Restoration can be great if it is on our terms at our times of convenience

 

  1. Family or friend: Yesterday would be a good time to do something.
  2. Others: interruption to our lives, not so fun as it brings inconvenience to our lives.

 

  1. God’s path

 

All know the sayings

  1. God works in mysterious ways
  2. God’s ways are not our ways.

 

  1. Elijah spending a year with a gentile widow at Zarephath (place of refining) instead of going to confront Ahab.
    1. She’s a gentile
    2. Drought is really starting to get severe
    3. I don’t see the people leaving Baal, in fact they are becoming more attracted to Him

 

 

2. Life in the detours

 

EXAMPLE: Arcadia and detour was farther than the original trip.

 

God does a detour it is easy to ask “It is really getting late.  Does God realize if He doesn’t do something soon real problems are going to develop.  Does God even know what he is doing?”

 

Paul’s first missionary journey stopped in Cyprus instead of a straight line. Acts 13 never would have seen Sergius Paulus governor of Cyprus accept Jesus.

 

More than just what happens, it is also who God chooses to show His mercy to that can be a really problem

 

3. The rescue of Ahab

 

Ahab the worst king ever to live.  He pretty well destroyed everything a believer in God held dear.

Attacked by the army of Aram Ben-Hadad  prophet comes and tells Ahab how God is going to deliver him from this army.

 

Wouldn’t this be a good time to eliminate him from us?

 

God didn’t just deliver him, he did it twice.

 

God declares Ahab is going to die for killing a man.

1 Kings 21: 27 – 29  Really you are going to show mercy because he tore his clothes and missed a meal?

 

To be people that are going to bring restoration we have to realize

  1. God will minister in our detours
  2. He will want us to bring restoration to those we really don’t want to be restored.

 

4. Ministering in a storm.

 

Ministering in detours to people we don’t want to are both shown in a story in Mark.

 

Mark 4: 35 Let’s go to the other side.

 

Probably thought Bethesda because 5 of them were from there.

 

Storm blew up and sent them to the Gentile area of the Decapolis where they released a man from Demon possession.

 

We can lose it and become embittered when this works out in our individual lives.

 

THIS IS NOT WHERE I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING.

 

EXAMPLE: We don’t trust in God but in our dream of what God should do and this causes us become disillusioned when that doesn’t turn out the way we thought it would.

 

Vs 36 other boats followed them.

 

Vs 37 a fierce storm, but we have Jesus in our boat with us.

 

Vs 38 Don’t you care about us?  What about the other boats in the lake?

 

We have Jesus, we are the ones who have to bring restoration by…

  1. Ministering in our detours
  2. Ministering to those we don’t especially like
  3. Ministering in any circumstances.