The Cost Of Restoration

What is the cost of restoring a heart?

I had a conversation this morning with someone who shares my interest in Missio Dei and engaging God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation. She was recounting the cost of missional discipleship and the cost of staying within the mission. To engage someone in the heart means we have to deal with all the junk and the pain. In certain cases we fight for people even when they don’t want to fight for themselves. And the person we’re fighting for turns on us because they somehow misunderstood us. And we even know that they are blind to what they are doing. We know they can’t see the lashing out and running away, or the apathy is their own well established defense mechanisms at work. But we can see it. We can see the cost all of the drama is having on those around them, and within us.

And the wounds we encounter in discipleship can sometimes bring out the worst in us. We somehow lose our capacity to respond from a place of love, rather a place of dodging the B.S. Rumors fly and the gossip mill gets running at full speed. People we thought we knew well begin to wonder with a tilt of their head and a furrow in their brow, all from the grandstands.  We have to spend the time picking up the broken pieces left by those who left, never allowing us the space to reconcile, much less defend ourselves. And our own hearts begin to wonder if it is all really worth it.

At certain points we encounter those moments when it would just be so much easier to just stop fighting for people’s hearts and let them go.  And in a lot of cases it means letting people completely go, out into the world and out of relationship. We experience the messiness of our wounds and junk and sometimes just want to give up. This is the temptation within the mission, that the cost is just too high, the enemy inviting us into the comfortable places of the sideline.  And mind you, these are all people within the body of Christ, working out the winter chill of confrontation.

And in this space, I begin to wonder if it is easier to restore someone’s front yard than it is to restore a heart? Is it easier to serve as an usher and pass the plate? Is it easier to simply sit in the pew and listen, never speaking anything more than the company line. Because there is a right answer that allows us to hide. There is a right answer that allows us to live in the safe confines of our plastic self, never experiencing any fear or pain. We’ve had enough of that, haven’t we? We can spend lifetimes listening to the Gospel and never really experiencing the Gospel.

And the more I follow Jesus, the more I realize that He is inviting me into a painful journey. My mentor often says, “Its like surgery.” But in the mystery of the Gospel, the pain is restoring my soul. It’s inviting me into facing my fears so they don’t define me. It’s removing the junk that keeps me locked in isolation and loneliness. It’s removing those things that keep me from being the beautiful reflection of my Heavenly Father. And He did it because I’m worth it to Him. But in that very principle, he calls me to see my neighbor, good friend, even my broken enemy as worth it. My restoration is then intimately tied to restoring those around me. The more I step into who I really am, validating the dignity of those around me, the more I validate my own.

I’ve been following Jesus for a long time, and the longer I do, the more I begin to see that the cost of restoring a heart is worth it, which is why I need community. I need people around me on the journey reminding me why I do this. I need people who can help me when I fall, and restore me to wholeness and how He sees me.

And then I am reminded of why I do all of this. I want to know. I want to know what it means to love deeply, and not from a place of co-dependence or searching for validation, but of restoration. I want to know the love of the Father that would allow me to go to the cross freely in trust, to give up what He is asking me for. I want to see me as He sees me, His beloved child. I want to live my life, not defined by what Adam did, but by what Jesus did. I want to know the wisdom of what it means to take up my cross and follow him. I want to be part of something bigger than just me. I want to see the look on my friends faces the moment they allow a simple truth to penetrate their hearts, that God really, really, really does love them more than they can imagine.

So, I ask, what do you really want?

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Jonathan Brink is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministires.  He lives in Folsom, Ca with his wife and three kids.  He loves Sharks hockey, Peets coffee and good sushi.