RETURNING HOME PT. 2
RETURNING HOME – Part 2
“Some Things Will Never Be The Same”
Luke 15:17
“And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”
There’s a turning point in this story that doesn’t get much attention, but it sure gets deep, that is the fact that “ he came to himself.”
That moment didn’t just change his direction… it changed him. It had to be his choice. There may have been some who tried to convince him to just go home, stop spending so much, they are not really your friends, they are just using you…
But the only way to really Return Home, (and by that I mean return to the Lord), is to get to this point. The point where you realize your current position is because of the decisions you made.
The son that left home and the son that started back home was not the same person.
When he walked away, he was full of confidence in himself. Life looked easy. Choices felt clear. He thought he knew what he needed. But somewhere along that road, through loss, disappointment, and empty moments, his understanding shifted.
The valley has a way of doing that. It teaches lessons you don’t learn on the mountaintop.
By the time he turned back toward home, his view of life had changed. His view of himself had changed. Even his understanding of his father had grown deeper.
He wasn’t coming back with the same mindset, he was coming back with humility.
And that’s an important truth for all of us to learn today:
There are some things will never be the same.
Many times, when we return to the Lord, we quietly hope to just “reset”, to go back to the way things were before we wandered into worldly ambitions.
But the truth is, we can’t go back to who we were… and we don’t need to.
Because what we learned in the valley has value.
Those hard places teach us what really matters. They show us the emptiness of life apart from God. They build a deeper appreciation for grace. And they shape a stronger dependence on the Lord than we had before.
This son didn’t come back the same, but in many ways, he came back better.
Hebrews 12:1-2 says,
“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…”
Life is not about starting over at the beginning, it’s about continuing forward with what we’ve learned.
If you’re running a race and you stumble halfway through, you don’t go back to the starting line. You get up, shake off the fall, and keep moving forward from where you are. The fall becomes part of your story, but it doesn’t have to keep you from finishing your race.
And that’s what returning home looks like.
You don’t come back unchanged, you come back wiser. More aware. More grounded. More dependent on the Lord than before. The weight you once carried, you begin to lay aside. The sin that once entangled you, you start to recognize for what it is.
You may not be who you were, but by God’s grace, you can become who God always desired for you to be..
So don’t wish that you could go back.
Keep going forward.
Because in the hands of God, even the valley becomes part of your Victory through Christ Jesus.
