What are you afraid of?

I’m lost, and I don’t know how to get home. 

And so the lie begins.

It feels so true and resonates in a deep place:  that relentless feeling of being lost.  And worse, not knowing how to return home.  Not knowing what we will be met with when we do.  Not knowing if we will ever be able to find home in the first place.

We have all stepped off the path.  Took a sidestep into the brush.  Turned around and didn’t recognize anything.  What happens first is that we don’t recognize ourselves.  And our language changes rather rapidly to shame and self-condemnation.  And from there, we certainly don’t recognize who God is either.  We can’t.  We know the story of the prodigal:  the one who has been received and welcomed home.  But he certainly didn’t imagine that outcome.  The best he hoped for was a business arrangement with his estranged father.  He cannot see his true father from this place.  And it isn’t that His father has changed.  His vision has.  This becomes especially true if you find yourself in a place of repeated sin, disappointment, or failure.  We know this.

So what now?

Do we turn around?  Head back down the path we came and maybe rediscover the main road?  Do we keep pushing through?  Eventually we will discover something true or familiar.  We can find our way back home.  Right?

Maybe we try a few spiritual things:

Repentance.  Then prayer.  Receive forgiveness. 

Then we repeat it, perhaps with some new variety:

Prayer, forgiveness, repentance…

Forgiveness, repentance, prayer??

And so the lie continues.

But the lie is different than what you think it is.

It’s not about finding your way home.

It’s not about rediscovering the path.

It’s not about repenting, at least not in the way we imagine it to be. 

The lie is that you never left home to begin with.

THE LIE IS THAT YOU NEVER LEFT HOME TO BEGIN WITH!

When we’re lost, all of our language will tend to start from the wrong place, from a place of separation.  That is, until we retrain our minds and repent in our thinking.  Your sin doesn’t separate you from God.  Your disappointments and failures do not separate you from God.

You never left home to begin with.

You were welcome and welcomed Home.  Forever.

Here’s the definition of “welcome” – to greet (someone arriving) in a glad, polite, or friendly way.

And here’s “welcomed” – to be glad to entertain (someone) or receive (something).

You are completed welcomed – right now – in the Father’s house . . . You cannot live with one foot in and one foot out of this truth.  That is an unsettled place, and it will drive you mad with double-mindedness.

In other words, you cannot live with a dim and narrow view of yourself or of God.  That is a place of shame and uncertainty.  And it leads only to more and more confusion and fear.

But there is no room for any of those things at this place called “Home.”

It’s a Party.

And you are welcome to join in.