Articles
First Step Toward Home
This article is lovingly addressed to any brother or sister in Christ who has drifted away from God and is written with the hope that, in the words of Fanny J. Crosby, “Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.”
One of Jesus’ best-loved parables is that of the wayward son who finally returned to the warm embrace of a loving father. Except for the part about the judgmental elder brother, it is a story with a very happy ending.
Before the Prodigal ever put one foot in front of the other toward home, he had to take an even more crucial step—in his heart. The turning point of the story is when “he came to himself.” At this decisive moment, when the fog suddenly lifted, he realized for the first time just how desperate his condition was. It was then that he determined to go home and humbly admit, “I have sinned.”
Now his thinking was more in line with his father’s assessment of him as one who was “dead” and “lost” (Luke 15:32). Even before he hit bottom, during those heady days of “riotous living,” even then the Prodigal was in desperate straits. Even when he was having a high old time in the far country, thoroughly absorbed in the pleasures of sin, especially then, he was dead and he was lost. He just didn’t know it—not until “he came to himself.”
Perhaps the story of the Prodigal fits you to a “T.” On the other hand, you may have difficulty identifying with this young man because you’re not into wild parties. Maybe instead your “far country” is being so caught up in work and family and recreation (good things in themselves) that you have no time for God. Or maybe your far country is one of apathy or doubt or discouragement—or pride.
Wherever you are, if it’s not home, then do you realize that you are “dead” and you are “lost”? Isn’t it time, past time, to come to yourself—and go to your Father? Then He can say of you as the father did of his son, that he “was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”
