The Lost Son Found: Come Home to the Father

This is what God feels about you. This is what God thinks about you. You wanna know what God is really like? He's not looking for you to, you know, fix the anger that he has because you messed up. He's not you're not he's not embarrassed of you because you screwed up because just like any parent, we know our kids are gonna screw up. He just wants us to come home. He just wants us to repent. He just wants us to turn from the the broken life we wanna live and back to the life that he has for us. This is what God is really like. And when that happens, what we receive on the other side is forgiveness and grace and joy and life. [00:47:26] (33 seconds)  #GodsUnconditionalLove

Remember, this whole thing started because his father gave him what he wanted. And now, he's in such a broken situation, no one will give him anything that the slop that he's feeding to the pigs looks appetizing. This is reality setting him. He's longing for freedom. He was longing to do his own thing. He wanted to be the man and be important and it got him into this mess. There was no such thing as ultimate freedom for any of us apart from dependency on God. I want you to recognize this. We all long for freedom. We want to do our own thing. We want to live the most free life we can possibly have. Freedom does not exist outside of dependency on God. [00:30:48] (47 seconds)  #TrueFreedomInGod

And, news flash, this is what happens to us. When we rebel against God, we don't understand the love of the father. And, so, we run away. We go do our own thing. We start thinking to ourselves, I can't do this. So we run. Or, God isn't going to be happy with me, and so we run. Or, we say, I don't like God's ways. I like my ways better, so we run. I can do better on my own, and we run. And, we'll be tempted to run from home in any area of our life when we miss the father's heart. The younger son missed the way his father thought about him and how he felt about him. [00:33:39] (40 seconds)  #RunningFromTheFather

He lets us do our own thing. But as we do our own thing, God is not forgetting us. He is hopeful with us. He is patient with us. He is faithful to us in terms that he's not going to give up on us. And he moves with us, waiting for us to come back home. And when we do that, he's waiting with open arms, ready to restore you to the status of son and daughter, ready to celebrate you because of the fact that you came home. So, come home. [00:49:01] (27 seconds)  #WaitingWithOpenArms

So, we go do our own things because we don't want God to be angry with us. We don't want to feel like we're failing and falling short and so we run away from what God calls us to do. But, problem is this is is this, is when we don't understand the love of the father, every one of us is tempted to leave home. And, this is what the younger son did. He didn't understand the love that his dad had for him. He didn't understand how gracious his father was and how loving his father was and that the best situation for him was to be under his father's roof and under his father's rule and reign. [00:33:00] (31 seconds)  #UnderTheFathersRoof

This is my encouragement for us. I'm sure all of us have heard this story so many times. I want you to realize that oftentimes, outside circumstances that are beyond our control reveal what's broken inside of us that is within our control. And, when something happens on the outside, it may show you, Oh, my marriage isn't great. Or, something happens on the outside, no, my faith isn't great. Or, something happens and it exposes this brokenness of maybe it's just hurt or or hang ups or habits or maybe it's selfishness or whatever it may be, something happens on the outside. And, my encouragement for all of us is to not blame what's happening on the outside, but to look inwardly and go, oh, there's something wrong and broken inside of me. I better address this. [00:28:30] (50 seconds)  #LookInsideNotOutside

And, the younger son, he's thinking his father might be bad. He doesn't want to face his anger and so, what he does is, I want to avoid the anger. I want to avoid the tough situation. And, we do that. We avoid tough conversations. We avoid tough moments. We avoid admitting that we're wrong. We avoid different things because we don't want to deal with it. So, he starts practicing it, trying to avoid the tougher situation. The problem is this, avoidance costs us. When we avoid the broken situation in our lives, when we avoid having the hard conversation, when we avoid the fact that we have broken a relationship, it costs us. [00:36:15] (39 seconds)  #AvoidanceCosts

When something that is lost is found, there is relief, there is joy, there is celebration. How much more of that went with a lost child coming home? I hope none of us ever experience a situation where our child is lost. But, we've seen situations, we've heard situations, maybe you'd experienced them, maybe you've lost track of your kid in a crowded situation before and you start panicking and you start freaking out. Eventually, you hear, mom, dad, they run over to you and there's relief and there's celebration. You give them a hug. This is even more than that because this is the love that God has for his children, his people. [00:46:42] (45 seconds)  #LostFoundCelebration