My Child Has Come Home

Introduction — When Words Can’t Touch the Wound

There are some wounds in life that do not bleed outwardly, yet they bleed continuously inside a parent’s heart. These wounds have no bandage, no cast, no sling. They don’t show up in X-rays or MRIs. And yet they ache every single day. They are the wounds of distance — not geographical distance, but emotional, spiritual, and relational distance.

There is a pain that comes when someone you love is far away… even while their mail still comes to your house. There is a pain that comes when the person is alive, but the relationship feels buried under layers of decisions, trauma, addiction, brokenness, or confusion. There is a pain that comes when a parent realizes that the child they remember — the child they held, shaped, guided, taught, prayed over — is still alive somewhere inside, but unreachable through the fog of their present struggle.

These wounds have names only heaven hears. Sometimes they make their way into your prayers as groans. Sometimes they come out as a father’s silence, or a mother’s tears behind a closed bedroom door. Sometimes they come as fear, sometimes as exhaustion, sometimes as hope flickering like a candle in a drafty room.

And yet Jesus meets that pain.

He doesn’t avoid it.

He doesn’t dismiss it.

He doesn’t call it weakness.

He tells a story — the greatest story ever told about the heart of God — not to entertain us, but to interpret our deepest ache.

It is the story of a father.

It is the story of a son.

It is the story of a home.

It is the story of a heartbreak.

It is the story of a miracle.

And it is the story of God.

Today’s message is titled “My Child Has Come Home.”

Not because life is neat.

Not because every story ends beautifully.

Not because every prodigal returns on schedule.

But because Jesus Himself wants you to know:

If your child ever turns — even slightly, even briefly, even uncertainly —

the Father runs.

Runs fast.

Runs freely.

Runs joyfully.

Runs with tears on His face.

Runs with love in His stride.

And that’s not just the story of one boy in the Bible.

It is the story of your child.

It is the story of God’s heart toward your family.

It is the story that still unfolds in rooms, phone calls, living rooms, and hospital beds today.

Let’s walk into Luke 15 with that in mind.

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1. The Pain of Distance — A Father’s Breaking Heart

Jesus begins the parable so simply, so quietly, that we often miss the emotional violence in the son’s first request:

“Father, give me the portion of goods that belongs to me.”

In that culture, the only time an inheritance was distributed was after the father died.

So the boy wasn’t saying:

“Dad, can I borrow money?”

He was saying,

“Dad… I want the benefits of your existence without the burden of your presence. I want your things… not you. I want your resources… but not your relationship.”

Few sentences pierce deeper into a parent’s heart.

The boy didn’t leave because he was evil.

He left because he was restless.

Because he believed that fulfillment was “out there” somewhere.

Because home felt too small, too slow, too ordinary.

Because he mistook structure for suffocation and boundaries for bondage.

We’ve seen this in our day.

Sometimes you can feel a child slipping away before they ever take a physical step.

Their answers grow shorter.

Their laughter dries up.

Their room becomes a cave.

Their eyes avoid yours.

They become distant, irritable, unreachable.

All while still under your roof.

Distance often begins long before departure.

And Jesus wants us to see something important:

The father does not force him to stay.

Not because he doesn’t care,

but because forced proximity is not love,

and coerced relationship is not relationship.

Freedom is risky.

But love without freedom is not love at all.

So the father lets his son go.

Not because he approves the choice.

But because he chooses love over control.

God knows this pain Himself.

Scripture says, “All day long I have stretched out My hands” — not arms folded in anger, but hands open in longing.

The father in the parable never moves from the place of hope.

He stays near the road.

Not obsessively, not anxiously, but faithfully.

Hope becomes his daily posture.

Love becomes his endurance.

Memory becomes his motivation.

This is how God watches you.

This is how God watches your child.

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2. The Far Country — The Illusion and the Crash

The son travels far — not just geographically, but emotionally and spiritually.

He enters what Jesus calls “a far country,” which is what life looks like when you try to live without the Father’s voice.