3 Areas God Wants to Restore in Your Life
by Lyn Packer
This prophetic word was given at the NZ Council of Prophets gathering in Christchurch, March 2023.
I believe the Lord is saying, “Look again at the big picture, the big picture is of paramount importance. That big picture is My eternal plan for mankind and all I am doing is related to that. It’s seeing the big picture that will give your life context. Unless you know the big picture, the stuff of life, the things you see around you and the things I am doing, will not make sense; you will not have the context to understand it. The works that I am doing in the individual lives of My people, and in the church, are all related to the overarching big picture. At its core, it’s about reconciliation and restoration – the reconciliation of all things back to Myself, and the restoration of all things back to My original vision and purpose.”
The word restoration means “a return … to a former, original, normal, or unimpaired condition, or the restitution of something taken away or lost” (Dictionary.com). This restoration work is happening in phases and will end in the establishing of the new earth and God’s ruler-ship over all being fully re-established.
The Lord has shown me three main areas of restoration that His work is happening in at this time, so that we might be fully restored back to…
Original and true identity
Original and true wholeness
Original and true representation and commission
The Lord was clear that with the use of the word ‘true’, he was implying that there are false, or untrue, identities that people are living under, fake or partial wholeness being administered, and unwise or outright false representation happening.
Original identity
God is working to restore us so that we can walk in our true identity as those made in His image and likeness. Over the past decade or so, God has been highlighting and speaking to the church about Identity – knowing who He is, and also knowing ourselves with more clarity. Part of His work in our lives is bringing us into a revelation, and subsequent understanding, of how much of the knowledge of that identity we have lost. Three areas of identity He is working on are…
Knowing who He is. Genesis 1 tells us that God made mankind in His image and likeness – in both nature and character. To understand what we were created to be like we must understand God’s true nature and character. God is teaching us what He is like, exposing false ideas that the world and the enemy have given us of Him, and revealing His true identity, nature and character – He is love, and all He does comes out of that. He is taking us on a journey of untangling and sifting through two things – untruths about God that have been perpetrated throughout the centuries, and our own personal filters and wounds that have caused us to see Him in a particular way, putting on Him things that are not who He actually is.
Knowing who we are in Him. This means understanding what Christ has done, what He has gifted us in the New Covenant, and what He has made available to us to access. We see in Christ the model for what a true son or daughter of God is like.
Knowing ourselves. He is showing us our strengths and weaknesses, dealing with wrong mind-sets, worldviews, wrongful self-assessments, false identities, exposing trauma and wounds that have shaped the way we view ourselves and life, and in that process is renewing our minds. He is developing us and growing us in new areas, releasing in us untapped innovation and creativity, revealing treasures hidden within each of us that have awaited this time, so that we can walk in the fullness of who He created us to be as individuals (and as the church).
Original wholeness
God’s plan is to bring us into the fullness of our salvation, restoring us to wholeness – in spirit, soul and body. Christ has made this available to us through His life, death, and resurrection, and our part is to receive what He did, and work with Him in establishing the fullness of that wholeness in our lives.
He is making us into the image of Christ, re-forming within us a harmonious working together of all our parts – spirit, soul, and body – no one part of us being fragmented or out-of-sorts with another; a healthy, harmonious life. A life where our internal and external lifestyles work according to, and from, their Christ-gifted wholeness, instead of from fractured and false identities, ungodly mind-sets and beliefs, trauma-informed emotions and lifestyles, and dis-ease in our physical bodies. In this process God is helping us to see ourselves as He sees us, helping us hear His words of acceptance and love, and know their truth, by experience. He is enabling us to embrace the goodness that He has planned for us, and to live a fulfilling life (John 10:10).
As we receive healing and our minds become renewed, instead of seeing, and therefore living, life from a distorted perspective, we will be able to live from a place of communion with Him that brings us into freedom, truth and confidence. He is restoring our hearts so that we see and care as He does, and within the healing work He does in us He is also teaching us how to move in wisdom in our righteousness so that we treat others with respect, dignity and loving kindness. This then enables us to model what it looks like to walk as a child of God in the earth.
Original representation and commission
Mankind, being made in God’s image, was commissioned to be a representation of God in the earth, and given stewardship and dominion of the earth. That multi-generational commission was never removed from us, and we are its inheritors and stewards today. God is restoring the vision for that stewardship and rule in His people – not that we might rule as overlords and dictators (moral, spiritual, or physical), but as true stewards who care for the planet and its peoples, and He is working in us so that we can represent Him in a wise and righteous manner. We are learning to walk as those made in God’s image, and therefore as those who are loving, kind, faithful, merciful, patient, etc – having received and formed His character and nature within us.
Alongside the original commission to steward the earth itself wisely and care for the inhabitants of it, we have Christ’s commission to go into the world, as ministers of reconciliation, to share the good news with them, and model, and teach them, discipling them in what it looks like to walk as those made in His image and likeness, with His power and love working in us and through us.
This prophetic word was posted on Elijah List on 18th April 2023 https://elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=29236&fbclid=IwAR3DZV9f3Whyy8Kh5_G2WhouNaO6u1TJWQVvK1Mjkh91w6DoMnuvXHkLQEg