Seeking the Lost Coin

When Jesus was accused of eating with sinners, he said

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

With Zaccheus, he declared:

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10)

In these statements, Jesus declares his pursuit of us before we knew Him.

In the three “Lost” parables of Jesus (Luke 15), we see the story

• of the lost sheep,
• of the lost coin,
• and of the lost son.

In these stories, Jesus communicates to us the outrageous love of the Father.

It’s all about the initiative to go and look for that which was lost, to leave the 99 to find the one, to tear the house upside down to find the missing coin.

They talk about the celebration that happens when that which has been lost has been found.

Our Precious Lost Item

We look for things that are important to us that are missing.

I was in Tampa for a conference.

When it was finished, I would travel home, sleep for a few hours and then go to Venezuela the next morning on mission work.

I would only spend 12 hours in my house before going on to Venezuela.

I got home from Tampa, and after to great meal, began to help my wife pack for our family mission trip to Venezuela.

It was then that we discovered that three of our passports were missing.

My wife and I finished the evening at 10:00 or 11:00 at night after searching every corner of our house.

We were looking through the trash cans. We were looking through the safe. We were pulling out drawers from all our dressers.

We were tossing things upside down. We looked through every single piece of luggage that we had.

We were looking in all of our backpacks, and we went looking through the toy boxes in our children’s bedroom.

We made a giant mess in the process.

Those passports would determine our destiny.  Those passports would determine if we could get back into the country, exit the country, or enter the country with which we were going.

Those passports would determine if we were leaving in less than seven hours, at 8:00 the next morning.

Those passports would determine our destiny.

They were the most valuable thing in the world.

And when we couldn’t find them, we were breaking down in tears.

We went to bed that night in tears. We cried ourselves to sleep.

I can imagine the widow missing her coin, the stress that she was carrying, and tossing that house upside down.

The Lost Item Got Found

I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, no longer able to have even a restless sleep.

I started washing dishes, quietly crying, and praying.

“Lord, I’m supposed to be in Venezuela this afternoon, and I don’t know how I’m going to get there because I just don’t know where the passports are.”

Then I hear the slapping of bare feet running across the tile floor.  I hear someone banging around on a seat bench where we store backpacks.

I hear an outburst of joy…..

There were three gorgeous passports (I had mine already from arriving the day before)

We found them!  We found them!

My joy-filled wife tells me she had a dream that awoke her.  In that dream, she saw where she put the passports from our last family trip.   They were in an interior compartment in a black carry-on bag inside the bench.   

Though we had looked in that bag in our panic the night before, that compartment was invisible in the poor lighting in that part of the house.

We told everyone

Can you imagine the celebration that erupted in our house that morning? Can you imagine the celebration as that stress just washed right off our backs?

When we finally got to the airport gate waiting area, we cried in relief.

Our taxi driver in Venezuela heard the story.

Our friends in Venezuela heard the story.

Those precious passports were the most important thing in the world at that moment and we had found them.  We wanted everyone to know we had found them.

As I ponder the story of the widow looking for her coin and the celebration she had, can you imagine the joy in God’s heart when that which was lost has been found?

Can you imagine God’s heart for you as God sought you and brought you to faith?

God takes the initiative to seek after you.

Get to know the Father’s heart.