The Way Home

Have you ever walked away from God? Maybe there are times when you sit in church, and you realize that you’ve wandered far from home spiritually. Or maybe you’ve walked away from God emotionally. You rarely pray anymore. You don’t search the Scriptures very often, and yet something inside of you wants to return. Or maybe you’ve found the Christian life too demanding, and so you feel like giving up.
 
Some people desperately want to get back to God, but they’re just not sure how to do it. A few years ago, there was a news story about a terrible flood in Houston, Texas. The story told of a single mom who was home with her two young children and she realized there wasn’t much food in the house, and the rain was getting heavier and heavier. So, she left the kids alone at home and drove to the grocery store so she could stock up on food. But in the short time she was gone, the floodwaters rose. When she tried to drive home, she found the road blocked by water. She was in a panic, so she took another road and tried to approach from a different direction, but that path was blocked, too. And so was another. Can you imagine how frantic that mom was to get home to her young kids? Some people feel like that with the Lord—they’re far from God, and they want to get back but they just don’t know what to believe anymore; they don’t know how.
 
In John 14:1-6 Jesus says, Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way” (verses 1–5)?
 
Some of us have a deep desire to be at home with Jesus; we want to go to the place he described. But we feel like Thomas, when he said, “I don’t know the way. How can I find my way home?” For others, it’s hard to even put into words how you feel. There’s a spiritual emptiness or confusion. Your soul is unsettled, and you’re drifting and searching for an anchor. When Thomas asked Jesus how he could know the way home, Jesus answered him and all who ask that question with this: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). Jesus claimed to be the way home to God.
 
Maybe you’re thinking, “It’s time for me to come home…to come back to Jesus…to love God with all my heart, soul, and strength. Other things have distracted me as of late, and I’ve just kind of put God on the back shelf. I believe in him, but I don’t live daily in his presence. In light of what Jesus claimed about himself, it’s time to make a choice: Embrace the truth about him, or reject it and keep living without God. What will you do? Wherever you find yourself on your spiritual journey, I hope you’ll embrace the truth of what Jesus claimed about himself, and allow him to bring you back home to God.
 
Tyler

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