Lost, then Found
My wife often panics when something seems to be missing before she even really looks for it. Have you ever done that like totally lose something, panic, act like the world is coming to an end, to later find what you were looking for in an obvious place. I have lost stuff and I know that I know I looked where I thought it was, not finding it, but then looking again and it's there. When something or someone is missing like our own child, it is the worst feeling one can feel, we become overwhelmed with fear and dread inside of the thought that something bad might have happened.
Have you ever lost someone of importance not out of accident but through rejection, either through misunderstanding, believed lies, being disappointed, etc.? This by far the greatest pain people usually experience in life.
So imagine how God who has made us as His prized possession, the only creation made in His image, for the purpose of fellowship, whom redeemed and restored us after the fall through the death and resurrection of Jesus and yet many are still lost in ignorance or simply reject what He has done.
God made feelings so He feels the same things we feel. Imagine how it is when just one of your family members are astray, now God sees the whole world as His own, so He feels the pain of each person that is lost or rejecting Him. So in Luke 15:10 when it describes the joy that Heaven has when just one who is lost is found, you can now imagine the emotional celebration.
In the parable of the Lost Son we see the flight of many believers. We start well but as we understand the commitment of being a citizen of the Kingdom of God we step back a bit or we step away all together. We being selfish beings want our Heavenly Father to serve us rather than we serve Him. We want all the benefits without the commitment. We want to do what we want when we want to do it and when we mess up call on God to fix it.
I was so excited as a young person to go out and live on my own, but like many of us I was spoiled and not ready to handle what life brought me, so I ran home to my Grandma (who raised me) to spoil me once again, and she received me with open arms. We live in a culture that celebrates independence, self accomplishment, yet parenting and education at the same time is usually void of much life training, so few people are ready. We were never intended to live independent from God, we were created for fellowship, a daily partnership with Him of bringing forth His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.
As the popular song by Bob Dylan says "we all serve somebody", so what is it going to take to realize the best person to serve is Jesus Christ. Yes, it costs us our life, but we gain eternal life. It took the prodigal son experiencing complete humiliation before He returned to His Father. Why do we love to learn the hard way? Why do we think we can live separate from God and think things will turn out find? It might not be easy to follow God but it is the only way to experiencing true life.
The Father never rejects us, we run away from Him, but He is always waiting for our return with open arms. He does not condemn us, He already knows that we can't live apart from Him, and He understands that most of us have to realize that for ourselves before we finally fully surrender. It is not an easy thing to see our children suffer but it is sometimes necessary and the only way they will learn. Many kids are spoiled and therefore ungrateful and irresponsible because we fear them getting hurt. Don't we realize the greatest pain for God is His children living separate from Him. When we shelter them they never get a chance to realize how much they need God. So sometime we have to let our children go astray so that they will one day surrender to the Lord not from the traditions we established but truly from their heart. It sometimes takes getting lost before we can truly be found.
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