We know we won’t be perfect in this lifetime… For those who struggle with perfectionism in their relationship with God, Faith Chang has words of rest and relief born of her own wrestling with the desire to be holy. Today, she addresses, in particular, the sense that because of our imperfections, God at best just tolerates us. May you feel God’s welcome as you join us at the farm table today...

Guest Post by Faith Chang

As I write, an art print—housed in a double-glass, golden frame—rests on my desk.

At the center of the piece is a small illustration, drawn in black ink. A path winds through farmland toward a 1st-century Palestinian home in the distance. From this home on a hill, a set of stairs runs down to meet the path. At the bottom of the stairs, a shadowed figure is poised mid-stride.

The drawing is outlined in black, but there are touches of color too. Metallic blue, green, and golden paints highlight parts of the farm and spill into the piece’s wide, empty borders. A patch of silvery blue alludes to sky.

It is the painted path that draws the eye and gives the piece its name: Prodigal Streams.

At the edge of the field, the gold turns into a river of gleaming blue. This path-turned-river pours out from the scene and flows toward the viewer.

Toward me, writing at my desk—the prodigal welcomed home.

GOOD WITH GOD?

If, like me, you struggle with perfectionism in your relationship with God, you may find yourself carrying the sense that things with God aren’t good.

As “Christian perfectionists,” we may frequently fight the thought, “Something is wrong with me,” at a gut level, it also feels like something is not quite right between us and God. I say “at a gut level” because we can believe God loves us, and still feel in the day-to-day that He is unhappy with us.

Sometimes, as God sanctifies us, we begin to imagine that while he has much He wants to do in or even through us, he must not want very much to do with us—especially as we keep failing and falling.

“Sometimes, as God sanctifies us, we begin to imagine that while he has much he wants to do in or even through us, he must not want very much to do with us—especially as we keep failing and falling.“

Beneath our service to God and our efforts to obey him, we perceive some sort of relational tension. But through the stories of Scripture (and you might say the story of Scripture), God persistently shows us something different.

WELCOMED AND WANTED

We all carry stories that shape our conception of God. For better and for worse, our life experiences shape our understanding of words like “love,” “Father,” and “forgiveness.” The power of Scripture’s narratives is that through them, God gives us new stories to form our imaginations. The parable of the prodigal son is one such story (Luke 15:11-32).

Here’s a refresher on Jesus’ parable. A son asks his dad for his share of his inheritance, leaves home, and spends all he has on reckless living. Then famine hits. Destitute, he decides he’d rather be a servant in his dad’s home than starve alone, so he resolves to return, rehearsing an apology on the way back: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants” (v 18-19).

The prodigal was right to risk his return, though even he couldn’t have imagined the welcome awaiting him. 

“The prodigal’s lostness draws out the depth of his father’s affection all the more in his compassion and yearning.“

It’s this welcome that has been depicted so widely in art, most famously in Rembrandt’s masterpiece. The Return of the Prodigal Son and in countless other pieces like the one on my desk. It is the embrace of the father, who sees his son while he is a long way off and, abandoning all dignity, runs to him and takes him into his arms mid-apology. The prodigal is received not as a servant but as a beloved child.

The scene captures our collective imaginations because it’s the turn in the story that makes us catch our breath. We might say that the best the lost son could wish for was “mere toleration”¹: something between a rejection and a return to how things used to be.

Instead, he finds his father’s love has not waned during his time away. Rather, the opposite seems to have happened. The prodigal’s lostness draws out the depth of his father’s affection all the more in his compassion and yearning.

THE SURPRISING WELCOME OF GOD

Those of us who are praying for prodigals know this yearning of love: the aching desire in our chest that they would come to their senses, no matter how far they’ve run. The 19th-century minister Horatius Bonar describes the way the father’s heart goes out to the prodigal, and how it reflects the compassion of God:

God’s hatred of the sin is not hatred of the sinner. Nay, the greatness of his sin seems rather to deepen than to lessen the divine compassion … The farther the prodigal goes into the far country, the more do the yearnings of the father’s heart go out after him in unfeigned compassion for the wretched wanderer, in his famine, and nakedness, and degradation, and hopeless grief.²

Scripture is full of examples of this surprising welcome of God—his invitation for sinners to draw near and His earnest embrace of them when they do.

Come, let us reason together. Your sins may be as crimson, but you will be made clean (Isaiah 1:18).

“…in your weakness and sin, your Father’s heart goes out to you and He says, Come.“

Come, if you thirst, come to the waters. Come, buy and eat— even if you have no money to give! Come, taste wine and milk without price (55:1).

Draw near with your conscience sprinkled clean by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:22).

Draw near to the throne of grace boldly. Find mercy and grace to meet your need (4:16).

Come, all who are weary and heavy laden. Receive rest (Matthew 11:28).

This is the welcome of God for you. Your imperfections have not consigned you to a life of being merely tolerated. Rather, in your weakness and sin, your Father’s heart goes out to you and he says, Come. He isn’t just seeking a change in your behavior. He isn’t even seeking your usefulness to him.

Remember that it was not extra hands for the farm that the father longed for while the prodigal was in a distant country.

He wanted his son.

So it is with your Father.

In calling you to draw near, God seeks, and has always sought, you.

1. Kelly Kapic, You’re Only Human (Brazos Press: 2022), p 23.
2. Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Peace (Christian Focus, 2021), p 137.

---

{Our humble thanks to The Good Book Company for their partnership in today’s devotional.}