New Year, New You Old Story

A new year brings new opportunities and new goals. I use January as a time to reset some rhythms or routines that have slipped away over the holidays when schedules disappear and kids are home from school. It’s a month to reflect on the past year, and chart a course for what’s next. I’ll take a look at my shelf and look for a book to get the year started. Some years I crack open a soul-care book that can help sort through the struggles and joys of the previous year. Other years I want to keep it simple with a discipleship book that points me back to the Bible and helps me intentionally draw near to Jesus.

Then Restoration Story (New Growth, 2021) landed on my desk. It’s a new book from Robert Cheong that combines soul-care and discipleship in a clear, easy to read, scripture infused volume that was the perfect jumpstart to my new year (and could be for yours too!). Let’s dig in.

What’s In There?

You might be saying to yourself, “I wonder how this book works, bouncing back and forth between soul-care and discipleship.” The truth is, it doesn’t bounce between them so much as it walks through with one foot in both worlds.

The first three chapters are all about getting a clear picture of reality. Robert begins by helping us reframe our own reality through the lens of the fall. He walks through the “common struggles” that come as a result of the fall - fantasy, guilt, shame, fear, anger, and sorrow. These are struggles we all recognize and deal with in some way. He then helps us to look at our own reality. We’ve each walked through life with different experiences, background, family upbringing, careers, and relationships. We’re encouraged to ask for God’s help to remember, reflect, and recap the big events and relationships in our lives that make up our own unique story. Finally, we’re directed to look at God’s reality through His story. We can only reframe our own story by setting it inside of God’s great story.

Woven through this first section are introductions to four people. Steve and Emma are a married couple struggling with infertility, intimacy, and adultery. Mark is an adopted adult who finds himself isolated, without a clear purpose in life and work, who’s prone to find escape in fantasy. Nikki is a woman who’s suffered sexual abuse as a teenager, and now is wrestling with that trauma and feeling unlovable. We’re given a picture of their lives, a look at the common struggles they’re facing, and how they’re seeing their own story in light of their circumstances, failures, self-deception, etc.

The second section (the last two-thirds of the book) outlines God’s story through the lens of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Through creation we see that God wired us for love. We’re meant to love God with our entire being, and that love enables us to love others. The fall shows us how evil disrupts and destroys our relationship with God. Our sin causes us to “love ourselves first and foremost instead of loving God.” Thankfully, God’s story includes redemption through his Jesus. The love and relationship that sin destroyed, Jesus is able to redeem through his life, death, and resurrection. That redemption enables us to once again love God and others. Finally, we see the already and not yet of the consummation. As we live in Christ we’re able to experience love here and now as the Spirit dwells in us. Even better, when Christ returns, we’re promised that we’ll be able to bask in God’s love forever.

As Robert unpacks God’s story across these chapters, we’re given short vignettes where we see Steve, Emma, Mark, and Nikki begin to work through their stories with the same biblical truth, encouragement, and self-reflection the author offers to the reader. Robert uses these stories to illustrate how the truths he’s sharing can be applied to the lives of these people, and ultimately to ourselves. While our stories may not directly reflect the struggles these four are going through, much of the application, opportunity for self-discovery, and examination of God’s character will be helpful in examining our own lives.

Why This Book?

These days we’re all running short on time, and there’s no shortage of options for books to read. So why should you give your time to this book? This is a rare book that seems to value understanding both your own unique story and God’s story. Robert spends a lot of time helping you to understand the value of discovering, knowing, and making sense of your own story. More importantly though, he doesn’t let you go down that rabbit hole alone. He’s constantly highlighting a Savior who’s with you in that story every step of the way. You’ll be hard pressed to find a mention of God’s character, promises, or plans without a piece of scripture to support it. It’s this beautiful balance of learning to see yourself, but also finding a loving God who’s alongside you as you go.

Not only that, but this book offers you space to do that work of discovery—both of yourself and God. At the end of each chapter you’ll find an exhortation to slow down and spend time in God’s word. He’ll give you something to ponder and then set you to reading a passage a few times before highlighting a promise of God or some other encouraging tidbit to take with you. You can almost hear him saying, “slow down, camp out, spend as much time as you need here.” This book isn’t something to rush through and throw on an Instagram post. Rather, it’s a book to work through slowly, giving the Spirit time to teach you things about yourself and offer opportunities for him to work in your life and draw you near.

Finally, while you may have time juggling all the characters initially, their stories help to solidify concepts you may find abstract without the concrete examples of lives being changed slowly as they draw near to God. All the stories don’t have fairytale endings, and the work they’re doing is often slow, painful, and difficult. However, it’s this honest look at incremental growth in the Lord that’s so appealing. Our spiritual lives can’t be put in the microwave, and real growth in and through the Spirit takes time. What you’ll see in these stories—and in your own life—is that it’s an investment worth making. Diving into this book would be a great start.