You Just Have to Come Home
There’s a story of a man who came up to bat in a baseball game and hit the ball clean over the fence. He knew it. Everybody in the stands knew it. He takes off on his trip around the bases, and he does everything right. He stays in the baseline the whole way around. First, second, third, all the way home. He tags home plate, confident, sure he’s just hit a home run.
And the umpire calls him out.
He can’t believe it. “How can I be out? I hit it over the fence. I did all the work. I stayed right in the baseline the entire time.” The umpire tells him why. He never touched first base.
He did everything else right. He ran the whole distance. He never left the line, but he skipped the one base that made the rest of it count. A lot of us are running that same race without realizing it.
Tagging First Base
You can do all the work. You can feel like you hit a home run, but if you never tag first base, you’re going to be called out. Tagging first base means saying yes to Jesus.
It means understanding that His body was broken for you. That His blood was shed for you. That right now, He’s saying come home, come home, come home. Because you couldn’t get to Him on your own, He came looking for you. He’s the one who brought you here, so you could hear this: you don’t have to work your way to heaven. You don’t have to be good enough to get there.
You just have to recognize you can’t be good enough. That you don’t have it all together. That you need a Savior.
A Prayer for Anyone Ready to Come Home
If that’s you in this moment, I want to encourage you to pray something like this:
“Jesus, thank You so much for coming to look for me. Thank You for loving me right where I am. I admit I need You. Forgive me for my sins, for trying to do this on my own. Today I want to receive the gift of eternal life You made possible for me. Would You be my Lord and my Savior?”
If you prayed something like that, hear this. Jesus keeps His promises. He says that if anyone comes to Him, He will not turn them away. It doesn’t matter what your past looks like. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through or what you’re currently walking through. If you come to Him, He takes you as you are and says, welcome home. He puts a new heart in you. A new spirit in you. A brand new direction.
Don’t Be Like the Older Brother
For those of us who already know Jesus, it’s easy to spend our time running around doing all the right things and still miss the Father’s heart. That’s the older brother’s story in the prodigal son parable. He stayed home, did the work, kept the rules, and still missed what his father was celebrating, a son who had wandered off finally coming home.
If you don’t carry the Father’s heart for people who’ve wandered, pray that you would. The way you get that heart is by spending more time with the Father. Draw close enough to Him that you see His tears. Close enough that you understand how He feels about the ones who’ve walked away. Because His body was broken for them too. His blood was shed for them too.
We give thanks for His faithfulness to us, even when we’ve been unfaithful to Him. We give thanks that He always welcomes us back, no matter how far we’ve wandered or how long we’ve been gone. God help us to love others the same way.
Two Steps to Take This Week
If you’ve never said yes to Jesus, don’t leave that undone. Pray the prayer above today, out loud if you can, and tell someone you trust that you did it. That step matters more than any amount of running the bases on your own.
If you already know Him, think of one specific person who’s wandered off, someone from your family, your old friend group, your neighborhood, and spend this week praying that God would give you His heart for them before you try to fix or reach them yourself.
If you’re searching for a church near me in Fayetteville where a message like this one is preached in plain language every week, we’d love to have you. We gather every Sunday at 9:45 AM at 479 Inman Road, Fayetteville, GA. Come as you are, and let us welcome you home.