Are You Ready to BE His Fixer Upper?

Kolleen Lucariello's fresh take on the Christian's walk with God is always sure to take us off guard just long enough to help us see the truth. In this Spiritual Living UPGRADE, she encourages us to act on a powerful truth and see a ministry available to each one of us.

"What the disciples weren’t able to accomplish, Jesus did," Kolleen says. "We can spend years believing people are rundown, in disrepair, even beyond the reach of change when actually, what they need is an encounter with Jesus"

I (Dawn) don't know about you, but when I read those words, I instantly thought of two people I've assumed are "beyond the reach of change." How about you?

Kolleen continues . . .

There’s a house in our town that has been sitting abandoned and empty for years. In fact, I don’t remember the last time it was occupied, and we’ve lived here for over 30 years!

Driving by the house, I often imagine the potential within—wondering what remarkable things Chip and Joanna Gaines would do to fix’er up—wishing I had the ability to do the work myself.

One evening, while enjoying a walk through town with my hubby, we were surprised by the sight of a “For Sale” sign in the front yard of the house. It seemed odd after all these years to see the old place was for sale, and within a very short time the sign was gone.

A few weeks after the removal of the sign, new windows were installed in the old, once abandoned, place. In no time at all, every dirty and broken window had been replaced by clean, white, energy-efficient ones.

Another night, we discovered the crew hard at work adhering new siding, which was now slowly rising up from the lower half of the house to cover the oh-so-unsightly, existing layers.    

 Now our walks through town are exciting as we witness the rebirth of what once appeared dead. A lifeless house is being revived and restored.

The house once known as “the abandoned house” will have a new identity because someone saw the potential.

I imagine Jesus’ walks through town must have also been exciting as He began changing the identity of the abandoned ones.

Although, He restored people—not houses.

Jesus met plenty of “fixer uppers” during His ministry years; He saw the potential, and brought life back into every dirty, broken, and abandoned one.

The prostitutes, the lepers, any hiding in the darkest caves because tormenting demons had driven them there.

The father, whose son had been abused and silenced for years, must’ve become undone as he witnessed the restoration of his son after their encounter with Jesus. He’d watched his son suffer torment from childhood because of a demon’s desire to destroy him (Mark 9:21-22).

I envision that dad lost in thought at times as he dreamt of the potential his son had . . . if only.

Helpless, he now stood face-to-face with the One he hoped could restore his boy.

“I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit,” he said (Mark 9:17).

His words held recognition. “I brought You . . . who has . . ."; he understood who bound his son and called the spirit by name.

He was very much aware of what this mute spirit was doing to his son, and it was torture both for the father to watch and the son to endure.

They were victims of the schemer, Satan, who covertly plots as he abuses and silences, leaving people broken and abandoned in shame. He certainly doesn’t want anyone to recognize he is behind the torment or call it by name.

Especially sin. He doesn’t want us to call anything sin.

What do you suppose would happen if we began bringing loved ones to Jesus and called bondage by name?

I brought you . . . who has . . .

• A Spirit of Offense
• A Spirit of Lust
• A Spirit of Hatred
• A Lying Spirit
• A Spirit of Jealousy
• A Spirit of Idolatry
• A Spirit of Gossip
• A Spirit of Addiction
• A Spirit of Depression

The father put his hope in the disciples, but when they couldn’t help him, he took his son straight to Jesus. I’m not sure he expected Jesus to call out their unbelief, but He did.

“Why are you such a faithless people?”

However, I bet he was thrilled when Jesus said, “Now, bring the boy to me” (Mark 9:19, TPT).

“Please, if you’re able to do something. . . ” the father continued.

“What do you mean ‘if’?” Jesus asked.

Then, He turned the ‘if’ back to the father. “If you are able to believe, all things are possible to the believer.”

The father, who had recognized the spirit holding his son hostage, now recognized his own bondage. “I do believe, Lord; help my little faith!” (Mark 9:22-24 TPT)

We all struggle with “little faith” from time to time.

Many in our town had lost faith change would come to the abandoned house. We were wrong—the house is changing, little-by-little, each day.

Suppose we’ve gotten it wrong about people, too?

It’s quite possible the Lord is ready to begin work on the abandoned, but He’s waiting to hear,

I brought You . . . who has . . . .

We upgrade the lives of others when we: 

1. Recognize the bondage and call it by name.  

2. Bring them to Jesus.

3. Pray for the faith to believe all things are possible.

Do you know someone abused and silenced? Abandoned by shame? Pray for the faith to recognize the spirit holding them hostage and then bring them to Jesus.

Kolleen Lucariello, #TheABCGirl, is the author of the devotional book, The ABC's of Who God Says I Am; and as a speaker, she speaks into women's lives "one letter at a time." Kolleen and her high school sweetheart, Pat, reside in Central New York. She's a mother of three married children and Mimi to four incredible grandkids. For more information about Kolleen, visit her website.

Graphic adapted, courtesy of LechenieNarkomanii at Pixabay.

Building on the Memories

Cynthia Ruchti's novels and novellas brim with hope, and in this Christmas UPGRADE, she writes of the hope we can build into our lives as we "reclaim" the past for a brighter future.

Cynthia asks, “How can we knock off the barnacle-like debris and use what once was ugly or hurtful to build new, God-honoring, family-preserving memories?”

This is one of the most beautiful concepts the Lord has taught me (Dawn) through the years, and Cynthia expresses it in a hope-filled way. Someday, the Lord will make all things new (Revelation 21:5), and we often see His hand of restoration at work today.

Cynthia continues . . .

He sat in the encroaching cold, the collar of his work coat turned against the wind, his right hand wrapped around the handle of an ancient pick, his left holding a brick encrusted with crumbling mortar. The brick was one of hundreds piled next to him.

By the end of the day, he’d cleaned a dozen bricks of barnacle-like debris. By the end of another day, the pile of unusable bricks shrank measurably as the stack of “now what?” grew.

Before they’d tumbled into a messy pile, the bricks had formed the walls of a storage shed on the man’s parents’ farm. When the man was a small boy, the storage shed held garden tools, his father’s grimy work bench, and dark memories of abuse the father had renamed punishment.

The boy had dropped an egg on the way from the chicken coop to the house. An endless round of wallops with his father’s leather strap.

The boy left his jacket at school. More welts.

The boy lingered too long at a friend’s house. The cost was a night alone in the locked shed—no lights, no food, no blanket.

As the barnacles of unkindness and cruelty fell away now with each tap of the pick, the memories crumbled, no longer holding power over him. He owned the house now. The brick storage shed had been torn down.

He was paving the walkway through the garden to the house with the bricks that had once represented pain.

When finished, the project drew tears, not because of the once solid memories, but because of the beauty of a firm, well-lit, soul-pleasing path.

That’s what restoration experts do—take the crumbling, useless, broken, tired, ugly, rotted elements of a home or a life and remake them to create either a better version of what once was, or something entirely new. Like walls of an emotional prison turned into a pathway to freedom.

It wasn’t until I was well into writing Restoring Christmas—a book with the restoration of an old fieldstone farmhouse as its setting—that the full impact of the connection struck me.

Christmas and restoration. Synonymous in so many ways.

• Jesus came to restore the relationship with God that hadn’t been possible since sin entered the world.
• The gift of God’s Son restored hope for mankind.
• Jesus coming in human form restored our faith in God’s indescribable, unfailing-no-matter-how-long-it-takes love.

Do some Christmas memories bite into your soul like a whipping strap bites into fragile skin?

An uncle refuses to come to the holiday celebration if his brother will be there.

A grandparent’s obvious inequality in gift-giving for a favored grandchild sends a wave of discomfort through the whole family—oldest to youngest—every year?

Christmas celebration has lost its luster in light of the medical crisis the family’s facing? The memories won’t be the same in the assisted living center that now substitutes for the family home that once served as the gathering spot?

Unforgiveness is an unwelcome guest at every holiday meal?

How can we knock off the barnacle-like debris and use what once was ugly or hurtful to build new, God-honoring, family-preserving memories?

• In some instances, the only option is to let it go—the unfairness, the inequity, the resentment. Humanly impossible? Yes. But the Father sent the Son to be the restorer of relationships.
• Old traditions that spotlight the pain of uncomfortable memories may have to be reworked to become something new. It’s not the same without Grandpa reading the Christmas story? What if the new tradition were hearing the story through the sweet voice of the youngest reader in the family? The Father sent the Son to give us a new story to tell.
• Uncle Fred refuses to attend the family Christmas? Pray for restoration but pass the potatoes. Christmas isn’t a celebration of earth’s perfect families but of the Son who was sent to make restoration possible because anything of earth isn’t perfect.
  

What is an important but previously painful or uncomfortable Christmas memory that you can reclaim from the rubbish heap and watch God turn into this year’s restoration project for your family?

Cynthia Ruchti tells stories hemmed in Hope through her award-winning novels, novellas, devotionals, nonfiction, and through speaking events for women and writers. She and her husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, not far from their three children and five grandchildren. Her recent novel—Restoring Christmas—shows the parallel between a couple restoring a fieldstone farmhouse for a reticent homeowner and God’s restoration work on human hearts.  You can connect with her through cynthiaruchti.com or hemmedinhope.com.