Victorious Dawn watch (02/02/2022@4:00AM)

• Text: Luke 15:11-24
• Exhorter: Sister Grace Tamani
• Title: Lost and found

Repentance is necessary for us to return to God. Without repentance, we act as if we have a right to something. Repentance recognizes and confesses our moral bankruptcy and changes direction. “When sinners turn from their sin and come home to God, God is glad.”

What’s different about the parable of the lost son is that the misery of his lostness is spelled out, the nature of his repentance is spelled out, and the wasteful eagerness of the father is spelled out more fully than in the other two parables.

When we break our attachment with God, we will end up attached to another, and that attachment will be slavery, not sonship.

Coming to yourself” as well as coming to God. It is discovering where you came from and who you are and why you exist. Running from God is always running from ourselves. Repentance is waking up to this truth.

What are the reasons why we get lost? We easily get into temptation. Everybody is tempted. As long as you’re in the body, the temptation can reach you. The impulse to sin has a landing place in your life. James 1:4 says that God wants more than just "patience." It is a means to the higher purpose of our full spiritual maturity. It is our free will or decision to do and not to be tempted. Yes, it’s true that it is so hard to wake up early in the morning to attend dawn watch activity because that is what our flesh says not to wake up because it feels so good to sleep. It is your choice whether to wake up, attend, or not. Jesus doesn’t say, “Watch and pray, so you won’t be tempted.” There’s no way you can get to a place in the Christian life where you’re no longer tempted but, “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). Literally, it says, “so that you will not enter into temptation.”

Furthermore, we get lost because we are opening the doors to the wrong actions. We get lost because we allow negative things in our life which leads us to wrong decisions. We have different choices we can choose along the way. We can choose to do good things and follow what God what us to do. In that way, we will never get lost, because there will have an assurance that God will redirect our paths the way He planned.

And, we get lost because we give up on the most important things. (Genesis 25:31-34; Luke 10:41-42). One of the hardest challenges of the Christian walk is waiting for God to answer our prayers when we urgently need him to intervene in a circumstance that is breaking our heart, testing our faith, and robbing us of peace and joy. As the example through the prodigal son, we can state that it is not good for a man to be separated from His creature who gives him everything. So, we must prioritize God in everything. Do not give up. Do not be lost just because of the things that are less matter than God.

Now notice something very carefully here. At this point, many people make a terrible mistake in the way they try to come home to God. The lost son is willing to come home as a servant rather than a son. Does that mean he wants to relate to God as a hired hand who earns things from God and thus turns a generous father into a wage-paying employer? I don’t think so. Is that what God wants?

What the son is saying is: Look at how rich and generous my father is. Even the servants eat well. You might say: even the crumbs that fall from the father’s table would satisfy me more than what the world has to offer. The focus here is not on the service that he can supply to the father, which the father then would be obliged to compensate. The focus is on the incredible bounty and generosity that he has so foolishly traded for the fleeting pleasures of sin. Repentance is believing that God is so great and so good that the smallest enjoyments of his house are better than ten thousand worlds without him. With that changed heart, the boy heads home.

God our Father is ready to show abundant mercy. The son deserves nothing, but the father loads upon Him the accessories of sonship. It's not due to merit but to mercy. Part of the charm of this story is the utter graciousness of the father contrasted with the stinginess and jealousy of the older son.

We once, once lost but now we are found. So, let us keep our God in our hearts and be guided by His holy spirit in everything we do.

God bless His words, His chosen messenger through the life of Sister Grace Tamani. God bless the readers, listeners, and doers of His words.