Getting home can be difficult. Some people never feel as though they get home or have a place to call home. My heart aches for these people. The philosopher Thomas Wolfe said, "You can never go back home." You will read below a portion from an email that waited for me upon my recent return home from traveling. This person is a warrior who I admire. This person has been through much. Lost much. This person has every reason to play the "victim role" or enter the "blame game" but they have chosen to not stoop that low. Or perhaps, while on their knees, have stooped low enough to learn some important life truths. (I think they are in that process!). I have changed some of the details to protect their anonymity. "X" writes....
"I think the point of my life journey so far is to get me to a place where I'm desperate. I have no money, no job, no car, and no skills. The best way to describe my life right now is, "broken." I think it's a good broken, a healthy broken--if that makes any sense. I think it's the kind of broken that forces any person to be dependent on God. I've always wanted to know God, I've desired a deep relationship with God, but it's always been a "add on" to all my other life activities. I know now that God has never been my all in all. I think I'm on the road to an authentic relationship with God today. No more detours or short cuts for me. This may sound strange but feeling broken, the kind of broken I speak of, feels good."
To anyone who has ever felt this way I say, I have been in this same place. I have come to believe that God cannot use a person UNTIL they are broken. A writer from another generation wrote, "When God wants to accomplish an extraordinary task God takes an impossible person and breaks them and then.... chooses to use that very same person to be the key leader for the needed task. Only a broken person can be successful in the extraordinary."
A final comment about coming home-when Jesus was facing immanent abandonment from those who said they were his friends he prayed. Jesus said, "I am filled with sorrow.." The word "sorrow" literally translates, "homesick". Where I take this is that our hearts and our lives, our goals and our dreams will result in sorrow UNTIL...our hearts, our lives our goals and our dreams are centered in our heavenly Father's will. Oswald Sanders would say we have to work out the Father's will with the very things that God has worked into us. Until we do this we will find ourselves feeling homesick or, away from the Father's will. If you are feeling away from "home" right now please comment at the bottom of this article and say, "Away from home". I will specifically pray for you.
"I think the point of my life journey so far is to get me to a place where I'm desperate. I have no money, no job, no car, and no skills. The best way to describe my life right now is, "broken." I think it's a good broken, a healthy broken--if that makes any sense. I think it's the kind of broken that forces any person to be dependent on God. I've always wanted to know God, I've desired a deep relationship with God, but it's always been a "add on" to all my other life activities. I know now that God has never been my all in all. I think I'm on the road to an authentic relationship with God today. No more detours or short cuts for me. This may sound strange but feeling broken, the kind of broken I speak of, feels good."
To anyone who has ever felt this way I say, I have been in this same place. I have come to believe that God cannot use a person UNTIL they are broken. A writer from another generation wrote, "When God wants to accomplish an extraordinary task God takes an impossible person and breaks them and then.... chooses to use that very same person to be the key leader for the needed task. Only a broken person can be successful in the extraordinary."
A final comment about coming home-when Jesus was facing immanent abandonment from those who said they were his friends he prayed. Jesus said, "I am filled with sorrow.." The word "sorrow" literally translates, "homesick". Where I take this is that our hearts and our lives, our goals and our dreams will result in sorrow UNTIL...our hearts, our lives our goals and our dreams are centered in our heavenly Father's will. Oswald Sanders would say we have to work out the Father's will with the very things that God has worked into us. Until we do this we will find ourselves feeling homesick or, away from the Father's will. If you are feeling away from "home" right now please comment at the bottom of this article and say, "Away from home". I will specifically pray for you.
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