It's Something Like a Big Car Show

[HKHaugan]

Epi.24 It’s Something Like a Big Car Show

If you’ve ever been to a car show where old cars have been restored to their original form, it’s quite an amazing sight. Some people spend thousands of dollars recovering old discarded automobiles, finding parts, getting rid of damage, painting and polishing them to look like new. When you meet the owners, who are usually standing by their cars, you sense the pride they have in the display. They’ll even go to great lengths to explain the process they went through to get it to look like it does. They have an original picture, a manual and know how to make them run. Shift this thought to our spiritual restoration in Christ. If we start with the One who created it all to begin with, the discovery and recovery process is all about Him. So let’s start with a reality check.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Everything we do, that is everything, is motivated by what you can’t see. Life is a spiritual process where you believe, you make a choice and you live out the choice.

There is no question we are all self conscious. ‘I’ is the immediate awareness that operates before we think, decide and do anything. When we approach every next moment, self consciousness dictates the way we process any and everything. From the simple motion of going, the reason we go, the going itself, as well as what is done when we get there, ‘I’ precedes it all. ‘I am’ is the image of God---the copy of the “I AM” (Ex.;3:14)---in each of us. The image is the personal copy. God is One God who is relational. He reveals Himself in a three person way, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the Mind that wills, the Heart that obeys and the Spirit that empowers the action. We, you and I, are His images with a mind, heart and spirit. We have a will, we process our will and we act on what our mind and heart arrive at. We are also relational. We are made to be relational with God and one another. The difference between God and us is His perfection, the word for which, is Holiness; perfectly spiritual, perfectly unified and perfectly relational.

But we are not only the image, we are also the likeness of God (Gen.1:26). God designed us to be like Him; not to be Him but to be like Him. The likeness is the nature of the person. God is Spirit (1Jn.4:24). God is love (1Jn.4:8). That is His likeness. His likeness is all His qualities. In Jesus we see the revelation of perfect man whose mind, heart and spirit living in balance. He showed the obedience of the Son to the Father’s will and the power of the Holy Spirit energizing His action. Jesus is the exact image and likeness of the Father moved by the Spirit (Jn.1:1, Heb.1:3, Col.1:15). All Three in concert creating the universe and us in the process.

One more really important thing about God, He is unique. There are none like Him. Therefore, we each are created to be unique individuals; unique in mind, heart and spirit. But not separated from Him---One with Him. Jesus made this very clear when, after His Resurrection, He tells Mary Magdalene not to hold on to Him, “...but go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, “I am going to my Father and your Father...(Jn.20:17).” His relationship is unique to each of us and with us. His love for us is experienced uniquely by each of us. We are not ‘cookie cutter’ images. We each are special to Him.

This means how each of us develops spiritually is to think spiritually, to process everything spiritually and to live spiritually. God made us to be relational, to be a family, to be reproducing, creating, working and ruling (Gen.1:26, 28) as well as humble, merciful and bearing all the fruit of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (Gal.5:22).

Sin is what disrupted this whole picture and it is the reason Jesus came to reveal Himself as the spiritual way to relate, the spiritual truth to believe and the Holy Spirit to be our spiritual life. Sin separated us within. It got us to think apart from God, to relate with each other apart from God and to act apart from God. Sin elevates us to think of ourselves as the ‘I Am’ instead of being His image.

Jesus came as the exact image of God to recover us personally, uniquely, relationally and eternally. What we see about God in Jesus is the Creator who looks at the broken and discarded images of Himself in a broken and breaking world. It was His desire to recover and restore each to function as He originally intended.

Our part as believers is to be those who recover and help in the restoration process. That’s why the Body of Christ exists. It’s why we are given spiritual gifts because recovery and restoration act together as a spiritual process. The work is constant because of the uniqueness of the individual and the uniqueness of the process for each. Even the gifts, which are the same, operate uniquely through the gifted with those in recovery. Recovery is on God’s schedule not ours so we see its constancy. Worship may have a similar structure, the Body of Christ the same manual and each a special part, but it is the same God, working with each at all times personally and relationally. One Lord, One Spirit, one faith, one Baptism, One God and Father of us all.

By the way, the next time you come to worship, think of the car show. Translate the people around you as recovering images of God all coming together for restoring, polishing and a tuneup that their lives can be the show pieces to function as God’s light in a broken world. Bring the lonely discarded hearts to Him.

[Joan]

I loved the detailed truth in this. It kind of explained something God showed me a few years ago. When God restores a heart it is not restored to how it was before the hurtful thing happened. Instead when God restores us it is to the "original design". How God created us ( our heart) to be in the first place.