You Were Never the Guest

Some of you are standing in the doorway of your own Father's house.

You came in years ago and prayed the prayer, and you meant every word. You just never sat down.

Picture a man named Ray. Third row, left side. I say Ray because I have never been in a church without one, and I have been thankful for every one of them. He tithes. He runs the sound board. He sets out the chairs at six in the morning and stacks them again at nine at night, and if the church needs a ladder he is already coming down the hall with one.

Ask him how he's doing with God and he gets a look. He'll say, "Well, I'm trying." Push a little and you get the real answer. Thirty years in, and he is still waiting for God to be pleased with him.

Now Ray is no backslider. He might be the most faithful man in the building. He just lives like a guest at somebody else's table, coat on, one eye on the door, working so hard that nobody will check the list and ask what he's doing there.

If I could sit with Ray I would say it plain. You were never the guest.

Romans 8 says you did not receive a spirit that puts you back into slavery and fear. You received the Spirit of adoption. Galatians 4 says it even closer to the bone, that God sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Look at who is crying. It is the Spirit, and He is doing it from inside you. He says Abba before your theology is in order and before you feel a single thing. You did not climb into that family. You were born into it, and nobody has ever been born by effort.

Don't go by how you feel on a given morning. You can wake up feeling like a stranger in a borrowed coat and still be a son. The fact doesn't check your mood first.

Go read Luke 15 again. Most of us only ever preach the younger boy, the one with the pigs. But the older brother is sitting right there in the field, and I think he is a lot of the church.

He never left. Never wasted a dime. When the music starts for his little brother, he stands outside with his arms folded and says, "All these years I have served you."

Served. That's the word that gives him away. He lived in the house and thought like a hired hand. And look at what the father says back. Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

Everything I have is yours. He could have killed a goat any Tuesday he liked. He could have thrown his own party and invited the whole county. He never asked, because he never believed it was his to ask for.

Now look at the younger one, because here's what gets me. He's in the pigpen, hungry, and he finally comes to himself. What does he remember? He doesn't remember he's a son. He remembers that his father's hired men have bread. So he writes himself a speech. Make me one of your hired servants.

Even on the road home, he was thinking like an employee.

And his father never lets him finish. He's running before the boy gets halfway through, calling for the robe and the ring and shoes. Hired men get a contract. Sons get dressed.

So one brother stayed and one left, and neither one knew what he was. The older one figured he was earning his place. The younger one figured he had blown his. Meanwhile the father hadn't changed his mind about either of them.

That matters because of what Jesus did. He hung there and said it is finished, and He meant it. He didn't mean it was nearly finished, or finished if you had a good month. When you go back and try to add something, a little more serving, a little more fasting, one more year of proving yourself, you are telling Him the cross came up short. You probably don't mean to say that. I've still watched people spend twenty years saying it, and none of them were at peace.

Colossians 3 says you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. With Him, not from Him. The old you, the one who kept the books and flinched every time the door opened, went into the tomb with Jesus. And Ephesians 2 says God raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places.

Seated. You can't be seated and standing in the doorway at the same time. Take the one God already picked.

Somebody's thinking, well, if I really believed this I'd get lazy.

I used to wonder the same thing. But Romans 2 says it is the kindness of God that leads you to repentance, and the longer I walk with Him the more that proves out. People don't run from a father who runs toward them. When you are loved, obeying stops being a chore and turns into something you share with Him. His wants slowly become your wants, until one day you can't say where His end and yours begin. That's what union looks like from the inside.

So take your coat off, Ray.

I mean it. Tonight, wherever you are, hang that thing up and tell Him you're done standing by the exit.

You also carry a ledger around, don't you? Every failure, every skipped quiet time, everything you should've done better. You've kept it faithfully for years, and it has never once bought you a night's sleep. Give it back. He closed those books a long time ago.

When the Spirit says Abba inside you, and He will, don't hurry to feel anything. Sometimes it is so quiet you'll think you made it up. It's still your Father, and He isn't wrong about you.

Go to the field after that if He's called you there. Just go as a son.

I don't know who taught you the other way. Somebody who meant well, most likely, and got it wrong. Or it was just that old voice in you that never could believe something this good was free.

But He finished it, friend. You couldn't have, and He never asked you to.

Pull out the chair and sit down.

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