low Life, and today we're talking about one of the most beautiful things God does Putting the pieces back together Restoration. And when God does it, it's always better than it was before. It's like that old principle of leaving a person or a place better than when you found them. That's God. He does it all the time. If pride has torn down some things in your life relationships, opportunities, even your faith don't lose hope. God is in the business of rebuilding and when he restores it's an upgrade every time. He's always waiting for us to turn to Him so he can do His thing. But here's the catch Restoration starts with humility. You have to get low and let Him work. Let's talk about what that looks like and how to invite God into the broken pieces of your life.

Speaker 3: 2:08

We begin today's episode in the scripture. We begin today's episode in the scripture Joel 2, 25. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you. This blows my mind. Here God is saying that he's going to restore. So restoration, that means he's going to give it back. You're going to give back what was lost. God is telling his people I will restore the years the locusts have eaten, that he will restore what's been taken away. He's bringing sexy back. That's not just poetic language, that's a promise, a guarantee.

Speaker 3: 3:02

No matter how much you've lost, no matter how much pride or sin has taken from you, god can and will restore it. But you have to go to Him, you have to run back to Him, and it's a process. It all starts with getting low, being humble, humbling yourself. So the first step would be admitting that you can't fix it on your own. Going to God and saying admitting that you can't fix it on your own. Going to God and saying, god, I need you. I acknowledge the fact that I am nothing without you and when I am without you, I'm less than nothing. I need you Help me.

Speaker 3: 3:35

The second part, after that is surrender. You have to let go of your plans and trust his process. Restoration might not look how you expect. You got to forget about all your ambitions, all of them. The car you want, the house, the job, all those things have to be cast aside for his plans and his help. You can't say, god, I need your help, but it has to look this way. Or I want it to be like this, or I need it to smell like that, doesn't matter. None of that matters. Your preferences have to be out the way. It has to be complete surrender. None of you for a little bit of help from him and the final thing will be the waiting, the patience. Remember his timing. It's not our timing, but his plan is always worth the wait. Instant gratification is a human pride thing. We want it now so we can brag on it. We want to be able to flex. It'll make us feel good on the inside if we get it immediately, so we can comfort ourselves, so we can relax. Just wait on him and you'll find the true rest that is necessary for life to start lifing again. Now let me take you back to the beginning of loss so I can show you the power of God's restoration. Walk with me.

Speaker 3: 5:04

It was 2016. I was in bed with a girl I had just met, picked her up at the casino last night on a bet. My buddy was watching her. He told me she was looking at me. I told him I didn't mess with Asians. He shook his head and he swore she was on me. So I remember saying if she's here, when I get back from the bathroom, I'll show you something. The last thing that I remember was smoking a cigarette with this girl and telling her her life had just changed for the better by meeting me Apparently. That's what it took. I thought it was silly, but I woke up the next morning and there she was. Everything else in between there was a blur Didn't even know that. I drove home.

Speaker 3: 6:00

This was how I coped lately, finalizing my divorce. Not seeing my kids. I would get numb and incoherent. I'd black out and wake up with way more questions than I had answers. This morning, though, it was a lot different than all the rest. I woke up to my phone ringing. I looked at the time and immediately I got sick. It was 5 am and it was my brother. He never called this early. Something had to be wrong. When I answered the phone, my whole world was turned upside down. Have you ever gotten one of those calls, one that just took the fabric of your life and unraveled it all in one sentence? This was that call. The sentence was devastating Mom and dad got hit by a car. Have you ever just gone blank? No words, but a million thoughts. I began to sweat. I started to cry. I was ready for revenge on whatever happened All at once.

Speaker 3: 6:58

I would later find out that my parents were walking their dogs, as they usually did in the morning, as they were crossing the street in the crosswalk, they were hit by a truck going about 45 miles an hour. About 36 hours later, my mom was gone. I can still hear the beeping of the machine and the sound of it going flat. My dad was broken in every way. His wife of 40 years was no longer there. This is the kind of heartbreak nobody should experience Children losing their mother, men losing their wives. It's not like she was old or anything. This was a tragedy and it's not something that you want to deal with alone. Thankfully, my dad had my sister, my godmother and a carousel of family in and out of town constantly checking up on him, wanting to take care and help. My brothers had their wives or girlfriends and their kids. They had someone to navigate through tragedy and grief with.

Speaker 3: 7:55

For me, I tried to be there when I could because I did care about my family. So when I was coherent, when I had a inkling to be understanding, I would be there and I would understand. But then I would go home and when the noise died down and I had nothing left to give, I'd be there alone in an empty house, full of grief, with no shoulder to cry on, nobody to talk through the pain with, desperate to have that, and nobody came. There are a million ways to react and respond to this Failed marriage, lost kids, lost mom. After a lifetime of pride and arrogance and never having experienced grief before while you're alone. For me it was an easy choice to make in response, endless days and nights full of alcohol, pills, drugs of every kind. If it helped me to not feel, if it helped numb the pain, maybe if it helped me not think to do mindless things. It was awesome, yes, please. Itless things, it was awesome, yes, please.

Speaker 3: 8:54

It wasn't long before I found myself living to die, washing down bottles of pills with tall cans of 211, driving reckless, just doing the most and in the worst ways. Obviously, one poor choice after another doesn't lead to victory. I'm here alive and kicking today, so my story didn't end there. That was only the beginning, though. I would go on to lose the house, I had, the cars and even the near six figure salary job I had. I worked an average of four hours a day on my butt and barely did anything, and I made that kind of money. Why I didn't make an effort to keep that, only pride can answer. The point is there was a lot of loss in my life that came as a result of the locust in my life called pride All those things that the world uses as a measure of success. Gone Along with people I called my pillars, my biggest advocates and my kids.

Speaker 3: 9:43

Pride in my heart, pride in myself, pride in my life, had me telling God that I don't see him as God. He was not in view. Instead, I was God. He didn't let that slide and he won't for anybody else. Be sure of it. So be prepared to act accordingly.

Speaker 3: 10:00

I sit here today now without any of those earthly treasures, still don't have the house, the car, still have not seen my kids. Instead, I have peace, a peace that doesn't make sense, or I should be stressing I'm loved and I know how to love. I didn't used to, Not at all, not since I was a kid. So, with none of the earthly things I possessed being restored, I see nothing other than the fact that God knows what's best when it comes to God, I'll never understand, and he will always show me something new. He rarely does things the way I expect. What he gave me back, though, the repayment I received, the restoration from what the locust took it's worth it. As I look at my life now and the peace I have, I see that the restoration God has begun in me is a restoration of the life I was about to lead before pride got me. I guess that's why I find myself enthusiastic like a child again, why my faith feels pure and innocent. He gave me back the me that existed right before pride crept in and took control of my life, the innocence that began to fade after that first time. I got jumped on the playground as a kid. I'll tell you about that another time. Fact is God does restore what's lost his way on his clock, and it's likely going to be what matters. He's restored so much on the inside. I could truly care less. If he restored the material things, I wouldn't mind, but I am more than content with what he's given back to me, thank you.

Speaker 3: 11:59

Another story we can look to when it comes to restoration is the story of Job. See Job. His story is often brought up as a testament to faith, faith during storms. The restoration, though, it came at the end, through the storms. At the end of the storms, see, job lost everything. He was a wealthy man, the wealthiest man in the land. So he goes on to say the Lord allows Satan to do basically everything but kill him. But test his faith In that testing. Job lost his kids, he lost His home, all his servants, his livestock, everything, and on top of that he was covered with sores. Anyways, at the end of the testing of his faith, god restored everything to him twofold. He gave him a double up. That is the God that we serve.

Speaker 3: 12:53

So if you're going through a storm today, if you feel like you're losing all things, maybe it's just the right opportunity for you to get low and kneel and pray and worship, and in that gesture you'll be standing tall. Where do you need God's restoration? Maybe it's in your marriage, your career or in your walk with Him. Consider it, write it down, pray about it, make room and trust that he's going to work. And then let's pause one time for our weekly challenge this week. Ask for God's help in all the things. Ask him to show you what he wants to restore in your life, write down what he reveals and then commit to praying over that area of your life every day. Pray with an expectation that he's going to do it His way on His clock and it's going to align with His will, and pray with a heart that trusts completely. If you need help committing, invite a friend or a loved one, someone you trust, to help keep you accountable. They don't even have to know what the details are, just ask them to remind you to daily pray.

Speaker 3: 14:19

Remember God's in the business of restoration. He wants to restore things. He wants to make things new. He wants to give you the life of abundance and prosperity that you have always longed for. It just may not look the way that you want it to look, so lower your opinion of self, lower and humble yourself in your preference and when you're asking God for something, just expect it to be better than what you thought. If it looks like what you wanted, then you had your eyes aligned with his.

Speaker 3: 14:50

Next week we're going to talk about servanthood, how living low means lifting others up. Servanthood, how living low means lifting others up, just like Jesus did. Now let's pray, father. We thank you that you are the God that makes all things and you make all things new. We thank you that the thief may come to steal, but you come to restore, you give us life and you want to make it better. We thank you. We ask this week that you would reveal to each and every one of us where you want to do the work in our lives and give us the strength to be weak, to be humble and to give you room to do what you need to do. Bless the listener and help them to grow closer and closer to you every day this week. We love you, we praise you. We give you all the honor and glory in Jesus name. Amen. Until next time, stay low, stay blessed and stay ready for the next episode of the Low Life Show, peace. Outro Music.