The Journey Home

I will get up and go to my father.
—Luke 15:18

Have you or a loved one wandered away from God? Maybe you want to enjoy the relationship with Him you once enjoyed but you wonder if it’s really possible. You say, “How can God forgive me for what I’ve done? Even if He does forgive me, how can I make up for the time I have spent apart from Him?” I think the prodigal son probably had those same questions. “If I come back to my father, will he forgive me? And even if he does forgive me, will I live in his house as a slave or as a son? Is my inheritance lost forever? And am I a hypocrite for coming back to my father after I left him?”

The story of the prodigal son reminds us there are four necessary steps to journey from the far country back to the Father who loves us. And we’re going to look at four essential steps necessary to coming home to the Father who loves you. First, there has to be a crisis. Second, repentance. Third, forgiveness. And finally, perseverance. Today we will look at the first step.

First of all, there has to be a crisis. I have never known any Christian who lived in the far country who has come back to God without a crisis coming into his or her life. It was the great Christian statesman Malcolm Muggeridge who once said that everything he had learned worthwhile, he learned through painful times. He looked back on those painful events with particular satisfaction. How can that be? How can we ever look back on painful experiences with satisfaction? The fact is, after we’ve come back to a right relationship with God, we view in a different way those painful things God used to bring us back to Himself.

Think, for example, about our ultimate homecoming one day when we get to heaven. Remember what John said about that time? He said, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). John is not saying that in heaven somehow God wipes our memory clean and we don’t remember those painful things anymore—that’s not what happens. But heaven will put a new perspective on the suffering we went through in this life. We will no longer see pain and suffering and death as the victor. Instead, we will see them as a prelude to a greater existence. Paul said at that time, “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

It’s in the same way when we come back into a right relationship with God. It’s not that we will ever be able to look at a divorce or an illness or even the death of a loved one and say, “That was a really happy experience.” But if God uses those things to bring us back to Himself, one day we’ll be able to look on those things with particular satisfaction. God often uses a crisis to bring us back into a right relationship with Him.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “The Journey Home” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2009.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.