As I turned on the television this morning, I was watching a recorded version of Kerry Shook from Sunday. I only got the first ten minutes before I had to leave for work. Really God spoke to be before Pastor Shook really got in to the message. He was using a bridge as an anaology, in his Burning Bridges series. He said the words restoring and rebuilding, but then God took my attention.
He showed me that I was focused on allowing God to rebuild my life, but He wants to restore me. I have allowed myself to be content that God has been able to use me and having been unwilling to allow Him to peel away at the layers of my life that I have tried to bury. I have allowed Him to work in the areas that were broken and fix them. I have let Him rebuild those areas of my life, but He wants to restore my life to the orginal beauty for which He created me.
I realized that in my walk with God I have only recently began allowing Him to restore me. For the past twenty months, He has been slowly showing me areas of my life that have been hidden even to me. It has been a slow process. I have a lot of layers that I have used to keep myself safe. He has been showing me that those layers haven’t kept me safe, they have kept Him from being able to restore those areas of my life.
He wants to get down to the root of those deep issues that keep me trapped in the same cycle, and restore me to the joy of my salvation. He wants to take the good works that He already does through me and take them to a whole new level. 
He has to work those areas out for me to be able to truly obey Him. Those areas I have tried to cover will continue to eat away at any good thing that He is trying to do until I address them. I can only do that in and through Him. There is a reason that I have buried them, and only He can do the work in me to restore me so that I can open those areas of my life to His presence.
Those layers that I thought were protecting me, were really just keeping me from Him and from others. They are keeping me from allowing my true self to submerge, the me that He created me to be.
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Restoring Voice 
Jackie, glad to find you this morning. Great post!
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Jackie, I found you on the Throw Back Thursday post today on the 31 Days survivors Facebook page. This is a great post.
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Thank you Tara.
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Jackie, I think it is interesting that the Psalmist (and it IS David in this case) wrote, “Restore to me the JOY OF ***YOUR*** SALVATION.” Salvation isn’t mine. It is given to me as a free gift when I put my trust in Jesus. Therefore, how can ***I*** restore the joy? I can’t, not on my own. I must go to the Giver of salvation and He will restore me. Isn’t that simply beautiful? So glad you shared on TBT!!!
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Great point!
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So thankful that I read this today!!! This is a great post. I absolutely LOVE Psalm 51:12 and it has been a daily prayer for almost 15 years now – since the Lord gave it special meaning for me on a sunrise walk. So refreshing to read it this morning!! Also, I pinned your two Bible verse pics 🙂
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Thank you for sharing. Glad it could minister to you this morning
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hi jackie, nice to meet you. i’m your next door neighbor at testimony tuesday (#82) 🙂 i like your post. i think there are some cross-overs in our messages. i just have a big clown “mask” on mine that comes from that perspective while you came from a sermon.
i also went too long and had to break mine into 2 posts to finish it:( which i did. this is part 1. in some ways, it is basic info for christians, but often that is what we tend to forget first isn’t it?
blessing this new year. i’m glad i came by.
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Thanks for stopping by Martha. I feel like God is stirring in His people to get back to the basics. We try to over complicate so many things or forget to keep applying the truths we learn.
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