Let Us Return to the Lord: He will Enliven us, Bind us up, and Restore us!

The aspiration for revival and restoration can be seen everywhere in the Bible, and especially in the Minor Prophets.

On the one hand, Habakkuk prayed for revival (Hab. 3:2); on the other hand, Hosea speaks of, Let us return to Jehovah… on the third day He will raise us up and we will live in His presence (Hosea 6:2).

We need to see that we as sinful people need God’s chastisement, and that we as God’s people can return to Him that Christ may be produced and lived out in us!

God created us with the intention that He would gain us to be one with Him, but we don’t care too much for God or we care for Him according to our own way. Either way, the result is failure – wretched man that I am (Rom. 7:24)!

We need God’s chastisement – He sends the locusts to swarm, lick, cut, and consume, and many of our days are filled with suffering and chastisement. The purpose of God’s chastisement is that Christ would be manifested in us for the restoration of the entire universe!

Saints, let us return to Christ – He will enliven us and He will restore us!

He Will Enliven us after Two Days – of Israel

There are two ways we can interpret Hosea 6:2, the portion speaking of, “He will enliven us after two days; / On the third day He will raise us up, / And we will live in His presence”.

As Hosea 3:4 prophesied, the children of Israel suffer God’s chastisement starting with AD70 when Titus destroyed the temple and scattered them among the nations.

With God one day is like a thousand years (2 Pet. 3:8), so you could say that for the past 2000 years Israel has been in a dead condition, being scattered everywhere and without a king or a temple.

But a third day is coming, the age of restoration, the millennium age, when God will restore them, bind them up, enliven them, and rise them up to live in His presence (see Rev. 20:4, 6).

In this age of restoration even the earth will be restored to its original condition that it may be fertile, rich, and productive to give harvest at its appointed time!

On the Third Day He Will Raise us Up – of the Believers

The second way we can interpret this is in principle – the principle of resurrection, the “third day”.

We as Christians in our daily living are many times apart from God, and we become desolate. Apart from Christ everything is desolation. But after two days of desolation there is the third day, on which Christ was resurrected!

Christ is the reality of resurrection, and now Christ in resurrection is the life-giving Spirit to enliven us, raise us up, strengthen us, and fully restore us (see 1 Cor. 15:4, 45; John 11:25).

Today we can return to Christ and receive Him as the life-giving Spirit in the day of resurrection – this brings us in the morning, in the revival, in the restoration!

God chastises us by sending the locusts to deal with us, and when we return to Him and touch Him, He heals us, restores us, revives us, and enlivens us again – on the third day, the day of resurrection! We all need to pray,

Lord, I want to return to You! Save me from any desolation! Lord, heal me! Bind me up! Enliven me and raise me up, Lord! Cause me to live in Your presence even in the midst of all the things I’m going through!

Breathing Ourselves Out and Breathing God In!

In John 20:22, after the Lord resurrected and became the life-giving Spirit, the life-giving breath, He came to His disciples and breathed into them saying, Receive The Holy Spirit! The Spirit is the breath of life coming out of the resurrected Christ and into all His believers.

Many times we feel dead, in desolation, and even under a lot of stress and suffering. The locusts sent by God to chastise us make our life a life of suffering and our days become days of God’s chastisement.

But we can return to the Lord, and we can breathe Him in as the living air! Just as Hymns #255 (by A. B. Simpson) says,

Oh Lord, breathe Thy Spirit on me – cause me now to breath Thee in! Let me pour into Thy bosom all my life of self and sin! Chorus: I am breathing out my sorrow: breathing out my sin! I am breathing, breathing, breathing, All Thy Fullness In!

We need to talk to the Lord, breathe out all that is in us – our life of self, the flesh, our failures, defects, boredom, sins, trespasses  and all our difficulties, sicknesses, joys, sorrows, etc. We can tell the Lord everything, just breathe ourselves out, and then we will breathe Him in!

As we open to Him, He opens His heart to us and He breathes into us His living air, the living Spirit! Be real with the Lord: open to Him, breathe out your sorrow, and He will breathe His Spirit into you!

Lord Jesus, cause us to return to You again and again from any kind of desolation! From all desolation and sinfulness, we return to You! Lord, we want to pour out and breathe out anything of the old life and self… Oh Lord Jesus, we breathe You in as the fresh living air, the living Spirit! Restore us, heal us, and revive us!

References and Further Reading

• Sharing inspired from brother Ed Marks’ speaking in this message and portions in life-study of Hosea (msg. 4), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of the Minor Prophets, week 12 (entitled, The Revival Revealed in the Minor Prophets).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Breathing out my sinful nature, / Thou hast borne it all for me; / Breathing in Thy cleansing fulness, / Finding all my life in Thee.
  # Seek the Lord while He may be found, / Call upon Him while He is near: / Let the wicked forsake his way.
  # Lord, ever turn us from our soulish pleasures / To gaze upon Thy tender, loving face. / Oh, keep us running forth to meet the Bridegroom / And patiently attending to the race.