There is a true story about a woman whose husband left her after leaving her a note out in the milk barn. He didn’t even tell her that he loved her! She was now left alone to raise their 5 children. Can we imagine the loneliness, the heartache? Can we imagine the self focus that could have gripped her putting her in the bondage of self pity? But praise be to the Lord for the Care, Forgiveness, and Love that Jesus had filled her heart with: what then was her agony? The agony of knowing that her husband’s soul was not safe in Jesus: “Lord, don’t let him go… Don’t let him go to hell!”
Without the Lord’s love in her heart she may have gotten bitter toward her husband and even hated him, but instead she prayed for him. “ Lord, if he is ( still alive) please draw him to yourself. Speak to his heart and bring him back, Lord. Please don’t let him go!” She didn’t pray just one time, or one day, one month, or one year- but for over 20 years! “Father, if only I could know that his soul is safe. Continue to draw him, Lord. Don’t let him go, oh Father. Don’t let him go to hell!” Anyone of us without the mercy of the Lord in our hearts would have given up. But remember the Lord had put His love, His care, and His concern for her husband in her heart. Every day for over 20 years she cried out to the Lord. Her trust, Her faith, Her hope, was in God.
One day over twenty years later, she gets a phone call from an evangelist. After telling her that he had found her husband in a New York City hospital, he said: “He (your husband) found the Lord Jesus as his personal (Lord) and Savior a few minutes ago and now he wants to see you. He is critically ill. Can you come immediately? He keeps asking how soon we think you can be here.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she listened. For several minutes she fought to gain control of her emotions so she could speak. “Of course I’ll come,” she managed to sob at last… “And tell him I love him and forgive him,” she added. “Tell him I’ve prayed for him every day for the twenty years he’s been gone.” After spending the last two hours of her husband’s life with him, she prayed as she laid his now limp hands( he died) back onto the cover: “Thank you for answering my prayers, Lord thank you for saving his soul. Thank You that You didn’t let Him go.”
There is a story in the Bible about the prodical son who left home and wasted his father’s money on harlots and riotous living. But what was his father’s heart? Bitterness? Hatred? No! Love and care! He looked and longed every day for his son to return home. He looked and longed to show compassion on him. When his son repented and was truly sorry for how he had sinned against God and his father, the son came home. And the father rejoiced when he did-“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”
Dear Readers, God does not want to let you or I go either! The Bible says, “For the son of man (Jesus) is come to seek and save that which was lost.” Are we “at home with the Father”? If not, we are lost. Isaiah 53:6 says: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his one way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Not just going astray with all our iniquities whatever they may be (lies, lust, lewdness, fornication, thefts hatreds, evil speaking, evil thoughts, disobeying parents, cursings… etc.) but the very attitude of doing our own thing our own way instead of doing God’s thing God’s way. But what was God’s response: longsuffering- He made a way that we could be forgiven and brought back home through the atoning death, burial, and resurrection power of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who can now change our hearts to live to do God’s will. He wants to give us a new heart if we are willing to get rid of the old (Ezekiel 18:31: “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and get you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die.”) God the Father longs to have compassion on you.
Can we hear the Lord speaking to our hearts today? ”Why will ye die in your sins?” ”I don’t want you to perish” “I am your salvation”, “I can deliver you from Satan, Sin, The World, and Self”– “If you only believe (In Me) you will see (experience) the glory of God (to raise you from spiritual eternal death to now new life- His eternal life ( “For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God”. (1 John 5:4-5 NIV)). Jesus said that you and I must be born again by the life-giving seed of the all consuming love of Jesus, to be given a new mind and new heart filled with the all consuming love of God with the resultant fruit of an all consuming love for God and the sacrificial love of Jesus for others. Please today, if you haven’t already –Through His Grace, Repent (from unbelief to belief in Jesus) and be converted (from a prideful, self-seeking, self-in-control life to a humble, God-pleasing, God-in-control life) that your sins may be blotted out. God can only give His saving grace to the Humble. Right now ask God to give you a humble, broken heart with godly sorrow over how your sins and the hidden lusts of your own goals have hurt and grieved Him as you let His self-sacrificing love and blood put to death your self- life. By His mercies alone, believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God to save you by His undeserved grace to now do the Father’s work His way. Now by Faith – Rely solely on the hope of the power of His blood alone, cheerfully given on the cross, to redeem you(forgive and set you free) from the guilt and bondage to sin and make you alive by this same righteous blood by with which you can now have His righteousness living in and out of you. Now by Faith, Relying solely on the hope of His resurrection power live by His undeserved grace! Jesus Christ’s Might can release us from the bondage of Satan’s Kingdom – prisoners of Satan’s lie- to now have King Jesus reign within us -with His Truth, His Life, and His Holy Spirit of Love living in Us. Dear friend, if you are still away from the Lord by following your own way, choose right now (this very moment) to come home today through His Son, the Lord Jesus. It can become too late (“Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me).”