Vicki shares her thought for the week; who are you listening to?

In Luke 15, Jesus tells his parable of the lost son, where a son has decided he doesn’t want to live under his father’s headship anymore and he wants to go his own way. So he takes his share of the inheritance, and the long and short of it is he makes a complete mash-up of his life. He gets it wrong and he realizes he just wants to be back under his father’s household again, and the father’s ready and waiting to take him back.

And we don’t really hear about what happened after that. What was the relationship dynamic between the father and the son? Perhaps the son was terrified that his dad would wake up one day and go, “No, it turns out I am really angry and you need to just go. I’ve changed my mind, I’m not having you back.” Was he there every morning with the coffee or, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Dad? Can I do this, can I do that?” – motivated by fear that he’d be rejected?

Or perhaps he was just out of a grateful heart, wanting to please his father, wanting to do things that he knew would make him happy. And perhaps he found freedom and joy in following his dad’s advice, because he realized he tried life without it and now he found a joy in following the guidance of his father.

And actually Romans 6 explores this idea further. It explores this idea of you’ve tried living under sin, you’ve tried going your own way – and did that bring you joy? Did it bring you this brilliant life? Not really. Actually, Romans 6 talks about when we’ve done that and we recognize that we need God as our guide, and when we recognize that God has given us a savior to bring us back to him, what a joy and a delight we find in living under his headship and following his guidance.

The Message version puts it like this:

“But now that you have found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise – a whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more life on the way.”

Romans 6:22-23

So my challenge this week, for myself and for you, is: who are you listening to? Are you letting that old voice of sin creep in and telling you that you can go your own way? Or are you taking delight in following the guidance that your loving and heavenly Father is giving to you? Let’s listen with delight this week.

Every week one of our members shares a short thought aiming to inspire you for the week. You can watch previous Thought For The Week videos by clicking here.