Coming Home to the Father - Neal Lozano

"We all have a longing for a home. I remember the first time I came home from college after being away for four months. I walked around our house and stopped to look carefully at things that I had walked by for years without giving a second glance. Paintings, furniture, figurines, they all seemed significant to me because they said to me, “This is home.”

Home is the place where we expect to belong and be known, and the place where we can know others. It is a place where we can be ourselves, a place where we can rest. None of us grew up in a perfect home, and many of us did not grow up in a safe or happy home. Still we long for a place to call home.

We were made for home and family, so that we could come to know our true identity as children of the eternal Father in whose heart we find our true home. In Eph. 3:14 the Apostle Paul tells us that every family in heaven and on earth derives its name from the Father. The very nature of the family finds its source in God the Father.

God the Father intended to reveal himself to us in our families. Because of our fallen nature, however, families can be a place of pain, a place where the goodness of the Father is hidden.

Sin has separated us

Sin has separated us from the Father and left us thinking and acting like orphans and slaves. The world offers futile answers to this root spiritual issue. For example, you have probably heard it said, everyone just needs to find his own truth. The broken, abandoned, lonely, rejected, and confused are encouraged to save themselves by deciding what is true, not based on revelation, but rather based on a limited, subjective perspective of the pains of life. Without revelation from God, these answers keep us from finding our home in His heart. Secular answers will never heal our hearts because they do not connect us with our Creator and the purpose we have in relationship with Him. At best, they offer temporary relief and a fleeting hope.

Life-altering answers are being offered to the very young who have never considered that their Creator made them purposefully and has a wonderful plan for their lives. Neither are they aware that the Father is searching for them, longing to bring each to the place of belonging and acceptance in His heart.

God, too, is looking for a place to call home His home

He stands, knocking on the door of every heart.

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. Revelation 3:20

And for those who have opened the door, He has made His home in us.

Jesus said, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” John 14:23

The question remains, however: how it is that the Father can feel hidden from those who have already received the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Two reasons to consider

For one, we do not see the Father as He is. We cannot see Him clearly through the lies we have believed, and the blind spots created by resentment, anger, fear, and shame. Although we believe, we still need to be unbound like Lazarus. After Lazarus was called forth from the tomb, Jesus commanded those around him to unbind him (or untie him) so that he could see and be restored to his family and other relationships. It wasn’t enough to simply have his life restored; his graveclothes, the remnants of death, needed to be removed before he could move into the fullness of life.

Being unbound is an ongoing process of restoration, sanctification, and integration into the family of God. This lifelong process of knowing the Father through the Son is the second reason the Father can seem hidden to believers, something we see in the special gift of John’s Gospel.

Perhaps 30 years after the Synoptic Gospels were widely spread, there was another gospel emerging, one that came out of the experience of the youngest disciple who lived longer than the others. As John grew in maturity and wisdom, tradition indicates that he had Mary, the mother of Jesus, under his care. I think the Gospel of John, born out of the years of his communicating with Mary about the intimacy Jesus had with the Father, reveals how Jesus is inviting all of us into that relationship.

In John 14, we are invited to witness the struggle Thomas and Philip have as they try to understand, to see the Father as Jesus does. The dialogue reveals to us the frustration of not understanding Jesus's words and ends with Philip crying out to the Lord, “Show us the Father, and then we will be satisfied.”

If you long for home, to see the Father more fully, to know your place in the Father’s heart, begin with this simple prayer of the Apostle Philip:

“Show us the Father, and then we will be satisfied.” Neal Lozano

You may wish to further enter into this prayer by reading his book "Abba’s Heart". It was written to assist you in coming to know the Father and His love for you.

You can learn more @ www.heartofthefather.com