“Reclaiming What You Lost” | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Original Broadcast of Sunday Morning 11 AM Worship, 03/22/2026

Speaker: Pastor David K. Caruthers

Message Title: "Reclaiming What You Lost" 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

And uh so let me just read in Joel chapter two verse twenty-five. The word of the Lord says, And I will restore to you the years that the locusts hath eaten, the canker worm, the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you. And then I would like to read in Luke chapter 4, verse 18. I'll come back to these settings of scripture later on in a few moments. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind and to set at liberty them that are bruised. And uh so let's just join together in prayer as the youth are dismissed to their class. We'll join together in prayer and ask God to speak to our hearts today. Lord, we thank you for this time together. We thank you for this moment, we thank you for this opportunity. Every person that has joined with us today, we pray, God, that you would speak to our hearts through your word, and that you would bless each person that has joined together with us today. We thank you for this moment and this time, and we give you praise and honor and glory in the name of Jesus. Everybody say in Jesus' name. You may be seated. So today I want to preach to you for a few moments what I've entitled Reclaiming What You Have Lost. There's a story about some Boeing employees uh uh several years ago on an airfield that uh decided they would steal a life draft from one of the 747s. And they were successful in getting it out of the plane and getting it home. And shortly afterwards they took it to the river to launch this life raft. After it launched and they were in the life draft for a few minutes, they noticed that the Coast Guard helicopter had come and was hovering over them because on the life trap, of course, there's a homing device so that they can be found. They're no longer employees of Boeing. That little story was in the reader's digest years ago. I can't vouch for whether it's accurate or not, but it does tell us something true. It does tell us that no matter where we go, remind us, no matter what we do, no matter what we think we're doing, God knows where we are. He knows where we are. He has a way of keeping up with us, knowing what's going on in our lives, knowing what's happening in our lives. And some of us have had victory, some of us have the gifts of God that God has given us, some of us have strengths and peace and joy and faith and hope, all these things, but but somehow they faded into the background, or something's intruded upon our lives, or something perhaps we even invited in our lives, that's caused us to sort of push those things to the background. You once held them strong, you once held them firmly. They were once very valuable and vibrant in your life, but they've faded to the background. And today I want to I want to challenge you to reach out and grab a hold of what you may have let go of or loosed or released in your life that's designed to be a blessing and a strength to you. Jesus stated a truism in John chapter 10 and verse number 10 in a discussion about larger things, but he stated this truism that is often quoted, the thief comes not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life and they might have it more abundantly. It is the behavior of the thief to kill, to steal, to destroy. It's the normal, natural behavior that we would expect. And we all have an enemy. We have an enemy in Satan, and we also have an enemy in the nature of the world we live in that desires to steal, kill, and destroy, to take what God has given you, to push it to the background of your life, to confuse your life or fill your life with all kinds of other things. So you lose grip on what God has given you and what God has for you. And so for some today, uh you may have lost that hope, you may have lost that joy, you may have lost that faith. But I want to affirm to you today and say to you again today that God wants that to be restored in your life. God is a God of restoration, God is a God of renewal, God is a God of hope that grants us that grace in our lives. And so we do, but we do have an enemy, and we do have our lives. We all live normal lives. We all live normal lives. We all get sick. We all have responsibilities. We all have, well, I started to say we all have jobs. Most of us have jobs. Some of you may be retired, or some of you are too young to have jobs, but we all we all live a normal life. And all of that normal life sometimes takes away what God wants us to hold on to. God didn't do a miracle for us just to be a resolution of a problem at that moment. But God's miracle extends beyond that moment and becomes a strength to our life and a help to us as we follow after God. We reach back to that miracle God gave us and we grab a hold of it and gain strength from it, even though it may have been years ago, and for some of us we're old enough that it was decades ago. But it's a miracle that is powerful and strong in our lives, and we still gain strength from that today. But the enemy would like to break that tie. The enemy would like to say, oh, that's just something in the past. It wasn't that big a deal, it wasn't that important, or just to make us forget it, and so we don't have the strength. And I'm challenging you today to reach out and grab a hold of what you have lost and pull it back in so that God can give you the strength and the grace that you need in your life for today. And in our culture, sometimes we're very, in in I'm gonna say Christian culture, can I just say it that way? Uh we're very passive sometimes. And if we're not careful, we can have that sort of passivity when it comes to these things where we're struggling with the enemy or struggling with our lives to hold it. We can we can sort of get passive about it. We're we're we're not really we're not really that engaged. We're we're easily persuaded to just kind of sit quietly. But your enemy is a bully. And bullies only take advantage of passivity. They find that a weakness they can leverage. And we live in a world in a culture that says the answer to conflict is conversation. And, you know, in some ways that could have some truth in it. Maybe if it's just a matter of misunderstanding, then a conversation can resolve that. But a conversation with your enemy, the enemy of your soul, is not gonna resolve the conflict. It's not gonna fix things. He's not gonna keep his end of the bargain when you bargain with him. He's not gonna, it's not gonna turn out like you think or like you expect. It's not gonna be measured by the way you think it should be turned, it should turn out. But instead, it he will take advantage of you. He will he will take advantage of your life. But we have this kind of attitude somewhere, sometimes that these things that God has given us in our lives, these victories, this joy, this peace, this hope, all that God has given us to strengthen us, we have, if we're not careful, we have this passivity and we start losing the connection with it and the strength that God wants to give us from those experiences and those things in His Word. In Jack Canley's book, Fuzzy Fuzzy Memories, excuse me, he said there used to be a bully who would demand my lunch money every day. Since I was smaller, I would give it to him. Then I decided to fight back. He said I started taking karate lessons. But then the karate lesson guy said I had to start paying him five dollars a lesson, so I just went back to paying the bully. And while it's a humorous story, of course, it does kind of illustrate sometimes what we do. We feel like, oh, well, that's too much to do, so I'll just live with where I'm at. That's too much effort, so I'll just stay where I am. That's gonna take too much from me. That might take more than just living with what I'm living in. But God's design is for you to live in victory, God's design is for you to live in hope. God's design is for you to live in faith and the power of the Holy Ghost in your life. And that is much greater than any effort that it might take on your part. The famous Winston Churchill and the famous quote from him on this topic is he said, an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. Howard Hughes said, once you consent to some concessions, you can never cancel it and put things back the way they were. My challenge to you today is don't negotiate with your enemy. Take back what God has given you. It's not a negotiation, it's not a discussion. You know, I I my children are really good at negotiating. Your children, I don't know, but uh, my children, when they were young, they were they still are, but when they were young, they were very good at negotiating. Everything I asked them to do, they wanted to negotiate. You know, and I I suspect your children are kind of that way too. Now, when they were young, they might have, you know, had a little temper tantrum or something else, you know, those kinds of things. But as they got older, they started negotiating everything. They wanted, you know, that's not fair, but this, and you know, we're sort of negotiating. And uh oftentimes I would say to them, this is not a conversation. I'm just making a statement. I don't need your feedback, I just need you to hear what I'm saying. Don't have a conversation with the enemy. Don't have a conversation with him, don't have a negotiation with him. That's not the right approach. The right approach is to state the word of God boldly and emphatically because the word of God is powerful, to state what God has promised you to hold on to that, to not step back and have some sort of fuzzy resistance, but instead step forward and take back what God has given you. Take back what God has already offered to you. I think God has given us enough already that we should be able to stand strong and powerful in the kingdom of God and in our lives. And so it's important for us to step forward in that. Brother Alex taught so well this morning, and I'm gonna, in honor of him, I'm gonna skip this page in my notes and just go to the next page. He's helping the youth right now, so just tell him I said that is alright. The Bible is filled with stories of how God restores and reclaims what what he has given to people when they've lost it. This is a message of hope for you because if you feel like you've lost and it's gone and there's no possible restoration, I want to tell you that God is a God of restoration. God is a God, God is a God that restores and reclaims what we have lost. Even if it's our fault we lost it, God can restore it. The Bible tells a story that probably many of you are familiar with in 1 Samuel chapter 30. It's a story about David reclaiming the families of his army. He and his soldiers are rushing back to Ziklag. It's been the third day of their journey, and when they get there, when they arrive home, this is their temporary home they're living in. And when they arrived, they discovered the Amalekites had raided Ziklag and had set it on fire and had stolen all of their families and their belongings and uh and and taken them, captured them and taken them away. And David's uh army being weary from battle and travel and in the great hope and expectation of getting home and seeing all that evaporate before them and the great loss that they were experiencing. And that just sort of, if you can just sort of imagine this moment where they're you know they're exhausted, they've been fighting and they've made this quick journey to get home, all excited about getting there, and they arrive only to find that everything they were coming to see and to embrace was gone. And in that moment, these soldiers, these valiant warriors, they had nothing left to give of themselves. And they just began to weep and to cry at their losses. In fact, they cried so much, the Bible says, until they ran out of tears, so they just cried themselves out. And soon their cries and anguish of losing what they had treasured so greatly turned into anger, and they needed someone to point that anger to. And the Bible says they were discussing stoning David. That's a pretty dramatic turn. They've been following him in battle, and now they're thinking about just stoning him and getting this all over with. That's what happens when you're in those moments. You do things that make no sense. You make you do things sometimes that are completely illogical in moments of great trauma. You do things that'll be destructive to you in moments of great trauma. And if you haven't been there, God willing, you keep living, you'll get there. Because we all experience some of those moments in our lives. And it's very easy in that moment to just lash out at everything. It's normal. And I want to I want to tell you if you're in one of those moments like that and you're angry with God, God's not offended that you're angry with him. He's not offended that you're angry with him. He knows how to deal with that. He's got lots of practice with us humans. So it's okay that you're in these moments, but the answer to that is not to kill somebody, even though that may be what you feel like doing. But the answer to that is still to lift your eyes to God again. Lift your eyes to God again and to say, God, I don't know what to do about this, but God, I'm open for your direction. I'm open for what you want to do. And so that's what David did. He's he's in this moment. These are men that he's led, that he, their hearts are knit together by wars and battles and families and connections and all these things. He's in this terrible moment himself. He's lost all of his family as well. And he lifts his heart to God and cries out to God. And the and so you can read the story about what happened. He was so distressed by it all, and he called the priest and said, We've got to seek God. We've got to have an answer from God, we've got to have, we've got to have direction from God. And God's answer was go take it back. God's answer was, go take it back. God said, Pursue them, and you will overtake them, and you will succeed in rescuing them. As best we can tell from the records, no one was lost when they went back and rescued from this opposing force. They rescued their belongings and their people and brought them back. Because God is a God of restoration. God is a God of help. God is a God that will restore and renew. But sometimes you and I have to step out to get, to make the claim. The scripture is full of these stories. I read it for you in Joel chapter 2. I'd like to read a little expanded version of that verse in Joel chapter 2, verse 23 through 29. I want you to think as I read, think about how God is assuring his people that he, while they're in difficulty at the moment, that he is going to restore them, that he is going to renew them, that he is going to make them better than they were before. He said, Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vat shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten, the cakeworm, and the caterpillar, and the pommel worm, my great army which I sent among you. And you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God that has dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be ashamed. And you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and none else, and my people shall never be ashamed. And it shall come to pass afterwards that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And on my servants and on my handmaids I will pour out my spirit. In those days I will pour out my spirit. So God encourages his people that I'm still here. You may be in a moment where you've lost something, but I'm still here, and I'm gonna restore it to. I'm gonna give you more than you had. I'm gonna multiply, and I'm gonna compress, and I'm gonna take the season that usually takes a year long, and I'm gonna compress it down to a shorter period of time. I'm gonna give you the first reign and the last reign. I'm gonna give it all to you together. I'm gonna put it all together, and you're gonna be blessed, and you're gonna be full, and you're gonna be filled, and and you're gonna enjoy this blessing. And what a great blessing that prophecy was to them to encourage them, and God is gonna provide their needs. But that blessing was so much greater than they even knew. It was so much more than they even understood. They're thinking barns and grain and you know, having plenty of food to eat. That's what they're thinking. But God's plan was so much bigger than that. Isn't that the way God's plan works? It's so much bigger than we see. The reason why we know that is because in Acts chapter 2, the Bible tells a story about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and Peter preaches on that day, and he refers to this scriptures. And when he refers to these scriptures, he's referring to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. So what they understood in the context was, you're gonna give me some food. God meant not just in the context of food, but I'm gonna give you food, but I'm also gonna fill you with the Spirit. I'm gonna make you new. I'm gonna do something so dramatic in your life that it'll change the very world we live in. That's the way God's promises work. That's the way God blesses us and keeps us. In the scriptural setting, to reclaim something generally uses the word redeemed. In Isaiah chapter 43, verse 1, the word of the Lord says, But now thus saith the Lord that created you, O Jacob, that he has formed you. O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by my name. You are mine. God said, I've redeemed you. I've put my name on you, and you are mine. That means that we're not just talking about God, we're not just talking about us reclaiming something God has given us, but God has reclaimed us. God has reclaimed us that we're lost. You and I that we're lost. That He has set forth a way to claim us that we're lost. And when we start reading through the Bible, we see this theme going all the way through the Bible. In the life of every significant character of the Bible, they either have a story or they're a key person in a story of redemption and restoration. I mean, just I challenge you to read through the just read through the Bible this afternoon. Just read through, think through every character in the Bible that you know about that is talking about God doing something in their lives. And and read through everyone. They're all either, it's either their story of redemption and restoration, or they're part of the story of redemption and restoration for someone else. Sometimes for the nation, the kingdom, whatever. Sometimes it's for someone else. That story is repeated over and over and over and over again in the Bible. Which probably means I need to hear it over and over again. It probably means I need to do it over and over again. I need to understand that's what God wants to do in my life. To do that, I have to assert the claim. To reclaim something, I have to, I have to claim it as mine. I have to have something that says, yes, that is mine. I have to assert it. Some way I have to assert that happening. The owner has to step forward and speak up and declare that the item or the property or whatever it is is theirs or even the right. In fact, it's one of the dangers of the society we live in. We have certain rights, and many of those rights are codified into law. They're in the founding documents. But those rights must be claimed and protected. Sure, they're on the books, but to have the value, you have to claim them and protect them. That's the reason why we have that saying, freedom isn't free, because someone or some group must establish the freedom, but ongoing, it must be protected and it must be exercised, or it is lost. The claim of freedom is lost if you don't exercise the freedom, if you don't put it into practice, if you don't live it every day. And it's the same way with what God has given us. We have to claim it. We have to go get it. We have to assert the claim. We have to say, no, no, no, that is mine. God has given it to me, God has granted it to me, and I'm gonna hold on to it. I'm not gonna have a passive attitude, but I'm going to get what God has given me. Otherwise, it just sits in the storehouse like all that unclaimed property at the state. That they occasionally advertise, have all these things at the state that no one has that's been eschewed, I like to use that word, to the state. Somebody's got to claim it. It's theirs. They need to claim it. And we have to claim what God gives to us in Psalms chapter one, uh Psalm 107, verse number one. This is what it says. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Let them say so. Well, why do we have to say it? Because you need to hold on to it, you need to claim it, you need to hold on to what God, you are redeemed by God. It's not just your stuff redeemed, he's redeemed you. And you need to say it, you need to speak it, you need to stand on what he has done for you. And so the Bible challenges us to say it. To say it, to make that expression, to make that assertion, to not acquiesce, not to give away, give up, or give in or walk away. But God has designed us to be victorious. God has designed us to be overcomers, God has designed us to stand in his power and strength. I want to turn from the to the verses that we read at the beginning in Luke chapter 4. Well, Jesus is uh speaking in synagogue and excuse me, the temple, and the Bible says there was delivered him of the book, the prophet Isaiah, and when he opened the book, he found this place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. We commonly call that the year of Jubilee. And he closed the book, he gave it again to the minister, and he sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. They were fixed on him, watching to see what he was going to do and say. And he began to say to them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Jesus came to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sides to the blind, set at liberty there. All of those are restorations. All of those are things we should have had had we been obedient to God, but we lost due to sin. And Jesus said, I've come to give it back to you. I've come to restore it to you, I've come to declare to you, to proclaim to you, to let you know that it is still available to you. And how is it available to us? It's available to us because of what he did for us, because Jesus died in our place and paid the price that you and I could reclaim what we lost. And that he reclaims us. 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18 and 19 says, For as much then as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things or with earthly things, such as silver, gold, from this vain conversation or lifestyle that you receive by traditions of your fathers. But here's how you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as the Lamb without blemish and without spot. Jesus has reclaimed you. And because he has reclaimed you, you can reclaim all that he gives to you and all that he offers to you. Would you stand together with me? I want to tell you today that Jesus has reclaimed you and he is calling you. He's calling you to him to get what? To get everlasting life, to receive salvation, the hope of salvation in your life. I will repeat what Peter said on the day of Pentecost when he was asked, well, they were asked, really, the disciples, and Peter responded about what they should do. Peter said, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That promise is for you and your children, all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. That is your promise to claim. That is your promise to claim. You have to step forward and claim it. You have to step forward in repentance. You have to step forward in God and let God fill you with His Spirit. And so today I'm challenging you. Something that God has given you, something God has granted you. Maybe it's your relationship with God is not where it should be, and you recognize that you can restore that relationship. Just turn your heart and mind to God. It can be reclaimed. Now, some maybe you've never really had that kind of relationship with God in the first place, but God has reclaimed you, and He's calling you to salvation today.