Looking for Elsewhere

 Elsewhere is a place for hearts that can never find a belonging. They are always wandering, looking for somewhere that will give them a sense of security. But they will never find it, because what they are really looking for is not out there. 

Driven with this restlessness, a son leaves home. He demanded his share of his father’s inheritance that was coming to him when his father died. Taking his share of his father’s wealth, the son ventures out for elsewhere. 

“And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.” (‭Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭13‬ NKJV)

Relocated, the son enjoys some wild living, he exhausts everything he has on things he didn’t need, on people who didn’t like him, on places he shouldn’t be, with aspirations he will never find in any of them. 

See the thing is, belonging is never where you are. Geography doesn’t give meaning to anyone. It’s not where you are that fulfills you, it’s who you’re with. 

So happens after the son has wasted all his money, that a famine swept in, and he began to starve. He looked for elsewhere to meet his need but he only met rejection. 

Desperation persuaded him to feed pigs which was the epitome of desperation in this ancient culture. He was so hungry that he even craved the slop of the pigs, but not even that would anyone give him.

Sometimes you need to lose what you have to appreciate the value of it. 

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” (‭Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭17‬ NKJV)

The son came to his senses and realized his problem was that he was discontented. Everything he needed was at home. 

Somewhere to belong is an ache many of us struggle with. It cries from inside us and we feel it needs to be answered. But it’s lie. It’s just a shade of being discontented with what has become too normal to cope with. It’s an insecurity that my present circumstances will not give me fulfillment. Relocation is a bad thing if it serves a means to escape a feeling of discontentment. 

Feeling that he didn’t deserve the right to be part of the family anymore, he decides to ask his father to take him as a slave. 

“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” (‭Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭20‬ NKJV)

While he contemplated, his father caught sight of him and with his heart pounding, he ran to his son. He lost nights of rest, he spent days with his eyes over the horizon, looking for his child to come home. 

In his culture, it was improper and bad for old men to run, but this father didn’t care. He wasn’t a whole since his son left. He lost a part of himself that if it return, he was not going to let anything keep him from getting it back. 

He ran on air until the father broke his son’s standing, throwing him into his chest. His son muffled his speech inside his father, but his father wasn’t listening. 

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.” Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭22-24‬ NKJV)

The son returned home finding all that he recklessly looked for was right under his nose. The son like many of us was ungrateful. He imagined love, acceptance and joy would be among a different group of warm bodies. But true love was right around him, waiting for him and merry when he got home. 

Sometimes, to have what you want, you have to want what you have. 

Elsewhere is somewhere that takes you anywhere because it’s nowhere. 

Where you need to be and where you actually want to be is around those you do love you. Being human sometimes causes us to disregard that. But where you belong sometimes is who you are with. 

Be grateful. 

Still long way off for some of you, there is a God Who’s heart is pounding, waiting for you to come to Him (or even come back to Him). He is anxious for to hear your voice, to feel your presence, to know you are His. There is no distance to His love for long ago He said: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” (‭Jeremiah‬ ‭31‬:‭3‬ NKJV). He won’t relent until He has you. He will wait until the sun sits under the sky and when it rises again for you to find Him. 

Let God love you. 

God’s Pleasure: He Wants You

  We aspire to answer the question: am I wanted? Too often our heart strings are racing to be  entangled with whatever hope of someone possibly loving us. We relish at any attention we’re given, either negative or postive, because we are captivated by the thought that someone desires us. 

The long fall back to earth happens at the reality we attained less of our sense of self worth. Wounds cut deep to realize someone we assume cared about us only acted in such a way for their own selfish gain. 

Trust is hard earned today. Honestly, why should we blame anyone for keeping such a guard? We can’t see sincerity in face value as much anymore.

But as cliché as it sounds: God wants us…for us

“Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:5, 6 NKJV)

God determined beforehand by Jesus Christ to adopt you. He decided that when at your coming to Him to be saved from all wrong that would destroy you, He was going to bring you into His family. And he did for the praise of the glory: He did it because He was pleased to do it. 

Being belonged to God is something that makes Him happy! 

How unfathomable is that? It’s inconceivable enough that God would want to save us in the first place.

It was justice for the terrorist Osama Bin Laden to die, because of he was responsible for the death of countless thousands that are still piling today. What scares me is that God sees it justice by sending everyone to Hell. 

God commanded: The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:20 NKJV)

That means that the person who sins will die. Sin is whenever you displease God. You displease God when you lie and you displease God for not thanking Him for life. Both are sin. It feels harsh but God made man to make Him happy. Not vice versa. 

He will be individually responsible for his wickedness against God and be punished. Romans 3:10 declares that there is none good. We have all missed the mark. 

The justice of a righteous God demands punishment for every crime against His precepts. The sentence God placed for our disobedience to His precepts is death.

At the shooting of Osama Bin Laden, could we imagine someone taking the bullet for him. No! We all wanted to see him die. He deserved to lose his life for taking so many others’ lives away. 

God is not a man. He looks at wrong differently from us. He doesn’t measure wrong. He sees a toddler throwing the pacifier across the room as bad as a terrorist planning to drive two planes into two skyscrapers to kill people. I lost an uncle at 9/11. He sees every wrong inexcusable and worthy of punishment.  

All that is within me cried for the head of Bin Laden, but at the same place when I first disobeyed God, all heaven cried for my death.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), (Ephesians 2:4, 5 NKJV)

God loved us so much that while we were dead because of our wrong, He gave us life through Christ. God wanted us. And how much: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 NKJV)

Its overwhelming to imagine all that it took for God to bring us to state of being clear of wrong. Christ became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Every nasty thing, every secret fault, every evil deed, every selfish motive- Christ became that so you could literally have a clean slate.

I have cried at this fact of Christ dying to save me from death because of my sin and to give me a right standing with God. What also causes my eyes to become teary is to see that God didn’t just saved me from sin but He also adopted me. He made me a part of His family.

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: (John 1:12 NKJV)

All who believe Christ, God decided to give them the right to be His children! We are born into this family not by human passions or plans that can later be regretted by a parent who has lost concern for his offspring. 

We are born into God’s family by God’s choice. This is what God wanted to do. According Ephesians 1:6 (see top), it gave Him great pleasure to do it.

Just allow your mind to entangle itself around the idea that God loved you at your worst and saved you with His best (the cost of Your Son) and then poured out His love on you by making you a part of His family. I leave you with a story that has impressed me gravely to understand God’s extravagant love.

Indeed if anyone has reason for justice it was Adele. At a genocide in Rwanda, Adele lost her husband. She saw as attackers came and flay his body with a machete. She saw as they slit his throat. As her husband fell to the ground that was a pool of his own blood, the pastor cried out to God to forgive his attackers. These men turned on Adele. They sliced her face deeply. Everyday a mirror shows her great scar. Adele was left among dead bleeding from her face, back and her wrist at the cuts of machetes. Three years it took her to recover. For many it would take a lifetime to even to consider forgiveness. Not Adele.

“I could be a bitter, angry, resentful old woman, but I’m not going to do that.”

Adele started going to the prisoners and mothered the very men who had attack her village. One day Adele met Luis. She met him prostrated before her, kissing her feet and crying bitterly. Adele examined the trembling man and saw that Luis was the man that had killed her beloved husband and the man that marked her face. A man’s love draws its limits at such a woeful event, but Adele was filled richly with a love we saw earlier in God.

Luis asked, “Adele, would you forgive me?”

Adele bent over as the Father did from the clouds of heaven and pulled Luis up as God did from our place of unwantedness. She looked into Luis’ eyes and said, “Luis, I forgive you.”

The story could end there, but it doesn’t. Luis was released for good behavior, but he entered society unwanted. Then entered Adele. Adele found Luis and she saw these words, “Luis, you come and I will adopt you as my son.”

How much does God love you? Enough so that He made death so that it would be difficult for you to remain in wrong. Enough that He made a way for you to escape punishment by the cost of His dear Son. Enough so that He decided to make you His child when you ask for His forgiveness. And it was His great pleasure.

You are wanted.

Rejection

 

Everyone wants to know that they are wanted. There is not a human being who does not share the desire to be loved.

Many people are victims to rejection. Some have the worst experiences with rejection and even till today struggle with a need for acceptance.

Maybe you can relate to a man in the Gospels named Matthew.

Matthew was an outcast. Like many tax collectors, they were the scum of society. They were labelled as traitors, and hated by countrymen.

Matthew understood rejection.

Like Matthew, many rejects glare through the crowds and see themselves as lost among the sea of faces. They feel unwanted and even fear if they were to suddenly die, no one would care.

Matthew receives a visitor. I want to imagine Matthew looking down at his counter, just briefly burying himself  from watching the burning eyes twitch of the people whom came to pay their dues to Caesar.

But he finally gazes up at his visitor and sees Jesus.

Jesus was climbing in popularity. Once a common carpenter from Nazareth, was the great teacher and healer. He has supernaturally raptured a multitude of followers, but today He is standing at Matthew’s tax office. At that moment, I imagine he whirl himself around and has his back against Jesus for sheer embarrassment.

“Jesus?” “What does He want with me?” “Oh please not Him, God! I don’t want to get rejected from Him!”

Rejection for many of us is so common, that the natural thing to do when you counter someone is to just push them away in order to save yourself from a potential painful rejection.

But this visitor doesn’t leave. While His followers whip questions at Him: “Jesus, why are we doing here?” “You can’t possibly want to talk to this guy?”

My mind’s eye imagines Jesus never lost His gaze on him. Matthew even knew Jesus was looking at him. Then Jesus says two words – two words that would change this man’s life forever.

“Follow me.”

I share this story, because it’s message to the people like me who have suffered rejection This is a story of acceptance.

Here is Matthew whom we can call public enemy number one. No one wants him. Yet Someone wants him Jesus.

Jesus accepted Matthew before Matthew ever met Jesus. Jesus doesn’t even give Matthew time to prove himself and win his favor. He looks at the tax collector through his eyes, into his soul and says, “I want you.”

(He brings Matthew into His special 12. Talk about acceptance!)

At the corner of the darkest chasm of your heart where you harbor all the scarred memories that has made you feel so numb to life around you. To the place where only hate gives you affection and loneliness accompanies you. Three words can steal the night of your hollowness and birth the light of hope:

Jesus wants you.

He doesn’t want something from you; He simply wants you. He loved you before you were born (Psa 139:13-17). He loved you while you wandered away from him (Isa 53:13; Rom 5:8).

I and every victim of rejection wants to know that they are loved. And there is One whom loves you “with an everlasting love” (Jer 31:3 NKJV)

He found me at the back of church. I was too young to understand  that you can be a perfect person – throw away your very identity and people will still reject you. He came to me at a time where I felt I had to pretend to keep a friend and never accept myself.  There in the words of an orator, I heard the sweet words that Jesus wanted to be my friend.

No matter where you are, “there is no pit that He is not deepest in”. He will find you and show you true love.*

I really wished that Mark, the writer to this story, would have detailed everything that followed after Jesus’ invitation; but all we have is:

“…So he arose and followed him” (Mark 2:14).

Matthew left his tax office and never looked back. He found acceptance and he embraced it.

We can leave our fear behind and find acceptance in Jesus.

We don’t have to feel unwanted anymore. Jesus loves us. He wants us! He accepts us for who we are.

Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3:20 NKJV).

Give Him a chance: Let Him take you where you are and have Him cradle you in His extravagant love.

*Quote by Corrie Ten Boom, Holocaust survivor and motivational speaker.

Acceptance by Others is Weak

Why did Nicodemus came to Jesus at night? Was it because it was the most convenient time for Jesus or was it because his fear of being seen with the Rabbi that many of his colleagues despised?

Being associated with Christ would severely damage his reputation as a prominent leader in the synagogue. He most likely lose that position.

His secret conversation with Jesus would become the nation’s headlines. All creditability that he produced in his years would dissolve. The only popularity he would accumulate from all this would be a favorite household gossip among the townsfolk.

Would it be worth it to Nicodemus to lose the much he kept to gain the kingdom of God that he inwardly desired?

Why did he hold acceptance by people at such a high esteem?

I know my life is shamefully marked with thousands of events where I risked my relationship with Jesus to receive the attention of people. So intangible is that ambition: it’s like a firecracker that blasts in the night, only to drown in the darkness of the sky.

Jesus said: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11, 12 NKJV)

Isolation, persecution, rejection are the birth marks of a sold out person for his God. But so great are their acceptance in God’s house when He will broadcast their name as thunder through the heavens, saying “Well done!!!! My good and faithful servant!!!”

The people whom you feel embarrassed to express your love for your God are not worth the company. Follow the Son of God who is worthy, profitable and everlasting.

(See how Nicodemus later publicly defended Christ! John 7:45-52)