Our Bible tells a story. And this is my LIMITED and BROKEN summary of the story that it tells.

The greatest book ever written~

A Love Letter Written Outside Time and Space, recorded by people who knew the Author

66 Books, 40 Authors, over 1500 years, in 3 different languages on 3 different continents

You were created by a Father who knows you and loves you anyway.  He wanted you to have all that you needed and freedom.  Freedom to access all that He had that was was good:  a place of perfect love and protection, a place where all you needed was available, and a place of perfect family.

But your freedom was not good, because you were not good, and in that came a desire to crave things that were not good for you.  This was true of your great, great …. great grandparents, their children, their children, their children …. their children, and now, you.  For all of us it is simple:  We crave what is not good, we chase after things we don’t need, we do things that bring dishonor to a normal person, much less a Perfect Father.  We are born into that which is broken.  In this broken place, the love is not there, the protection is not there, what you need is not there, and families are broken.  And when you live in a place that is broken, things break.

Now in that broken place there is often three things that happen:  People either party in excess and continue their cravings, they fix it with all the work they can ever do, or they give up.

And so we can choose the YOLO lifestyle and crave all the things that we could ever want.  But in that place, there are some truths that you should know:

There is no drink strong enough, no drug potent enough, no love deep enough, no bank account big enough, no party fulfilling enough, no fame great enough, no appetite satisfied enough, and no longing small enough that any of the things that we chase could EVER, EVER be filled.  And in that pursuit we come to the end of ourselves, and we have to ask, even in our greatest moment, is this AS GOOD AS IT GETS?

Our second option is to choose work.  And so we find ourselves trying…..We try to harvest a field that does not grow, We try to sell a product no one will buy, We try to build a house that will not stand.  

We try, and we fail, and we come…to the end of ourself.

Or perhaps we go to option three, and we simply give up… and we come…to the end of ourselves.

All this time the Father who gave us everything waits for us to come home.  He waits and He waits, yearning for His child to return home so that He might cover us in all the love He can give.  He has to wonder, “why did I give my child the choice to leave?  Why?”  But He knows that if you love something…you set it free….  And so He cries out from the perfect place and waits for the child who has the choice—the choice to perish in bitterness…OR the choice to come home and LIVE.

And so we can choose to come home.  And if we do choose to come home we must find a way to come to the end of ourselves and stay home.  This is not an easy part of the journey….because when you are dropped out of good and into not good, you have a part of you that constantly will try to pull you back.  And you have to ask yourself, why in the world would He want me here?  How could a Father that is so good not only welcome me back, but FORGIVE ME, ADOPT ME, RESTORE MY WASTED EXISTENCE, GIVE ME AUTHORITY, PROMOTE ME, and even ask me to call Him Father, or Dad.  It is simple:  He sent someone to stand up for us.  A Defender, and Advocate, a Friend.

  When we align with Him … The enemy that filled us with his lies is DISABLED.  

When we align with Him … The debt that could not be paid is PAID IN FULL. 

When we align with Him … The sin that could not be forgiven, IS FORGOTTEN.  

When we align with Him … The death that is inevitable IS CRUSHED.  

When we align with Him … The wounds that could not be healed ARE WITHOUT EVEN SCARS OR MARKS.

ALIGN YOURSELF WITH HIM:  Come to the end of yourself, Communicate with Him, Read His Word.  Be born into a new life.  Connect in love with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead!