Your Lost Son

I recently was thinking about the passages of scripture that God has used to guide me toward church planting. One of the passages that jumped into my thoughts was the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. This story is one of the best known stories that Jesus told to teach people about the kingdom of God.

The great thing about parables or mashalim is that they are stories to make us think. There isn't just on clear meaning but multiple meanings wrapped into a story that we can relate with.

This story is most often told from the view of the son that asked his father for his inheritance and blew it all on wild living and then returned to his father's home looking to be a servant and his father embraces him as a son. Sometimes it is told from the view of a loving father who's son took off. This father is seen standing outside everyday looking for his son to return home. And every once in a while we will hear this story from the view of the other brother who is angry by his fathers response to his brothers return.

We can take so much from these views. We can see ourselves as either or both of these sons. We see God as this loving Father that is always look for us to turn back to Him and who constantly shows us loving kindness when we get wrapped up in our own way of thinking.

As I was thinking about this passage I began to see a story in this parable that I had never herd taught before. What if God desires us Christians to put ourselves in the place of the father? How should we react if our son (child) took off? Would we just sit and wait for him to come home or would we be out searching for our child day and night?

When God called us into His family He called us to be Christ's ambassadors.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 says, "16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Maybe the next time we are around a lost person we will seek them as if they are our lost children in need of our love and acceptance. Rather than sit back and wait for them to come home.