What is God recovering in your life this season? In my own recent time of recovery, I felt the Lord speak that word- “recovery”- over my season. He prompted me to look it up. While the first two definitions were very much what I would expect (1. The act, process, duration, or an instance of recovering. 2. A return to a normal or healthy condition.), the third definition caught my eye. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “recovery” is also defined as “The act of obtaining usable substances from unusable sources”. The beauty of taking something USABLE from something UNUSABLE is a perfect picture of what God is doing in us during our times of recovery. Whether it’s recovery from a heartbreak, physical recovery, recovering from a financial devastation, a trauma, or having to reestablish in some area of life where there was a completely new start…. God is RECOVERING something in your life right now.
In Isaiah chapter 10, God speaks of a turning point in the battle. Through this battle, God had been weaning them off dependence on unprofitable things. God was helping Israel reach a point in which Isaiah 10:20 says they would "no longer depend on allies who seek to destroy them but they will faithfully trust the Lord". As God causes us to come into recovery from a battle, God also weans us off of mindsets, habits, relationships, or positions that keep us depending on old thinking or old ways of living that will be unstable and destructive where the Lord is leading us next.
The Lord is calling our eyes from focusing on what we're recovering FROM to focusing on WHAT we're recovering. When outlining how to live after their exodus from Egypt, God instructs in Deuteronomy 17:16 that "The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” It's interesting to think that the people who watched the Lord part the seas for them would still think of Egypt as their supplier of power (horsepower was the driving force of the day). What is your Egypt? What are you coming out of? In what ways (thinking, habits, resources, etc) are you still unknowingly "getting horses from Egypt"? It may very well be that as we try to get back on track to what life used to look like, the Holy Spirit is instead trying to teach us new solutions for new seasons. As you ask the Holy Spirit to identify what work of "recovery" He is doing in your life, it will require not going back the old way again. Instead of old familiar grooves, the Lord is making new paths in unused spaces.
In this recovery season, God is also rehabilitating buried treasure in our lives. My son and I were recently watching a show on the recovery of valuables from underwater. By its nature, recovery finds objects that are incredibly valuable or useful but are currently in a position or state of not being able to be used- much like that third definition of recovery. After clean up, repair, or even just extraction from their lost location, the usability and value are restored. As God does this in our lives, He takes things that are not being used in our lives... the things we would say "That's not valuable", "that part of me can't be used anymore", or "Nothing useful can come from that place". The first thing often that the Lord must recover is our eyes to see the potential for His goodness in the seemingly invaluable or impossible.
If you're in a time of recovery, let the Lord begin to stir your hope again. Take these encounters to the secret place, and let the Holy Spirit begin to recover all He wants to in your life. There is nothing beyond His power to redeem. He brings something usable from the most useless places. We serve the God that recovers all!
Ask:
Lord, what are You wanting to recover in this season?
Lord, what are some unhelpful things I am relying on now for which You want to show me a better way?
Lord, in what parts of myself or my life do You want to show me anew the value and potential You see?
Lord, what are some places that have felt useless that you want to feel usable again?