Originally Posted by Caty 
I want to come to Jesus, but I fear I've committed the unforgivable sin? Can anyone help me with this?
There is absolutely nothing you can do to separate yourself from the Love of God.
He Loves You so much more than I could even begin to describe. I'd like to share with you something I believe God showed me concerning the Prodigal Son. I hope it helps you;
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When God put this on my heart, I thought a good place to start would be to define "prodigal". I really didn't know what the word meant, so I looked it up, and this is what I found;
characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure : lavish recklessly spendthrift
This in itself was interesting to me. The sermon at church was titled "The Prodigal Father". We all think of the son's lifestyle as being "prodigal", but equally, if not moreso "prodigal" was the father's Love, grace and mercy toward his son.
So I began to examine the parable of the prodigal son more closely.
The first thing that happens is the son asks his father for his inheritance. The father does this. I hope you'll permit me some speculation here, but I suspect that the father knew the younger son's intentions. But he gave the inheritance to his son anyway. "Prodigal" of him, you might say.
The next thing that happens is the son goes and wastes his inheritance on "riotous living". The Amplified Bible describes his lifestyle as reckless and loose [from restraint]. Later, his brother talks about how he wasted his inheritance with "immoral women". In other words, this was some bad lifestyle. Real bad.
So the son squanders his entire inheritance on this "riotous living", and then a famine hits. So he runs to the world. The Amplified Bible says that he forced himself upon one of the citizens who hired him feed his pigs. He finds himself dying of hunger, and that's when "he came to himself". The NLT says, "he came to his senses". He realizes this is stupid. His father's servants eat better than this.
So he comes up with a plan. He'll return home and repent to his father, and then at least he can be one of his hired servants, even though (by his estimation) he is no longer worthy to be called his son.
This is where the revelation hit me, and what I've felt strong in my heart...
The father in the parable did not know this. This was something that the son said within himself before he returned home. The father in the parable is not God, and is not all knowing. He's just a father.
That's where the impact of this hit me. The next part of the parable says that when his father saw him, still a long way off... That tells me that the father was
watching and
waiting for his son's return. He was
anticipating the best for his son. He was not sitting around talking about all the horrible things his son was doing. He thought the best of his son, and was anxiously awaiting his return.
While he was still a long way off, he RAN to his son and EMBRACED him, BEFORE he knew that his son was repentant for his actions. In other words,
his father was not concerned with his repentance. His father was concerned with him. The Love that the father displayed to his son was
not conditional upon the act of his son's repentance. He
Loved his son, because he was his son, and for no other reason. Not because he acted the right way or said the right things. Not because he repented. Not because he had learned his lesson. But simply because he was his son.
It was then remarkably easy for the son to be repentant, I believe, because of his father's "prodigal" display of Love toward him.
The son goes on to say, I'm not worthy to be called your son. But what the father does next is remarkable....
I'd like to stop for a minute and give you the world's view, and to a large degree, the church's view, of what should happen next. People will tell you there is a process. You need to prove your accountability. You need to repent of your sins and be exposed so the world can see your flaws. You need to be publicly humbled and shamed. You need to acknowledge, in detail, every wrong you committed and display a sufficient remorse. You need to make sure you've "learned your lesson", usually meaning you have to suffer the consequences of your actions sufficiently. You need to serve your punishment before any true restoration can take place.
But the prodigal father had a very different view.
There were most definitely consequences to the son's actions, but note that those consequences stopped the instant his father embraced him.
The very first the thing the father does is call on his servants to bring the very best robe to his son. I believe this is not just a robe, but symbolic of the father
covering his son. He did not put his son's shame on display for the world to see. He did not require his son to list everything he had done wrong and promise never to do it again. No, what he did is what most of us would consider reckless and foolish. He COVERED his son. He HID his shame. He did not strip him and publicly humiliate him. He CLOTHED him. He gave him a ring. He acknowledged, THIS IS MY SON. He gave him sandals for his feet. He killed the fatted calf and threw a party in his honor!
Guess who was NOT happy? His brother. I suspect his brother felt that the father was maybe a bit too "prodigal" with his grace and mercy. He compared himself to his brother, and talked about how much better he had behaved than his brother, and yet he never got to have a party. Essentially, he is saying, I was/am better than my brother, because I never did any of those horrible things that he did.
The lesson here is, don't expect your brothers and sisters to be happy about your restoration. In fact, expect them to throw your sins back in your face and show how much better they are than you, and how much more they deserve to have the party for themselves. The brother does just that when he brings up the "immoral women", something the father was not concerned about. The father was concerned with only one thing; his son was lost, and now he is found!
We sing a song at church called "This Is Our God". That's what this parable is. It shows us the Father.
THIS is our God! But more than that, it shows us what we should strive for. As He is, so are we in this world. If He is "prodigal" with His Love, grace and mercy, we should be too. There is a line in that song that says He is "recklessly wildly Loving a dangerous world". There is another line that mentions His "scandalous mercy". These are things that I feel so strongly in my heart are keys to unlocking the Kingdom of God in our world.
The world doesn't need more of our judgment and holier-than-thou attitudes.
The world needs lavish, reckless, wild, scandalous, prodigal Love.
Restoration of someone who has fallen doesn't need to be a "process". God's prodigal Love for you can restore you in an instant.
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My point in all of this to you? God is not concerned with what you deem to be the "unforgivable sin". Jesus took care of your sin. God is just waiting for you to come to Him so that He can embrace you and rejoice over the fact that you have come home.
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