going home

This is the third week of Mid-Week Sessions. This week we will discuss repentance. Below is a sample of the chapter from Derasha:

If you are anything like me, you have occasionally heard the word repent in less than ideal circumstances. There is a preacher on TV who is sweating so profusely the moisture is seeping through his three-piece suit, and as he wipes away the sweat gathering on his forehead he yells into his handheld microphone, with veins popping out of his neck, “Repent!”

Of course the people that are present in the live audience respond because something about not listening to this guy is scary enough (not to mention all the threats of fire, heat, darkness, torture, burning, falling, thirst, and other miserable living conditions if they refuse). Something about this repentance makes God seem like an immature boyfriend who is going to make a person miserable if they don’t choose Him.

This kind of repentance is not an invitation, it is a threat placed on men and women. This threat can often turn into manipulation by scaring someone into repenting. Who wouldn’t choose rivers, trees and robes over fire, pain and pitchforks?

We are like the younger of the two sons in the parable known as The Prodigal Son. He begins his life in his father’s world. He has everything one could ask for. Yet one day he decides that the life he has isn’t doing it for him anymore. So he tells his Dad that he wants some money, the keys to the car, and heads off for a place no one has heard of.

This is our story isn’t it? Adam and Eve start out in paradise and at some point decide that the garden isn’t good enough. They want the one thing they can’t have. Then they decide they will go get it. They left the house, and humanity has been leaving ever since.

Repentance is the call of our Father to come home. It is God asking us to return to paradise, to come back to where we started. Repentance is not just turning around and heading home. Repentance is seeing the father run to us, having him kiss us, having him throw his arms around us, and hearing him say in our ear, “I am so happy you’re home.” The invitation of repentance is a love story about a Dad who misses his kids.