Hunger Was Homesickness

There is a moment that comes to anyone who starts to love Jesus for real, and it is not a comfortable one. You look back over your life and realize that what you called hunger was homesickness all along. There was the chasing and the reaching. There was the promotion you were sure would settle you, the relationship you thought would finally make you feel whole, the applause, even the ministry. You kept grabbing for something to quiet that ache, and none of it worked for long. Your spirit was remembering Someone. It remembered the house it came from, and it kept looking for the Father in places He was never going to be.

Notice I said house. A stranger does not get homesick. Only a son does. The ache you have carried your whole life is proof that you belong somewhere. Most of us were taught that our longing was the enemy, so we spent years trying to kill it or manage it. But God put that ache in you on purpose. It was never something to be ashamed of. It was the Father keeping a lamp lit in the window so you could find your way back to the table you were always meant to sit at.

Loving Jesus is more than admiring Him. Plenty of people admire Jesus the way they admire a portrait in a courthouse hallway. They nod at it on the way past and go on about their business. When you really begin to love Him, something starts coming apart on the inside. Every false lover you ever leaned on starts to lose its grip. You did not get stronger or more disciplined. You finally saw something more beautiful, and beauty did what willpower never could.

He does not come asking for a room in your house. He is not looking for a compartment where your religion stays separate from your money, your marriage and your thought life. John saw Him with eyes like a flame of fire, and those eyes see all of it. He has no interest in being useful to you, something you pull off the shelf when you need help. He intends to be your life. Paul told the Colossians that Christ is our life and that our life is hid with Christ in God. You died. The life you are living now is His life in you, and He is not going to share it with a rival.

A lot of folks want Jesus as a rescuer, and He does rescue. He heals and delivers, and I thank God for every time He has done it for me. But very few want Him as a consuming fire. Very few will pray, Lord, burn up everything in me that competes with You. A lover prays that way. There is nothing holy about pain, and God takes no pleasure in watching you hurt. Union with Him is simply worth more than anything you could hold on to.

Most of us got sin backwards. We were taught that sin is breaking rules, and it does break rules, but the root goes deeper. Sin is affection pointed the wrong way. It is taking the longing that was made for Him and handing it to something smaller. It is pouring the wine of your heart into a cup with a hole in the bottom. Every time you did it, you came away thirstier than when you started, because you settled for a trickle when a river was offered.

That changes how we see repentance. Repentance is not groveling in the dirt and hoping God will be in a better mood tomorrow. The blood already settled whether you are accepted. Jesus finished that on the cross, and nothing you do will add to it. Repentance is the soul turning its face back toward the only eyes that ever fully knew it. The prodigal came to himself in the pig pen and remembered his father's house. He rehearsed a speech about being a hired servant, but his father never let him finish it. The father ran down the road and put a robe on him and a ring on his finger, because a son coming home is not a servant applying for work.

I have been around a lot of believers over the years, and the ones who love Jesus the deepest have one thing in common. They are undone. Some of them have their lives in order and some of them are still a mess, but all of them have seen enough of His heart that obedience no longer feels like sacrifice. A man in love does not complain about the drive to see his bride. He counts the miles as part of the joy. When you love Jesus like that, the things that used to feel like duty start to feel like home.

The more you come to know Him, the harder your love gets to explain. Gratitude is easy to explain. If somebody pays your bills, anybody understands why you thank them. But there is a love that goes past gratitude, and only revelation can account for it. How do you explain tears coming just because somebody said His name? How do you explain feeling more known in the quiet than you ever felt in a conversation? How do you explain that a Man you have never touched with your hands has become more real to you than the chair you are sitting in?

Information will never get you there. Somewhere past theology and past all our words, the Holy Spirit introduces the human heart to the Man Christ Jesus. Jesus said the Spirit would take what is His and show it to us, and nobody gets that out of a commentary. Doctrine matters, but it is the map, and He is the country.

Once that happens, you cannot go back. Casual Christianity loses its taste. Performing for people, or for God, starts to feel like wearing somebody else's clothes. Prayer stops being a list of requests and becomes communion. Worship stops being a few songs before the sermon and becomes the place where you lose track of time because He is there. Love has found what it was looking for, and it has no reason to go back to the pig pen.

Here is the most searching thing I know, and it is also the most merciful. Suppose He took away every gift: every open door, every promise you have watched come to pass, every sign you can point to. Suppose all of that was gone and He simply offered you Himself. What would you do? The one who really loves Him would fall on the floor and say, Lord, do not leave. If I have You, I have not lost anything.

Most of us do not start there, and God is patient with us along the way. But that is where love is taking us. Mary sat at His feet while everything else in the house needed doing, and Jesus said she had chosen the good part, and it would not be taken from her. That good part is still on the table. The hunger you have felt all your life was never meant to be filled with anything less than Him.

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