{"id":1140,"date":"2019-09-13T12:09:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T19:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2019-12-09T14:50:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T22:50:00","slug":"he-came-to-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1140","title":{"rendered":"He Came to Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>In a hot\nmess of inarticulate father-love, I sputtered, \u201cBut you love Jesus!\u201d<\/strong> My son had been explaining how he\nwasn\u2019t sure he was still a Christian. I had been challenging him to return to\nJesus. My declaration felt pathetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I\nunderstand the aching heart from which these words flowed, but only now am\nbeginning to understand what I meant.<\/strong> After all, Jesus said if you love him, you will obey his\ncommands. This kid wasn\u2019t. And who was I to tell one my son who he loved? Was\nthis another annoying example of parental over-reach? Maybe not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Re-reading\nthe parable of the prodigal son in the gospel of Luke has helped me figure out\nwhat I meant.<\/strong> After\nthe prodigal son had wasted his inheritance and descended into poverty, he looked\nwith longing at the pig food. In the King James Version (Luke 15:17), we are\nthen told: \u201cBut when he came to himself, he said, \u2018How many of my father\u2019s\nhired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger?\u2019\u201d Other\ntranslations begin with \u201cBut when he came to his senses\u201d (NIV, NASB). However,\n\u201cto himself\u201d is closer to the original Greek. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The\nphrase \u201cto himself\u201d helps me understand what was moving in my spirit when I\ntold my son he loved Jesus.<\/strong> I want my son, like the prodigal, to come back to himself\u2014to the person\nGod\u2019s Word declares, he was created to be. My sons were made to love God and be\nloved by Him. \u201cTo come to himself\u201d isn\u2019t just a turn back to who he once was;\nit is a step forward to the person God created him to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>After\ncoming to himself, the prodigal\u2019s mind turns to his father because who we are\nis always defined by relationship<\/strong>. We are not ourselves apart from relationship with God. The\nidea we must escape God, run from our father, in order to be ourselves is one\nof Satan\u2019s most terrible and yet popular lies. It is a promise of freedom that\nends in slavery to sin and our own flesh. The son\u2019s journey home is a journey\nback to relationship with his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though\nthe prodigal son declares himself no longer worthy to be his father\u2019s son, his\nfather runs down the road, wraps his arms around his son, kisses him and gives\nhim the robe and ring of sonship. In other words, the father ignores the son\u2019s\nown despairing definition of himself and declares the prodigal, \u201cMy son!\u201d <strong>With\nexuberant love the father completes his prodigal son\u2019s \u201ccoming to himself\u201d\u2014a\nbeloved son wrapped in His Father\u2019s arms.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>This is\nwhat was bursting in my heart when I exclaimed, \u201cBut you love Jesus!\u201d <\/strong>And in many ways, it is what should\nbe said to every young believer who is hurt or bored with the Church. Yes,\nChristians are a wounded and wounding bunch of people, \u201cBut you love Jesus!\u201d\nYes, earthly fathers and mothers are flawed and fail us in many ways, \u201cBut you\nlove Jesus!\u201d Yes, there are many intellectual questions about our faith that\nneed answers, \u201cBut you love Jesus!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Sometimes\nthe revelation that we love Jesus is as important as the revelation God loves\nus.<\/strong> This is part of\nthe what was pouring out of my heart to my son. How can one know of Jesus and\nnot love him? I love his goodness, wisdom, gentleness, and boldness. I can\u2019t\nread one of the gospels and not fall in love with Him, desire to follow Him,\nand hope to become like Him. I wasn\u2019t merely informing my son that he loved\nJesus\u2014I was declaring Jesus worthy to be loved. <strong>How can we be honest with\nGod and heaven and not love Jesus?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We can pray that\nevery prodigal son and daughter will come \u201cto themselves\u201d. We can pray they\nwill remember the relationship with their Father who is already making a cloud\nof dust as He runs down the road. <strong>Because, really, they love Jesus!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a hot mess of inarticulate father-love, I sputtered, \u201cBut you love Jesus!\u201d My son had been explaining how he wasn\u2019t sure he was still a Christian. I had been challenging him to return to Jesus. My declaration felt pathetic. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/?p=1140\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[88,210,212],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-job1912","category-john317","tag-prayer","tag-prodigal-sons","tag-sons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6y6Br-io","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marksletters.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/cropped-cropped-cropped-cropped-Teckla-Mark-Mill-Creek-Falls-June-2011-3123.jpg?fit=1000%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marksletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}