The Longing for Home, Part 2

No matter what kind of home we grew up in, we have a longing for some idea of home.

Tim Keller writes this about home. Home is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us. Where we can be or perhaps find our true selves. Yet, it seems no real place or actual family ever satisfies these yearnings, though many situations arouse them. And so we live with this ache, this longing, a spiritual homesickness.

What do you do about the ache within you? And what if the longing isn't a problem to fix, but a sign pointing you home? In Genesis 2, we come across four aches. Four signposts returning us to our original home, the home we are truly made for. The first thing I want you to notice is the heart aches for permanence. The heart aches for permanence. We live in a transient, ever changing world, fast paced, nonstop. We move more than any other time in human history. In fact, millennials and Gen Z move than any previous generation. The average millennial moves every two years. Psychologists say of this time and age that there is a rootlessness, a constant sense of disconnection leading to anxiety and depression.

We swap cities, careers, communities, hoping the next one will finally be it. We do this relationally. Love immediately wants it to be permanent, doesn't it? Like when you, you start to fall in love, you want to love forever. In fact, we do this with friendships. It's a BFF, it's best friends. Forever.

We were made to be with God and with each other. You are hardwired. Our hearts desperately long for the with-ness.

You know, friends are rare these days, not because they've diminished importance, but because we've increased in speed. We fill our lives with noise, screen and schedules, but what we crave is real embodied presence and the entire arc of the Bible is all about restoring the presence we lost in Eden, like we were created to walk with God in the cool of the day. The with-ness. And so the entire arc of the Bible moves us that direction of intimacy and presence lost and God working His way to be the "with us God". I mean, we sing the songs about Emmanuel at Christmas time. Guess what? That's true. Not just then. It's true all year long, Like there would be one who comes, that is God with us. That has been God's heart and longing from the beginning. And Jesus steps into history fully God, fully man - with us.

And what was Jesus' final promise to His disciples before He ascended, "and behold, I am with you, even to the end of the age." Think about this, your greatest need is to be fully known and fully loved. God fully knows everything about you. Nothing is hidden from Him. Every secret thought. Every emotion, everything that you think, if I showed to someone else, they would reject me, He knows all of it, and he said, I'm coming for you. And not I'm coming to get you. That's how we hear it. I'm coming for you. Woo. I'm coming for you. That's not what He did.

Love compelled him. Love compelled him. Love compelled him. Love compelled him. Love compelled him. Love compelled him towards you. Love compelled him towards you. He looked at all of you and His heartbreak that you're not with Him, and that you're living in the brokenness of that, and he love compelled him towards you. You are fully known and fully loved, and that's the reason Jesus came.

Our hearts ache for permanence 'cause we were created for a home that last. Our hearts ache for presence because we are created to be with God and each other. And believe it or not, our hearts ache for pleasure. there's these aches and longings inside of us, and somewhere along the way we got the idea that pleasure is bad, that following Jesus means white knuckling our way through life, denying our every desire. By the way, Eden wasn't just functional, it was pleasurable. It was meant to be enjoyed.

Genesis 2:9 and the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye good for food in the middle of the garden were a Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. By the way, you know what Eden means? Delight. The Garden of Delight.

Now, it was pleasure, without perversion. It was love without distortion. It is almost impossible for us to fathom the beauty and the wonder of that reality. It was love without strings attached, without self-interest. It was pleasure without manipulation or somehow using somebody for your own good. It was the Garden of Delight, why, because we're made for joy. Psalm 16:11 says, "You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." The ache for pleasure is actually an ache for God.

C.S. Lewis would say it this way. It seems that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are too far easily pleased. In the presence of God is fullness of joy. See, the great lie that we believe in is somehow God is holding out on me. No good thing, Scripture says, do I withhold from those I love.

The heart aches for permanence, for presence, for pleasure. The final ache of home is the heartaches for peace. In Hebrew it's the word shalom. Shalom is more than just the absence of strife and chaos or conflict. It's the presence of wholeness that all is well, everything as it should be. Genesis 2:15 says, "The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden. Now, if you're carefully following along in the notes, you'd notice in 2:8 it's almost like a restatement. But in verse, 15, that word 'put' is a different word than earlier. That word means a place of rest and safety, dedication in God's presence.

In a world of chaos, confusion, uncertainty, brokenness and conflict. We often feel fragmented, overworked, stress, striving always on the inbox never stops, the pressure never lifts, the mind never slows. The heart aches for peace, like the sense of wellbeing that all is as it should be. Why? Because we're made for wholeness. we want that shalom. That peace, that safety of home, where all is as it should be, no worry.

And in the midst of our stress and our chaos, our uncertainty, Jesus offers a better way. And He says, come to me. Come to me. Are you weary? Are you burdened? Come to me. Are you lonely? Come to me. Is your heart aching? Come to me. Are you grieving? Come to me. Are you confused? Come to me. Are you doubting? Come to me. Are you struggling right now and wandering through life? Come to me and I'll give you rest. I'll give you Shalom.

All of us have this God-sized hole within us. This ache that nothing else can satisfy. And Jesus invites us and says, I am the wholeness that your heart needs. Come to me. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I'm gentle, humble of heart. You'll find rest for your soul. We spend our days looking for something. Or someone to fill the ache of our soul, to bring a wholeness to our life, to mend the brokenness that we cover up from everyone else. And so what I do with the ache within me.

C.S. Lewis, once again wrote these words, “If I find in myself desires, which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is I was made for another world.”

We are all spiritually homesick friends. We all have an ache, a God-sized hole that only He can feel and the home my heart aches for is not just a place but a person. And Jesus, after He said that, He goes to prepare a place for us, told his disciples, I Am the way, I'm the way back home. I Am the truth. I am the, the truest thing. The, the, the part of your soul that you've been longing for. I Am life itself. No one comes to The Father except through Me. You were made for Eden. You were made for God, and Jesus. Jesus is the way back home and he is home itself.

As we close, I just wanna share a story I've shared a few times before, most of you've heard it. Years ago, it was on a Sunday morning I was getting up early to prepare I was gonna head to a coffee shop. I come out of my door and I see, uh, my neighbor's truck, there's a guy standing next to it leaning up against it. At first I thought it was my neighbor Jerry, he's a construction guy. And so I thought like, okay, he's up early. But then I noticed it's not him. Now I'm afraid somebody's breaking into Jerry's truck. And so I hop in my car to pull right up alongside him because if he really is breaking into the car, I don't want to be like, well I want a fast getaway. Let's just say that I wanna call the cops and just woo go.

I pull up to him and the guy's leaning against it and he's got his phone and I just go, ‘Hey man, you okay?’ He kind of ignores me, he's fiddlin' with his phone. And I ask again like, 'Hey man, you okay?'. Then I realized maybe I'm asking the wrong question. And so I said, 'Hey man, do you know where you're at?' And I guess he had called his girlfriend and he's like crying. He's like, “I can't believe you guys left me. I've been wandering all night long and there's this nice man talking to me.” Apparently he was at some party, you know, was drunk, got walked outside, got lost, wandered the wild streets of Will Glen, all night long. And he is freaked out by himself and he's talking to his girlfriend.

And then he says, this line, no lie, it is pretty funny. He says, ‘There's this nice man talking to me. I think he sent from God.’ I'm like, well, I am a pastor, you know. And so I looked at him and said, ‘do you need a ride home?’ He's like, ‘Yeah’. I said, ‘Come on, get in the car.’ And as we got in the car and we're driving and we started to have a conversation. He began to just say this line over and over again. I can't believe you found me. You saved me, and you're bringing me home like you found me. I was lost. I was scared, and you found me, and you didn't just find me, you saved me. And now you are bringing me home.

And the truth is the ache of our soul. There's so many of us that we just feel like we've been wandering in life and we're lost and we're just going through the motions and we just are desperate for somebody to find us. And Jesus says, I've come to find you. I've come. I've come. I've come. I came to seek and save that, which is lost. And then there's just this reality for our hearts where we gotta realize that at some point we don't need help and we don't need advice. We need to be saved.

We settle for advice, friends. We settle for self-help. Minor tweaks to try to modify our lives to get better. And at some point we gotta say, I, I can't. But He can. And then the invitation he had to get in the car and you're bringing me home. What if the ache, the longing of your heart, isn't a design flaw? What if it's pointing you home? What if it's leading you to the one you are made for? The one who can fill the ache, the one who came for you.

As we close, I just would love for you to pray with me. And the truth is, there's so many in this room who are far from God and feel like, I don't feel like I can come back to him. And today His words are come to Me. And then it's better than that, I came for you. And there's those that you're just like that young man sitting by the car and you've just been wandering. There's been an ache and a hole you can't quite fill, and you've never said yes to Jesus. You've never experienced His grace, His mercy, His life, His hope, His peace, His wholeness, and this is the moment. This is the moment where you say yes and you experience new life erupting inside of you.

If that's where you're at, would you pray with me this simple prayer. Ah, Jesus, I ache. I have a longing and I feel like I've been wandering and I'm hurting, and I need you. I believe you came for me. You died for me. You rose again from the grave for me to bring me home, to bring life. And so today, Jesus, would you come and make your home in my heart, would you come and make me new?