Message Recap
This weekend, Willow's Online Associate Campus Pastor Faith Schiller kicked off our new series, Finding Your Way Back to God. Anchored in Luke 15, specifically the parable of the Lost Son, Pastor Faith asked us if we've ever been lost before. She began with a story about being lost as a child but quickly turned toward our current adult reality. Because sometimes, we get lost as adults, too—lost in relationships, our jobs, or the pursuit of a goal.
Pastor Faith shared that in the parable of the Lost Son, we don't exactly know why he left. So she asked us: if you were the son in the story, why would you leave? Pastor Faith proposed that perhaps the answer is that he was trying to fulfill deep seeded longings that he mistakenly thought could be fulfilled in his inheritance and, as the Scriptures say, wild living. She continued, "When we orient our lives around the fulfillment of our longings, we find ourselves detached from God and his longings for us."
And yet, no matter what the son has done, the father cannot wait for him to come home. And when he does, he runs out to get him. It's a beautiful picture of God's heart for all of us. He is desperate for us to come home and be restored to Him.
Faith then reminded us that the parable began with pointing out there are two sons. The older son had spent his whole life with the father and doing whatever the father asked of him. He was the "good son." But while he was doing what the father needed, did he really know the heart of the father? It seems that although the older son was close to the father and doing all the right things, he was just as misaligned with the father's heart as the younger son was.
Pastor Faith shared that we all have longings, and some of us leave, like the younger brother, to find satisfaction in those longings. Some of us stay, like the older brother, and work to find fulfillment in what we do for God. If we let our longings drive us, they will not drive us to good places, which is why we have to bring our hearts into alignment with God, to recognize that our purpose is to know God's heart and join him in the work of bringing restoration into the world.
Pastor Faith continued, "Living out the purpose God created for us satisfies the deepest longings of our souls because it is impossible to live out God's purpose without God. And God is the only one who will ever be able to perfectly and fully satisfy those longings you have."
