How easy it is to judge, but the Bible says: the Father was moved with compassion, a heart of compassion; and it says: he ran to the son, and he hugged him and he wept. God is passionate! Passionless religion is a curse. It's not Biblical. It's not the heart of God. Jesus stood over Jerusalem, that great city in all its fineness and splendour, and He wept. He wailed aloud with grief, with longing and yearning for the city. Conservative, passionless, expressionless religion does not change anything. God wants a fire ignited in our hearts, a fire for the lost, a fire for burnt stones, a fire that's not just come out of human concern and sympathy, a fire that's ignited out of the place of prayer and fasting! In Isaiah 58 it talks about the fasting before the Lord, and the outcome is to become a repairer of the breach, a repairer of broken lives, a restorer of people. There's none of us here not called to be restorers of lives; but if your life is damaged, and you yourself are a broken stone, a burnt stone, and you're in the pile of rubble, and your life is preoccupied just trying to look after yourself - how will you ever rise up, take your position in the work of God, and begin to restore others!
You must make the commitment: I will not stay a burnt stone any longer. I will do whatever it takes to get up out of this situation, be restored, be full of the life of God, full of passion, full of fire! I want the fire of my first love back again! I want to be alive in God again! I want to be serving God passionately! God, come upon me and ignite that fire! See prayer is the place it's ignited, prayer, God wants to restore the burnt stones. You see Nehemiah in Nehemiah 2:17 he says to the people, he says can you see the distress we're in? Can you see the condition of lives and families? He said let us rise up and build. Let's rise and build. Let's arise on the inside and become builders. God is wanting builders. God is wanting builders.
I want to just share with you just some simple steps to restoration, and then we'll just finish up with a little clip I want to show you. In 2 Kings 6, it shows you five simple steps of restoration. I won't develop them, I'll just throw the seeds out for you, but you find it in 2 Kings, Chapter 6. I love the prophetic stories in the Bible, but every one of them contains insights that are very relevant for us. In 2 Kings 6, it's the story of an axe head being restored, and it says: here the sons of the prophets said to Elisha - Verse 1 - the place where we dwell with you is too small for us. In other words, they're feeling contained. They were feeling limited. They were feeling restricted. We want something big, and he said: can we go to Jordan, let every man take a beam from there. Let's make a place where we may dwell; and he said go. Then one said: come with your servants. He said: I will go; and he went with them. When they came to Jordan they cut down the trees. Notice everyone was a builder of the house, everyone went with an axe, everyone went with a purpose to build. There wasn't one of them who wasn't determined to build.
But one of them, as he was cutting the tree, the iron axe head fell off into the water, and he cried out and said: alas master, it was borrowed! So the man of God said: where did it fall? And he showed him the place, so he cut off a stick, and he threw it in there, and he made the iron float. And he said: therefore pick it up for yourself. He reached in, and he reached out with his hand, and he took it - an amazing thing. You notice now we see the lost axe head, and so there's a need for restoration.