The Lord has continually brought a couple of well-known passages to mind lately. They are passages that I have even preached on before, but I have seen them in a different light this week. The Lord has been taking me even deeper into the difference between religion and sonship.
For starters, our only chance to step out of religion and into being a child of God is to listen to Him. Psalm 119:35-36 tells us to delight in His commandments and incline our hearts to His testimonies, rather than selfish gain.
Well, what does that mean? That means that we trust that He is GOOD. That means that when He says something, we trust it is with our best interest in mind. That means that we incline our hearts to hear Him. Think about a bench press at a gym. The inclined position isn’t the natural position of the bench, yet it actually isolates the muscle that is being grown more than the normal position. It takes intentional effort to move the bench into the inclined position. In the exact same way, we have to choose to incline our hearts to God’s word. We will never know what He is saying if we don’t give Him time to speak through His word.
And this is so so critical! We live in a time where anyone and everyone is competing to be the driving voice in our lives. Peers, pastors, politicians, bosses, etc… they all influence our decisions. Our culture constantly tells us what our lives should look like. Our culture tries to define what marriage, parenting, morality, obedience, submission (or lack thereof), and even Christianity itself should look like. God’s word cannot simply be something that we consult. It has to be the very foundation of our lives. Every single decision must be built on it. Otherwise, we stand no chance.
For example: I have a sweet friend who walks out childlike joy so incredibly well. This friend is a goofball. There is never a dull moment around this friend. This friend makes even the most boring things fun. This friend LOVES Jesus and walks in incredible wisdom/passion.
Okay, so what is the issue?
The issue is that I have watched this friend be told time and time again that childlike joy is immature. Thankfully, this friend knows truth. Thankfully this friend knows that biblical maturity is marked by two things: joy and peace. The way this friend chooses to walk through life is absolutely mature… it is actually far more mature than the worldly definition that is just picking the more “responsible” and “safe” option. But if this friend wasn’t rooted in truth and what God says, this friend would almost certainly be influenced by culture to change… and that change would eliminate so much joy that points so incredibly clearly to Jesus.
The first passage I want to touch on is in Luke 15… it is the parable of the prodigal son. A wealthy father has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance early, and the father gives it to him. This son moves to a far-off land and squanders all of his money. He is broke, and the land where he is living enters into a famine. He is in a completely unfamiliar culture, miles away from his father’s dominion. His lavish, and self-destructive, lifestyle is no longer possible. He becomes so desperate that he willingly becomes a slave, just to have food to eat and somewhere to stay.
The Bible then tells us that the boy longed to eat the pig food, but nobody gave him anything. I have learned that this verse is actually one of the most merciful truths in all of scripture! The emptiness we feel over the pursuit of our sinful desires isn’t wrath but MERCY! That feeling that says, “This can’t be it. There has to be more. Something dramatic has to change” is the hand of God at work. It is the Father’s unwillingness to let us settle for less than His absolute best. It is MERCY! It is Him telling us that He has made us for so much more than what we are living in.
I know what it is like to live in the pig pen. I know what it is like to endlessly chase things that I thought would bring me satisfaction… primarily success in sports and a relationship. Yet, the Lord in His mercy left me empty. What a tragedy it would be if the Lord would actually allow us to feel satisfied by those things!
You see the emptiness drove this boy to come to himself, get up, walk out, and go all the way back to his father’s house. If this boy hadn’t been left empty, he would never have made it back to his father’s house.
The son is so beaten down by the shame of what he had done, that he has this idea to confess his failure to his dad and ask to come back into his house as a slave… he knows he isn’t worthy of being a son anymore.
But can we pause for a second to just acknowledge how ridiculous this is?! Remember, this boy was in a far-off land. He is completely broke. He has no resources. Yet, he somehow stands up and just walks out… all the way back to his father’s house. What was surely weeks of walking, if not more. Notice how nothing dramatic happened in this moment. He simply “came to himself”. Evidence of genuine transformation in a believer isn’t some crazy dramatic moment. Evidence of transformation is a changed mind and heart… it is deep change that leads to action, not just some theoretical idea or feel-good moment.
Just imagine that journey for a moment! Who knows how he ate or found shelter? He is starving, weak, and dirty. He continually recites this confession and plea for his father to take him back as a slave. Day after day he wills himself back to his father’s house. Every step of the way he stares down the voice of shame screaming in his ear… it shouts, “how could you?! There is no way your father still has space for you! You don’t deserve that after what you’ve done! You are going to show up empty handed after taking your inheritance early?! You are such a failure!” He fights that voice every single step. He fights his own physical exhaustion with every single step. Yet he clings to hope that maybe his dad has somehow kept a seat for him at the table.
See walking back to the father’s house will take courage! It will take some determination and fortitude. It isn’t easy, but gosh it is so worth it!
I was challenged this week with a sermon that I was listening to. It asked this question: Did the prodigal ever stop being a son?
Okay, what does that mean practically? It is the same question that I think gets asked all of the time in the church… Is the person who walks away from God still saved?
Now that is a question that is REALLY HARD.
Even a few days ago, I would have said that this person never knew the Father in the first place. How could someone wander away from their father’s house if they had truly given their heart to Him?
But the prodigal clearly never stopped being a son. That is hard for me to come to terms with, honestly. Like what does that mean?!
But here is what I was really convicted of… If the message of grace that I understand isn’t radically offensive to my understanding of fairness/justice, then I WILDLY undersell grace. If the grace of the Gospel leaves me to be dealt with in the way that I deserve, I am hopeless and helpless. The grace of the Gospel is offensive to what is fair! And even if that is uncomfortable to me at times, I am bound to the word of God. I have to submit what I am comfortable with to what He is crystal clear about.
The truth is that the prodigal never stopped being a son.
No matter how far you may have strayed… no matter how much you may struggle to believe… it doesn’t change who you are. Your Father is still waiting. He LOVES you. He is calling you. And there is a place for you!
This truth isn’t a freedom from responsibility though! You still have to make the choice to come to yourself and come back home! So, stop dreaming of pig food when the Father has so much more for you. Stop settling for less than His absolute best! Those things that you keep chasing that leave you completely empty… leave them and walk back to your Father’s house!
Because guess what?! The story doesn’t even end there. The story gets so much better!
The father sees his prodigal son at a far-off distance. The father absolutely humiliates himself in this culture and runs to his son. To the pharisees, no man should ever run. It showed desperation. But this father runs to his son. His son tries to give his contrition about being a slave rather than a son, and the father cuts him off altogether. He throws a huge party for him and celebrates him.
See the Father’s heart towards us isn’t that we have to pay for what we have done. The Father says, I don’t care where you went… you are here now, let’s party! That is the entire point of Jesus. What LOVE?!
Then the older brother speaks up. He gets mad, and seemingly rightfully so. He asks why this son of his father (he refuses to even call him brother) is getting celebrated. He had been there the whole time, and he never got anything. He did everything his dad ever asked, and this is how he gets repaid?!
See, I am this older brother in this story far more than I am the prodigal. I can be far too quick to look down on people. I can be hesitant to trust whether repentance is real or not. I can be skeptical and cynical. I can get annoyed that the prodigal gets celebrated more than me.
Yet, the prodigal never stopped being a son. I know that is true, but honestly that can be hard for me to believe that God really is THAT good. It is way easier for me to think that if you aren’t doing it right, you aren’t a son. But truth reigns over what is easy!
The even bigger issue in this story is actually the older brother. The older brother never knew what it meant to be a son. The father looks at the older brother and tells him that he has always been with him, and that everything the father has is his.
There is a big warning in this passage. You can do all the right things and not know what it means to be a son. This older brother lived his whole life doing everything his dad ever asked of him. We can go to church, serve, give, believe, pray, worship, be a missionary, and do all of the right things… yet we can miss intimacy. We can know Him as Lord and King. We can know Him as looming judge. But if we don’t know Him as Father who desires to tell us, “I am always with you, and everything I have is yours”, we have missed relationship altogether.
Okay, so what makes a son then?! What did the prodigal know that the older brother never did? He knew that the father was good. He knew that he didn’t have to wait for his inheritance until the father died. He knew that it is the Father’s “good pleasure to give us the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
How often do we live like the older son? How often do we look down on prodigals and think, well at least I am not like them?
I spent years of my life as the older brother. I went to church and did all the right things, but I didn’t get it. I thought I had to earn my way to inheritance. I even honestly probably spent years in college leading ministry where I still didn’t get this.
We were never invited to join His religion. We were invited to join His family. He didn’t die for us to be slaves. He died for us to be His sons and daughters!
What does it mean for it to be His good pleasure to give us the kingdom? Does that mean I literally get whatever I want? Absolutely not.
It means that the HOLY breakthrough that you desire in your life… He desires it more. He is committed to it far more than you are. It was His dream first. And His heart burns for it to become reality. His heart burns for you to become everything that He dreamed you would be. His heart burns for you to never settle for the pig food when He has a seat for you at His table!
And sometimes that means that we have to get started. We have to come to ourselves. We have to step out of the pig pen and start walking home. We have to try and be willing to fail.
I love to use the analogy of a blind man sitting in a room with a door. If he waits for perfect circumstances to leave, he will never leave… he can’t see. But if he gets up and starts walking, he will eventually find his way out. He might walk into the wall 10 different times before he finds the door. Honestly, he will probably fail at least once. BUT, he will eventually get out.
We have to be willing to repent for our shallow understanding of the Father’s goodness. My prayer is that the Father would break my pride and self-reliance. I pray that he would break my unbelief and self-righteousness. I pray that He would break any sense of comparison in me and instead let me get lost in His GRACE and LOVE.
Okay, but what does it mean for a desire of mine to be holy? Well, that leads me to passage number 2 (I know this is STUPID long).
In Matthew 5 Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now, this doesn’t mean blessed are those who are sad for they will be made happy. The word for mourn is pantheo. It means to grieve so deeply that you are moved to weeping.
So, what does this verse mean? Let’s look at John 12 to help. In John 12, Lazarus is dead. Just a few days earlier, Jesus had promised that his illness wouldn’t end in death. Now Jesus shows up and Lazarus is dead. Everyone is weeping and making a huge spectacle out of the situation. Jesus then weeps. But it is indignation that led Jesus to weep. That word doesn’t just mean compassionate, it also means angry. Jesus was moved to weeping from a deep, Godly sorrow. His weeping wasn’t over Lazarus. His weeping was over the unbelief of the people closest to Him that didn’t trust His promise that this wouldn’t end in death for Lazarus.
You see, this is the response that we are called to. This is holiness. What is your response when you read yet another article about yet another leader falling into deep sin? Because our call is to let it break our hearts, not sit in judgement. What those people need isn’t for someone to tell them how pathetic they are. I promise you, that person is aware. What that person needs is someone who will weep over their soul and pray for them… someone who will join their heart with the Father’s heart for the situation.
2 Corinthians 7 tells us that Godly sorrow produces repentance which leads to salvation. It isn’t niceness or coolness that leads to repentance and salvation. It isn’t guilt or shame. It is holy, Godly sorrow!
That means that it is quite literally impossible to experience true grace and freedom without first letting your heart break like the Father’s. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted… that translates more literally to blessed are those who allow their hearts to break like the Father’s, for they will be exhorted.
So, when was the last time you truly prayed in a way that allowed your heart to break like the Father’s? When was the last time you asked Him to truly break your heart for what breaks His? When was the last time that your response to being hurt was to let your heart break for the person who hurt you?
All true passion is born out of experiencing the Father’s heart for something. And that only comes from falling to your knees and asking the Lord for His heart!
The whole book of Nehemiah is about restoring a destroyed Jerusalem. Who does God choose for this? Not a preacher. He picks a random guy who was a cup servant to a king… but he was a praying man… a man who wept over Jerusalem in prayer.
There is no chance at lasting passion, impact, freedom, or even salvation without Godly sorrow.
The place of letting your heart deeply align with the Father’s heart is the place of holy desire. That is the place where the Father is always with us, and everything He has becomes ours.
So, what are you praying for? If it continues to leave you empty, maybe it is the pig pen. Maybe you need to get up and walk home.
How do you view, and pray for, people? Do you experience sorrow for them, or do you judge them?
What is the root of your desires? Is it a holy desire that aligns with the Father’s heart, or is it selfishness?
These have been incredibly convicting questions for me this week, but I promise these aren’t questions that are meant to leave you in guilt or shame!
In Genesis 3, the fall happens. Eve eats and then Adam follows suit. God comes looking for Adam, and do you know what His question is? He asks Adam, “who told you that you were naked?”
Do not miss this! God could have chosen to make a stand for grace or justice in this moment, but He didn’t. He could have said, “How dare you Adam! You ate from the tree I told you not to eat from. You are going to die because of it!”. He could have also said, “It is no big deal buddy… I know I told you not to eat from the tree, but it is fine!”
He did neither! Instead, He asked this WILD question of, “Who told you?
Do you want to know why?
Because what broke God’s heart in the garden far more than the act was the fact that Adam listened to another voice. God’s dream was to be the only one who ever defined Adam. And that is what the Father cared about most in that universe-altering moment… whose voice are you listening to Adam? Are you letting yourself be defined by the world? Or are you willing to trust me enough to define you?
It is the same question we have today. Will you let the Father alone define you?
Whether you are the prodigal son who has run away from the Father, the older son who knows what it is to be a servant but not a son, or Adam who has let the world be your standard for truth… He LOVES you. He forever has a seat ready for you at His table!
Are you willing to come to yourself, get up, and walk back home? Are you willing to let Him share His heart, and heartbreak, for situations with you?
Because friends, that is the only way to genuine repentance and freedom!
