Returning Home to Father

Returning Home to Father

Note: The following material is taken from Soul Physicians. Today you’re reading Part Four in a series on putting off the old me and putting on the new me in Christ. Read Part One, How to Break the Stranglehold of Strongholds. Read Part Two, Christian: Do You Know Who You Are? Read Part Three, Returning to My First Love.

“I Annul My Attachment to Alluring Lovers”

Divorcing the adulterous lovers of our soul is the principle we follow for putting off false lovers. What is the process? It involves annulling our attachment to our alluring lovers, or what the Puritans labeled “the mortification of our sinful affections.” The process includes:

• Relational Return: Returning Home to Father

• Relational Dissatisfaction: Acknowledging Our False Lovers’ Faults

• Relational Contentment: Reveling in Our True Lover’s Fullness

Relational Return

Repentance is not only a change of mind, but also a change of love and longing. Motivated by a vision of the majesty and beauty of God, I pine after a different relationship, life, and world. In repentance, I acknowledge that God is my first love. Thus repentance removes the barriers to seeing, experiencing, and enjoying the face of God.

The Scriptures consistently portray repentance as relational return. I put off my old adulterer’s clothes and return home. The Prodigal repented and returned home. Christ commands the lukewarm Laodiceans to repent and then invites them to open the door of their soul so they can return home to sup with him. When the floundering Ephesians left their first love, Jesus tells them to remember, repent, and return. Desperate, despairing, depressed David repents and then pleads that he could rest in the presence of his forgiving God. Repentance is relational return in which we first turn away from our false lovers and then return to our heart’s true home.

Hosea 14 provides a classic biblical picture of relational return. Building upon the imagery of Gomer’s unfaithfulness to Hosea as a symbol of Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness to Jehovah, Hosea concludes with the words, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God. Your sins have been your downfall” (Hosea 14:1). Hosea uses this same word “return” sixteen times in fourteen chapters beginning with Hosea 2:7, “She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back (return) to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.” Mortification of false lovers calls for a return to God our true Husband.

Relational Dissatisfaction

Something else in Hosea 2:7 and 14:1 may not be quite so obvious. In both cases we find a recognition of our false lover’s inability to satisfy. Our sinful lovers are our “downfall”—a word suggesting weakness, lack of strength, inability, and insufficiency. Gomer says it even more clearly when she realizes that she was better off with her true husband than with her false lovers. Relational repentance is always relational return and relational dissatisfaction.

The Prodigal came to his senses realizing that even his father’s hired servants were better fed than he. Jehovah urged Israel to recognize the futility of her false lovers and to acknowledge that they could neither save her nor fulfill her (Jeremiah 2). Hosea counsels Israel along identical lines telling them to say to Jehovah, “Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war horses. We will never again say, ‘Our gods’ to what our hands have made” (Hosea 14:3).

Relational Contentment

We mortify our false lovers through relational repentance which includes relational return, relational dissatisfaction, and relational contentment in God our true Lover. Returning to Jehovah, Hosea offers us words to say to him, “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips . . . For in you the fatherless find compassion” (Hosea 14:2a, 3b, emphasis added). We return content and amazed by Father’s grace and compassion.

Hosea’s “process” counters Satan’s strategy. Satan belittles Christ and magnifies the other lovers. Relational repentance belittles the other lovers and magnifies Christ.

To uproot the flesh and fleshly affections, walk through the process of relational return. Mortify your false lovers through relational return in which you confess to God the sin of your false lovers, acknowledge to yourself and to God your relational dissatisfaction with your false lovers, and share with God how He alone is worthy.

A Prayer of Relational Repentance

“Father, I come home to You. I confess as sin my false lovers. I confess as sin living like the old person that I used to be. I confess as sin my spiritual adultery and whoredom. I acknowledge to You and to myself that my false lovers are horrible lovers and that my pursuit of them is ugly and putrid. How foolish of me to ever believe that anyone but You could ever satisfy the longings of my soul. How shameful. How disrespectful. Forgive me my relational sin. I acknowledge that You alone are my Supreme Good. I acknowledge that You alone are gracious and compassionate. I return to You as my Forgiving Father. Renew my vision of You as a totally competent and totally good God—boundless in holy love.”

Join the Conversation

To portray our sin against God, the Bible consistency uses the language of spiritual adultery. Why do we shy away from that imagery today?