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RETURNING HOME
Updated: Dec 14, 2024
Dear readers of our Discovering A BETTER LIFE messages
We take this opportunity to thank each of you who have acknowledged the encouragement you have received from our messages we feel privileged to share with you and look forward to continue sharing them with you on a more regular basis.
We thank God for the friendship of each of you, and pray that God’s grace and peace will sustain you during these difficult and uncertain times.
Ron Bainbridge, on behalf of the A BETTER MINISTRIES Team
(ISAIAH 40:27-31)
Today’s Message of Encouragement from Discovering a BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES
(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)
They are dedicated to HELPING
PEOPLE FIND PEACE and HOPE
(John 10:10)
RETURNING HOME
Friend, every culture has its prodigals. Max Lucado tells the story of Maria and her daughter Christina. A blossoming young woman, the daughter leaves her small hometown somewhere in Brazil for a big city. However, Christina's sweet disposition was soon to turn sour, and the tell-tale lines of hard living soon scarred her good looks. Prostitution was the only way she could survive away from home. She was lonely, angry, depressed, and wanted desperately to return home, but how could she? She would look like a fool if she went home now. So her life went on. Only days after Christina ran away from home, her mother pieced together what happened. So, Maria searched the bars and hotels of the city for weeks. On doors and mirrors she left a picture of herself, hoping Christina would recognize the picture and read the message on the back. One particularly embittered evening, Christina recognized the picture of her mother on a large mirror in the reception room of her hotel. She hastily ran her fingers over the picture's texture, as if she were caressing her mother's familiar cheek.
Maria had written hundreds of times on the backs of hundreds of photographs anticipating that Christina would see one of them. The note was simple, and its words expressed the invitation Christina was ready to hear, "I love you. No matter what you have done, please come home." That's all it took. Love was always there for Christina--waiting only for her to see it and act upon it. Friend, the Bible story in the Gospel of Luke chapter I5, frequently labelled The Prodigal Son, is the same terse universal drama. A son with everything wastes his life, hits rock bottom, and comes crawling home for help. Jesus takes an event that almost everyone has either experienced for themselves or through someone close to them. You and I might wonder why the son left home, or why Christina left her home! Was it Rebellion? Was it Boredom? Were the rules too strict, and he/she could take it no longer? I believe that how we are driven and why we act as we do become focal points of this universal story. In the case of the Prodigal Son, the boy's father was amazed! He wondered, "Why would my son with all this wealth at his disposal, and more to come, take his smaller portion now? What's he planning, anyway?"
The uncertainty of his son's future was enough to worry him. Even more, the separation anxiety, caused by the loss of his youngest son is excruciating.
Friend, those of us who have children away from home remember the pain of not having that loved one there, the tears, the concerns, the fretting. The father’s fears are justified, for his son does it all, all shallow, all superficial. That's how it is when you buy fun and friends with money. The money runs out, the food is gone, and the boy struggles now for survival. Even pigs eat better! In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus shows God as the father who reaches out when his wayward son returns. Not a doting father, just a redemptive father. In his eyes, now filled with tears, were the words that never were spoken, "I could have told you so!" But the words were swallowed, overshadowed by the incredible joy of recovery, healing, and lessons that would never be forgotten. "My son is back! My son is redeemed!" Never again would he be lost! (Luke I5:11-32).
Friend, Jesus' story is not only a universal plot, but a fundamental theme of the God-man relationship. Jesus said it. And the apostle Paul shaped it for a sceptical audience, as we read in Acts I7.
Then the letters of the New Testament repeat it. The message is God's outstretched arms and a personal invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). -- No more pigs! No more hotels and bars! Just peace!
“The Friend of a Wounded Heart”
To hear and View this ~Video~ Please click on the Link below
Friend, perhaps even as you're reading what I've shared with you today, you are finding yourself struggling to cope with your life.
Perhaps you've alienated yourself from family and friends, and in your loneliness, you're wondering how you can turn things around and return to your family and friends.
If this is how you're feeling, we invite you to write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE for our FREE booklet titled "ATTACKING THE AGONY OF LONELINESS."
To receive your complimentary copy, just write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE, BETHANIE ON THE PARK, Unit 49/2 Plantation Street, Menora, 6050, Western Australia
Phone: +61 0456 538 006
Or you can E-mail us at: abl-alb@omninet.net.au Friend, we are always pleased to hear from readers of Discovering A BETTER LIFE. If we can assist you in your spiritual journey, please allow us to do so. Your correspondence will receive a prompt reply. Please don't hesitate to make contact with us.
“TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS”
To hear and View this ~Video~ Please click on the Link below
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