Renovation

 Brenda and I enjoy watching some of those home improvement shows. It is amazing how the builders can take run down, dilapidated and shambles of houses and restore them better than you can imagine. Their renovation work from design to construction often leave me in awe at the transformation. I love watching the reactions of the new home owners. They are often speechless and moved to tears. 

Let me tell you about one renovation project that has blown me away. It is a renovation that defies imagination. It is not about a property. It is how God renovated a life. His name is Juan and he lives in Corpus Christi, TX. I met him at a preaching engagement. When he told me his story I was held spell bound. 

Juan grew up in poverty. To this day he loves to eat fried potatoes and beans because he so seldom ever ate meat as a child. He grew up on potatoes and beans. He drifted with the wrong kinds of people as a child. As a young adult he went into the military and served his country. He had a hard time reorienting into society once he came home. Soon he started drinking, doing drugs and committing fornication. He couldn't keep a job. He lived off government assistance and what he could get people to give him. He sunk deeper into addiction and developed a reputation as a man to be feared in the neighborhood. A really bad guy. Cut throat. Mean. Dangerous. 

He started living with a woman. They were so poor they started going to a food ministry twice a month at a nearby church. He refused to go help his live in girl friend get the food because of his pride. He made sure she went though so they would have food to eat. They lived in run down apartments where fights often broke out over drugs deals and other things. Juan was no stranger to fighting. Only one night he got jumped and knifed in his stomach. He was left to die out on the sidewalk in front of the church where his girlfriend had gone so many times to get food. It was while he laid on the concrete thinking he was about to die that he considered matters of eternity. The paramedics got there in time and saved his life. Jesus got there too and saved him in another way. He renovated Juan. Transformed him from the inside out. 

After getting baptized, Juan married the woman he had lived with for so many years. He began attending the church where he sent his wife went to get the free food for so many years. Over the years he earned a reputation as a servant. He took it up on himself to volunteer as the church janitor. He also served as a sort of body guard for the pastor. The church and his apartment are located in a very bad part of town. One where homeless people frequent, where homicides occur and every other form of wickedness you can imagine. 

God delivered Juan out of all of it. To complete the renovation Juan eventually became the leader in charge of the food ministry that had fed him for so many years. He organizes securing the food and heads of the distribution twice a month on Saturday mornings. 

God is the renovator of lives. Atheist, agnostics, angry, abused, abandoned, abducted, and addicts make no difference to God. He is more than able to change any life, to heal any wound, to deliver from any addiction, to renovate any broken, battered and bruised life. That is the greatest renovation project I have ever seen and I see Jesus do it over and over again. Please Lord do it again. Right here and right now.