How to Live at Home in the Father’s Love

What Does it Mean to Live At Home in the Father’s Love? Why is That Important?

To live at home in the Father’s love is what it really means to be a Christian. It is what truly sets you free from the self life and causes you to blossom forth into what you were created for.

Stuck Struggling with Strongholds

Have you ever felt that powerless “stuck” feeling? I sure have. In a difficult season of my life I had a job delivering newspapers. It was dreadful waking up at 2am 365 days a year! One morning in particular it was raining and miserable as I tried to stay warm in my old, beat up baby blue Ford Fairmont. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I turned onto one of the a dirt roads on my route, and then it happened. My car tires hit a mud patch and got stuck. As I tried to get out, the tires spun obstinately which only served to dig me deeper into stuckness. With cold rain pounding down on me and having many newspapers still to deliver, it was an awful circumstance. I felt stuck and powerless.

Maybe you have places in your life like this:

• Are battling marital issues that never seem to get any better?
• Are their certain life habits you never seem to get free of?
• Does your future feel like a dead end with no hope of improving?

Many Christians are living with stuckness because of a wrong view of how to relate with God. We haven’t understood that it has to begin with love.

Living at Home in the Father’s Love

All creation started with the Father desiring children. This present age will conclude with Jesus delivering creation back to His Father. (1 Cor.15:24)

Living at home in the Father’s love means:

• You feel valued by Him.
• You feel like you have a place in His heart.
• You feel welcomed by God, accepted, included.
• You feel recieved into a warm place of love, not a cold place of judgment where you think you have to walk on eggshells.
• You feel free to make mistakes, knowing God will not close His heart but will work with you lovingly to overcome your challenges.

A Picture of this Warm Environment

When I was dating my future wife, Cyndi, the time came to meet her parents. Her dad was a successful civil engineer, good looking in his blue blazer and neatly cut grey hair. I was intimidated! Cyndi’s parents took us to dinner and afterwards we rode home in the backseat of their car. Sitting there I felt something strange. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but something “in the air” felt odd — different from anything I’d ever experienced. Finally it dawned on me. “Nobody’s afraid,” I thought.  There’s no tension between any of us you could cut with a knife. I could clearly see that Cyndi was not afraid of her dad. Everyone simply talked and laughed and was comfortable in each other’s presence. I had never been around a father figure where everyone was not afraid. I had lived my whole life up to that point in guardedness and defenses. It was a new experience for me — so extreme that it actually felt strange, almost too good to be true.

This is what salvation and joining the church should be about. Picture a young plant in warm sunlight, rich soil, and just the right amount of water each day. It quickly grows strong and blossoms into fruitfulness. Now imagine a new believer as that young plant. Only love can mature the heart to live openly and experience growth.

Father has a place like that in His heart for you. This is what being a Christian, one of His sons or daughters, means. You are “at home” with Him.