Today’s Devotional is the conclusion of a sermon I preached this past Sunday at the Homecoming Service in a church of a dear friend of mine in ministry. I pray it ministers to the deepest parts of your heart.
You may say to me today, “Steven, you don’t understand. I’m a Christian, but you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know how far I feel from God. I can’t humble myself before him, because I just don’t think he would ever take me back. I just don’t see how God would ever love or accept me. I’m here today, but I don’t feel very spiritual at all. I don’t feel loved or accepted. There’s just no hope for me.”
Well, if that’s where you are today, thank you for being honest with me. Honesty is important. However, I want to challenge your assumption. In fact, I want to challenge your perception of how God feels about you. Because the Scripture tells us that it is the “kindness of God” that leads us to repentance, “the kindness.” The Bible also tells us that God loves us with a love that is so powerful that it cannot be measured, a love that we can never be separated from as Christians, no matter what.
I want you to think about the word “Homecoming” in your mind, as it is Homecoming Sunday, a word that means “coming home.” And I want to challenge you today to begin viewing God as someone who wants you to come home, as someone who is, as Phillip Yancey says, “a lovesick father,” the kind of “lovesick father” we read about in Luke chapter 15, in the parable of the prodigal son, the kind of God who loves you in ways you cannot imagine and who, again, longs for you to come home, is desperate for you to come home.
You remember the parable and the story. The youngest son of the father has asked for his inheritance from his dad, which would have been considered an insult in the ancient world. He wants to leave his dad and make it on his own. But instead of doing it responsibly, he goes the opposite route. He decides to sow his wild oats in what the Bible calls prodigal living. And he spends his entire inheritance doing so and hits rock bottom in the process. No more money. It’s all gone. And the only job he can find is a job feeding pigs.
He knows he can’t go home. He knows his dad won’t accept him back because he’s offended and insulted him too much in his mind. But maybe, just maybe, his dad will allow him to be a hired laborer in his house, a paid servant. It is worth a try. And so, he approaches his home with his head held low. And he begins rehearsing the speech he will give to his father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you and am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
Time goes on and home gets closer. He can start to see the house, the house he’s grown up in, but then he puts his head back down. He peeks up, again, to see how close he is, but as he does, he sees something that he doesn’t expect to see, something that he really doesn’t know what to do with, something that is shocking. He sees his father, the father he knows will not accept him back, his dad, running to him, running to him with open arms! It was considered a disgrace for a grown man to run in public. But the father doesn’t care. He runs to his son and throws his arms around him and kisses him.
The son gives his prepared speech, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you and am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Yet, the father, again, does not respond the way the son thinks he will. In his “lovesick” excitement, he demands that a robe be brought and placed on his son, a robe that traditionally would have been worn only by a guest of honor. A ring is then placed on his son’s finger, which is a sign of authority. Sandals are placed on his feet, something that only a free person would wear. And all these surprising and shocking actions are done because, in the words of the father, his son “was dead and is now alive again.” He “was lost and is now found.”
How this gives us insight into the way that God views us, the way that God feels about us, yes, feels about us! We serve a God who feels, who has great feelings for us! So, if you feel unworthy today, if you feel like you’ve gone too far, and that you can’t come home, open yourself up to this perception of your God today. If you have turned away from God, if you have gone your own way, if you have done things that have hurt him, hurt other people, or hurt yourself, God is waiting, patiently waiting, painfully waiting in love.
He has not given up on you. Like the father in the parable, he is waiting, and he longs for you to come home, to come home and rest in his arms, rest in his mercy, rest in his love, rest in his grace. He longs to restore you completely. He longs to make you into a person you never thought you could become, molded by his grace. The question is, on this Homecoming Sunday, will you come home? Because you can come home. You can come home and experience God’s love in Christ in a way that you have never experienced it before.