Marriner’s Moment: Restoration: Balm in Gilead – Part 3

By Pastor Melvin O. Marriner
Grove Church

Are you seeking restoration, forgiveness or peace? God has given us free will to choose and some of us have chosen the wrong path, or gone down a path that was not intended for us to travel. Before we can begin to restore our relationship with God, we need to understand what broke the relationship. Certainly the relationship is broken not because of anything God has done, but because of what we have done or the choices we have made. We have turned away from God’s standards and made our own path. Everyone makes mistakes, but how we recoup from those mistakes helps determine our next move.

Some of us spend too much time in the valley of despair because we have been conditioned to fail rather than learn how to live a victorious life. When we are in the valleys of life – downtrodden, disappointed or discouraged – God wants us to learn from those experiences. He does not want us to stay or wallow there. He does not hate us. He wants us to live a victorious life, but too often we get in our own way and then we blame Him for our problems.

In Isaiah 65:2, we find these words, “I have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, according to their thoughts.”
God requires us to follow Him in faith and trust Him for the outcome. Too many of us have not learned how to recover from hurt, pain and disappointment.

Part of the Christian faith is learning how to regroup, reorder and reclassify so that we can come back better. In that vein, each of us has the opportunity to live and not just survive. One of the first steps in this process is to give our life to Christ – wholly and completely. Once we embrace Him, we have the power to not only have our soul restored, but also heal and transform our relationships, attitudes, environment and our world. Moreover, we must learn to follow through on our journey and not be sidetracked, even when we are falling apart. We must not give up!

© Dr. Melvin O. Marriner,
October 2016

We invite you to join us at Grove Church, 5910 West Norfolk Road, Portsmouth, Virginia, Sundays at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., Tuesdays at noon and Wednesdays at 7 p.m.