Coming Home

There is something so powerful about the words "Coming Home", it evokes either memories of pain, rejection, and disappointment or wonderful memories of Mom cooking a great meal and the family all together enjoying around the dinner table.  Home is not a neutral or factual description but one that evokes in our hearts a flood of imaginings.  Yet "Coming Home" is the invitation of the Gospel, home is not so much a physical location as a place in the hearts of those who love us and where we belong (parents).

Yet on an orphan planet where so many are not sons and daughters in their hearts but have chosen independence and self-sufficiency, finding our way home is a journey through sometimes dark passage ways, failures, and disappointments to come home.  I have realized that there is a stronghold that surrounds and keeps me from entering into more of the revelation and reality of sonship.  This stronghold was constructed in my heart when my father committed suicide, this will mean walking through the dark woods of unbelief, the desert of fear of trusting fathers, and the caves of despair of ever being totally loved.

Jesus came to the earth from being in the Father's bosom and in John 14 He tells us that He is leaving this earth to prepare a place for us in the Father's house and in the Father's bosom.  In other words, He came to bring us "Home" to having a place in the Father's heart.  From beginning to end the Bible chronicles God's pursuit of His people to bring them "Home", His great love spans time, sin, unbelief, rebellion, failure upon failure on man's part.  Yet this lovesick Father will not quit pursuing us and now the barriers have come down to the final ones, the ones that are in our heart.  Jesus made a way for us to "Come Home" and even in the story of the Extravagant Father (also known as the Prodigal Son), it is the Father that is looking out from His porch and searching the horizon.  Yet love requires a choice, He has chosen us but will we respond to Him.

The prodigal is the one who left home and the eldest son though he has not left home does not have home in his heart.  A changing of their minds and direction must take place (repentance) for the journey home to end in the joyful celebration.  Each of these sons has quite a journey of the heart ahead of them, but the call to "Come Home" beckons the depths of their hearts.  Each of us have a journey to "Come Home" to the Father's Heart and Love, there are many who have come home but still many more who are wandering in need of seeing the path.  Jesus said "...I am the way, the truth, and the life...", we must lay down our life (soul life- orphan ways) in order to follow in Jesus footsteps and "Come Home".

On the Journey Home,
Bret