Chapter 11 - Coming Home (The Wholehearted Journey)

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Have you ever caught a whiff of a familiar scent, or heard a melody that took you down  memory lane? Often, we find ourselves reminiscing about our childhood, the old house, the holidays, the favorite song; each carrying a unique blend of joy and sorrow. But what if these memories can lead us to healing and wholeness? This episode will take you on a spiritual journey, as we delve into the transformative power of childhood memories, and reveal how Jesus, in his profound love, yearns to free us from the shackles of past wounds and guide us towards a better life.

This episode is also about embracing our prodigal parts with kindness and compassion, a call from Jesus to unite our hearts and lead us on a path to the divine union with God. It's a journey, scary and wonderful, a path from one lifestyle to another that is only attainable if we have the courage to answer the knock on the door of our hearts. So, join us as we unwrap the mysteries of life, the essence of our existence, and the path to becoming our authentic selves; all under the guidance of Jesus. Get ready to welcome healing, salvation, and wholeness into your life.

Transcript

Joel Johnson: 0:00

Chapter 11, coming Home. As an adult, I went back to visit that childhood home, the old yellow house I grew up in on Redwood Avenue. When I arrived, I was inundated with memories of my childhood recollections I hadn't thought of in years the brick chimney I used to climb to secretly get on top of the roof. The concrete path I used to ride my skateboard on the flower bed under the large front windows. Standing on the property was a powerfully nostalgic experience, though I had returned as an adult. Being there made me feel very young. Perhaps you've had this same experience when you've revisited a location from your childhood your house, a neighborhood park or your elementary school. Sometimes I experience that young feeling when I listen to certain songs or watch particular movies. Maybe you have as well. Almost everyone has experienced these moments of youthful return. Think Christmas. Most of our holiday traditions center around these childhood recollections the seasonal smells of pine, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, pulling out the old decorations, rediscovering the ornaments collected over the decades, tasting the turkey stuffing and desserts made from recipes handed down for generations. These traditions serve to stir up those childhood memories. They bring us back home, so to speak, restore a little bit of that childlike wonder we seem to lose as we journey into adulthood. While many youthful returns arise as moments of warm nostalgia, sometimes they return as painful recollections. Sounds, smells, the way someone touches you, gets upset at you or betrays you in your adult years can make you feel the way you did at the age you were when you first experienced it. There are young places in all of us and some of them are severely wounded and broken. We all need a good, older brother to walk us through our healing and guide us back home to God and ourselves. Jesus is that brother. Let's revisit those powerful words he proclaimed as his life mission. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61, verse 1.

Joel Johnson: 2:29

Jesus' choice to use Isaiah's words on the inauguration of his ministry has staggering implications. The word brokenhearted is no mere metaphor for sadness or sorrow. It's the Hebrew word Shabar. Isaiah uses this word throughout his writing to describe real breaking. He utilizes it to describe the breaking of tree limbs, broken bones and the shattering of ceramic vessels. Isaiah and Jesus by way of quoting him, are speaking of a literal breaking of the heart, not of our physical heart, but the breaking of our inner heart, the one residing in the center of our soul. Our hearts can shatter like a ceramic vase, unless the pieces are bound back together. Part of our inner being can get stuck at the age when the breaking occurred. Many psychologists refer to this as arrested development. Most of us have these younger places in us that need Jesus' restorative healing. These places can often be identified in those moments of painful recollection. Jesus was sent to set free these arrested places in our heart, to get us unstuck so we can move forward and into the better life God has planned for us.

Joel Johnson: 3:46

Jesus came to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. He came to free the brokenhearted held captive by the prison of their dark past. This is a powerful salvation. Indeed, salvation is much more than fire insurance from hell's flames, which is an incredible gift in and of itself, but it's even better than that. Salvation also includes wholeness of life and heart. Colossians, chapter 1, verse 22, says but now, by Jesus giving himself completely at the cross, actually dying for you, christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in His presence. Hebrews, chapter 9, verse 14, says the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives inside and out. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23, says Make God Himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together spirit, soul and body being made whole and heart is included in the work of salvation.

Joel Johnson: 4:58

What else would we expect from the one who came to bind up the brokenhearted? Our eldest sibling desires to bring us back home to our Father and to our authentic selves. He wants to bind up those young, painful places in our heart, get us unstuck, reintegrated within and with Him. This internal and eternal reunion is the very purpose of our lives. What is the purpose of life? Jesus shows us our purpose and we find it in the prayer he prays in John, chapter 17, just within 24 hours of his crucifixion. He prays this that all of them may be one. They're just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us. That they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me so that they may be brought to complete unity, union with God, oneness with God is the purpose of life. Now, going after great goals and accomplishments in life, those are good pursuits, but they're secondary at best. God's desire for each of us is to be brought to complete union. You know God's heart and soul. There are no cracks or fissures in his heart. It's completely whole and united, one Jesus' heart and soul. It's perfect, it's whole. And here's the great news that we can be made one with Christ and because Christ is one in our Father, we can be reconnected, whole with him and within. Union with God is the purpose of life, and we do this through the work of Christ and we enter into this union with our Father through our brother, jesus Christ.

Joel Johnson: 7:36

Jesus in Revelation is talking to a church and he says Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone would hear my voice, let them open up and I will dine with him. This is amazing, because Jesus isn't speaking to unbelievers, he's speaking to believers and he's saying I'm knocking at the door. If you recognize my voice, I'll come in. We'll have a dinner together, we'll dine together, we will talk things through. And this is so interesting, especially when we think about this in light of the parable of the prodigal son.

Joel Johnson: 8:23

Remember, in our parable we have the younger son who was prodigal and left for a distant land, and we have the older son, the older brother, who is there and he is holding down the fort. You know, he's being responsible, he's working in his father's fields. He's definitely more mature, he's the elder one. But when the elder one comes back from working in the field, when he finds out that his prodigal younger brother is being celebrated, he refuses to enter that door. I mean, even the father comes out and pleads with the older brother, his older son, and he says come on, we've got to celebrate the younger parts that are coming home. And here lies the issue with our wholeness and oneness. Remember, jesus said his mission statement in Isaiah 61.1 was I've come to heal the broken hearted, and so it's his desire to make that which is un-whole and broken to being whole.

Joel Johnson: 9:34

But here's a major issue with the part of us that is mature, the present us. You know, the mature present us who we are. Right at this moment. There's a distancing between us and the present and sometimes those places in the past, those younger, more prodigal places that have looked for the best the world has to offer, but we came up short. It wasn't enough for us. We usually come home back to God feeling distant, not worthy of being a beloved child of God, but maybe we'll come back as a servant, as the younger son created a speech to tell his father, and the father ignored it. And so there's this distancing between the younger prodigal places that are within us and the present mature us, and so we find ourselves not wanting to enter the door and meet with some of those past memories, some of those past wounds and hurt of our younger prodigal places in our life. And so part of the issue is that our older areas of our heart, you know, those ones potentially laboring in the house of God, do not believe they need rescuing or reunion. They are living in their father's house, working, potentially desiring to please him, yet are blind to the father's heart for union, integration and oneness inside the home of our heart. In returning home, they don't see anything wrong with ignoring, disassociating or pushing the broken places to life's peripheries. Their faithful productivity unknowingly becomes justification to differentiate themselves, potentially elevate themselves and continue the internal segregation these older, mature parts are present. Us concludes that they don't need the younger areas and are likely better off without them, the more mature areas banish them to the background of life. This internal distancing insulates them from having to face the younger parts that they feel have brought them so much shame.

Joel Johnson: 12:14

For Jesus to be successful in reuniting our mature older brother working in the field and our younger areas, those younger parts of us, jesus is going to have to use courage. He will have to have fierce intentionality and masterful maneuvering. He must woo the younger parts with tender kindness, assuring them that they are the much beloved child of a loving heavenly parent, and simultaneously buffet the older parts with bouts of troubling truth. He must employ a mature love to see how to encourage the less mature areas in a way that doesn't embolden the arrogance latent in the more mature areas. He must withdraw his words and skillful opposition to the older places ruling like Herod and Herodius, yet reassure the younger places that his silence does not mean he's rejected or forsaken them In order to lose them to live with an unveiled face. He must strike hard enough to break the masks impeding the vision of the more responsible parts, while not crushing the prodigal heart he so desires to win.

Joel Johnson: 13:39

If a heart is ever to be reunited, our brave sibling Jesus must convince both brothers, the younger and the older, to come back together again. As the story of the lost son depicts, this is no easy feat. You know, the older parts of us resist reuniting with these broken and prodigal younger places. They don't want to see them. There is a lot of shame, even hatred, attached to them and the memories associated with those younger places are hurtful and rejected, especially to our mature, present self. Like the older brother and the parable, our older, mature places unconsciously think those less disciplined places deserve to be restrained, chastised and ignored.

Joel Johnson: 14:37

Jesus must teach mature areas to embrace the prodigal parts with compassion, kindness and love, so he can reunite them, making the heart whole. You remember, the purpose of life is unity, wholeness, oneness within and with him. Jesus said behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with me Again. That's Revelation 3.20.

Joel Johnson: 15:13

The fastest way to a whole heart is to open any door Jesus knocks upon when you hear his voice, and invite him in and give him access to any area he desires, allow him to dine with us, reintegrate those broken places and restore us and loving reunion, the path from one way of living to a better one is always scary, wonderful and wild.

Joel Johnson: 15:41

If you're going to leave your comfortable life, the way ahead will be dark, perilous and narrow. But if you're going to soar, you'll have to leap off the branch into the void. And if you're going to experience the vast beauty and wonder of the life that lies before you, you'll have to leave the familiar sidewalk of yourself, as I did, and roar out with Jesus into the unknown wilds of your heart and soul. So here's your moment to walk deeper into the wholehearted life God has for you, the one Jesus described as better than you dreamed. If you haven't already, please go and download the free portions of the wholehearted journey book. You'll be so glad you did. Also, there's a ton of other free resources on JoelJohnsonorg. Please avail yourself to them and enter further into the life Jesus described as abundant, satisfying, full and free.