What Do You Do When You've Gone Too Far?
Most of us have been somewhere we didn't plan to end up.
It didn't happen in one dramatic moment. It was a decision here, and then another one, and then another — and at some point you looked around and thought, how did I get here? The longer you've been there, the harder it feels to find your way back. Not because the road doesn't exist, but because shame has a way of convincing you that too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, and that coming back would only mean walking straight into everything you've been avoiding.
That feeling is exactly what Pastor Nate opened the new Playlist series addressing this week.
He started with a question that sounds simple but cuts deep: is God's message to you really about good and bad? Because that's how most of us learned it. Good behavior in, bad behavior out. Follow the rules, you're good. Break them, you're bad. It's the framework we were handed, and for a lot of people, it's the exact reason they stopped coming back.
But Pastor Nate pointed to the very beginning — Genesis 2 — where God didn't place the tree of good and evil at the center of the garden. He placed the tree of life. The whole point was never a moral report card. It was always about life and death, blessing and cursing. The enemy's strategy has always been to lure us just far enough off the path that we stop recognizing where we are, not through one big dramatic choice, but through comfort, distraction, and the slow drift of becoming unaware.
Then he played a song. "When God Ran" — a picture of the father in Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal son. And what Pastor Nate zeroed in on is something most people miss when they read that story.
The father runs.
In the culture of that time, there was a ceremony called the Kezazah. If a Jewish son had squandered his inheritance among Gentiles and shamed his family, the community had the right to perform a public ritual of excommunication — break a clay pot in front of him, declare him cut off, stripped of his name and his people. When the prodigal son came trudging back down that road, that ceremony was waiting for him at the village entrance.
But the father saw him first. And he ran.
A man of his standing didn't run — he had servants for that. Running was beneath him. But he ran anyway, because he knew what was coming, and he chose to take the shame on himself rather than let it land on his son. He got there first. He threw his arms around him, kissed his neck, and before the son could finish his rehearsed apology, the father was already calling for the best robe, a ring, sandals, a feast. Not a lecture, not a probationary period, not a "we'll see how this goes." A celebration.
That's the picture Pastor Nate kept returning to: a love that waits. Not a love that chases the wandering sheep or tears the house apart looking for the lost coin — though God does that too — but a love that watches the horizon every day, positioning itself, expecting. A love that says, even if you don't, I'm here. Even if you won't, I will. And the moment you turn around, not when you've cleaned yourself up, not when you've proven you're serious, not when you've made up for lost time — the moment you turn, he runs.
So what do you actually do with that this week?
If you've been staying away because shame has convinced you there's too much distance to cover, turn around. That's the whole move. You don't have to have a plan or a speech ready. The son came back with nothing but the words "I've sinned and I'm not worthy" — and he didn't even get to finish the sentence before the father was already moving. And if you've been in church for years, this message has something for you too. The father didn't go get the robe himself — he told the servants to go get it. The celebration of someone coming home is supposed to involve all of us. Think this week about someone in your life who's staying away because they're afraid of what they'll find when they get there. Your face might be the first thing they see on the road back, so make sure it looks like the father's.
It didn't happen in one dramatic moment. It was a decision here, and then another one, and then another — and at some point you looked around and thought, how did I get here? The longer you've been there, the harder it feels to find your way back. Not because the road doesn't exist, but because shame has a way of convincing you that too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, and that coming back would only mean walking straight into everything you've been avoiding.
That feeling is exactly what Pastor Nate opened the new Playlist series addressing this week.
He started with a question that sounds simple but cuts deep: is God's message to you really about good and bad? Because that's how most of us learned it. Good behavior in, bad behavior out. Follow the rules, you're good. Break them, you're bad. It's the framework we were handed, and for a lot of people, it's the exact reason they stopped coming back.
But Pastor Nate pointed to the very beginning — Genesis 2 — where God didn't place the tree of good and evil at the center of the garden. He placed the tree of life. The whole point was never a moral report card. It was always about life and death, blessing and cursing. The enemy's strategy has always been to lure us just far enough off the path that we stop recognizing where we are, not through one big dramatic choice, but through comfort, distraction, and the slow drift of becoming unaware.
Then he played a song. "When God Ran" — a picture of the father in Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal son. And what Pastor Nate zeroed in on is something most people miss when they read that story.
The father runs.
In the culture of that time, there was a ceremony called the Kezazah. If a Jewish son had squandered his inheritance among Gentiles and shamed his family, the community had the right to perform a public ritual of excommunication — break a clay pot in front of him, declare him cut off, stripped of his name and his people. When the prodigal son came trudging back down that road, that ceremony was waiting for him at the village entrance.
But the father saw him first. And he ran.
A man of his standing didn't run — he had servants for that. Running was beneath him. But he ran anyway, because he knew what was coming, and he chose to take the shame on himself rather than let it land on his son. He got there first. He threw his arms around him, kissed his neck, and before the son could finish his rehearsed apology, the father was already calling for the best robe, a ring, sandals, a feast. Not a lecture, not a probationary period, not a "we'll see how this goes." A celebration.
That's the picture Pastor Nate kept returning to: a love that waits. Not a love that chases the wandering sheep or tears the house apart looking for the lost coin — though God does that too — but a love that watches the horizon every day, positioning itself, expecting. A love that says, even if you don't, I'm here. Even if you won't, I will. And the moment you turn around, not when you've cleaned yourself up, not when you've proven you're serious, not when you've made up for lost time — the moment you turn, he runs.
So what do you actually do with that this week?
If you've been staying away because shame has convinced you there's too much distance to cover, turn around. That's the whole move. You don't have to have a plan or a speech ready. The son came back with nothing but the words "I've sinned and I'm not worthy" — and he didn't even get to finish the sentence before the father was already moving. And if you've been in church for years, this message has something for you too. The father didn't go get the robe himself — he told the servants to go get it. The celebration of someone coming home is supposed to involve all of us. Think this week about someone in your life who's staying away because they're afraid of what they'll find when they get there. Your face might be the first thing they see on the road back, so make sure it looks like the father's.