The reason why so many of us fail to experience a breakthrough into a more joyous, close, and rewarding relationship with God through Jesus Christ is not because you have rock walls like Jericho that need to come down or rock rubble like Haiti that needs to be lifted off of you. Breakthrough isn’t coming because you are shouldering some heavy burden that you refuse to slide off on to the Resting Rock.

When we look at the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we can see that breakthrough often happens because we have broken through and relieved ourselves of the wasteful, sins of the flesh, repented, and came back to the Father through Jesus Christ….revelation, motivation, destination, and salvation is this route as we saw the other week.

 That was a great, first step. It got you out of the pig-sty, didn’t it?

But there’s another step, a much harder step for most of us. And that’s the step where we slide off on to the Resting Rock the sins of the heart. These are sins of the spirit, sins of attitude, motive, of judgment, and the sin of just being a plain-old “party-pooper” when your heavenly Father has invited you to join in a home-coming celebration.

You see, there were two sons in this parable, and both needed a breakthrough. One was the party-prodigal. The other was the party-pooper. 

Today, we’re going to deal with the party-pooper in us so that we can finally slide off the burdens we have carried far too long and breakthrough into a more joyous, close, and rewarding relationship, celebrating in the cool of the shade of the Resting Rock.

In order to help us be relieved of these sins of the heart, our heavenly Father has designed a wonderful, spiritual, and effective, diagnostic tool. It’s the gut-check.

Luke 11:23; 15:32

When people breakthrough and repent, it is God’s “gut-check” for us because it reveals quite clearly whether we are on God’s side or not, working for Him or against Him.

 This guy and his girlfriend were riding a tandem bike, he on the front seat and she behind him on the second seat. They came to a particularly steep hill. When they finally made it to the top, the guy, totally out of breath, turned around to his girlfriend and remarked, “Man, that was a steep hill. I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it up it.” And she replied, “I know. It was so steep I decided to keep the brakes on so that we wouldn’t slide back down it.”

 You know, sometimes we are really working against God’s efforts in our lives and in the lives of others instead of working for them. We too often put the brakes on Christ’s efforts in someone else’s life because we choose to be the party-pooper, throwing wet-blanket comments on prodigals who have finally come home. So many mountains are never climbed, breakthroughs never attained, and breathtaking vistas are never enjoyed in the spirit because we’re putting the breaks on God’s efforts of reconciliation, salvation, and celebration….in our lives and in the lives of others. 

 One day, Jesus drew a line in the sand when He said: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23.)

 Listen. God is going to put certain people in your life and make your path cross theirs with one goal in mind: to give you spiritual a “gut-check” to see if you are on His side or not. Because God wants a breakthrough in you and because He’s the Resting Rock who sees the burdens of unforgiveness and party-pooping that you continue to shoulder, He’ll navigate people into your life at any given moment to give you a spiritual gut-check.

 When the party-prodigal returned home and was reconciled to his Father, a spiritual gut-check was given to the party-pooper. And the real question boiled down to this: “Will you come to the party? Will you off-load your sins of the spirit?”

 He asks the same of us today, doesn’t He? He’s asking you right now, isn’t He? 

Luke 15:21-24;32

When people breakthrough and repent, whether we celebrate their breakthrough and

their return to the Lord or not is the great “gut-check” for every believer in the family.

The text tells us that the prodigal returns from wasting away the inheritance, the father deems him worthy of full reconciliation and restoration into the family as his son, which are signified by the sandals, ring, and robe. Then the father calls for a celebration.

Now the Greek word for “celebrate” as it is used here is a rather interesting one. It is the word euphraino. It literally means “to put or to be in a good frame of mind, to rejoice, or to make merry.”

So the father was in a good, if not a great frame of mind when his son returned home. In fact, so wonderful was his frame of mind that he said to his elder son that they “had” to celebrate (verse 32.). In other words, there was no option. The word “had” here is the Greek word deo which means “bound, necessary, knit, or tie.” In other words, the father was “bound” to celebrate. There was not getting around it. The wasting of the inheritance didn’t matter. It was a mute point. A line was drawn in the sand when the party-prodigal returned home – they “had” to celebrate for a dead son was now alive.

The elder son, the party-pooper, on the other hand, was not in a good frame of mind, was he? For him, celebration was optional. He did not have to be joyful and, by golly, he wasn’t going to celebrate. In fact, he was intentionally choosing not to be on his father’s side of the line that had been drawn in the sand. There was no way that he was going to off-load this grudge that he had carried and nursed over the months. There was no resting rock for him…he didn’t need it or want it. 

Funny, isn’t it, how the longer we nurse a grudge the harder it is to be weaned from it?

 Now, here’s where the word for “celebrate” gets really interesting. Euphraino is really a conjunction of two words: eu which means “good” and phren which in its root form means “midriff.”

 That’s right… “midriff” – your “gut.”

You see, the center of one’s emotions and feeling in biblical times was associated, as it is with us, with our gut, or our midriff. This is because God made it that way

So, the return of the party-prodigal who had his own gut-check in the pig-sty caused one kind of response in the gut of the father and quite another kind of response in the gut of the elder brother, didn’t it?

Listen, your gut is to your faith like a thermometer stuck in your mouth – it’s going to tell you whether you are on the side of spiritual sickness or spiritual health. Your gut is a barometer that will indicate the air pressure in your soul. Your gut will tell you if you’ve forgiven this or that person. It will tell you if you are truly happy that someone’s come home from the pig-sty. You gut will quickly tell you if you’ve relieved yourself of the burden at the Resting Rock or whether you are still carrying that weight. Your gut, when God navigates that certain “someone” into your path like Christ did for me just this past week, will tell you instantly whether or not you’re celebrating or party-pooping. It will tell you instantly whether you are on God’s side or not.

God gave you a gut, not just to put food into it, but to help you obtain spiritual information so that you will know if you are in a good frame of mind with other members of the wider family of faith or whether you are not. Your gut was designed by God to not only digest what you chewed up for dinner but if you are still chewing someone up with unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, revenge, or resentment.

You know what’s so great about this little spiritual “thermometer” and “barometer” that God’s designed both for both digestion and revelation?

It never lies, does it? For when God sends those special persons to cross your path and give you a spiritual “gut-check,” you’ll quickly find out if you’re on God’s side because you feel like you’d rather regurgitate than celebrate. Right? 

The gut never lies. God designed it that way. Listen to it, for it is signal that you still need a breakthrough. You may have repented of the sins of the flesh and gotten out of the pig-sty of sin that you had been wallowing in, but your gut will help you know where the sins of the heart are, the hidden sins of unforgiveness and bitterness, and every other spiritual sin that make us stink as badly as any form of fleshly sin from the pig-sty.

Luke 15:27, 30, 32

The Father has never given to us the right, power, or authority to define or to redefine a person’s worth. So don’t! If you do, you’ll be working against God and not for Him.

Remember the other week when we looked at how the party-prodigal tried to “redefine” his worth by saying that he was no longer “worthy” to be called his father’s son. The father, however, reconfirmed his son’s worth and place in the family regardless of his sin and wastefulness. 

 What this showed us, if you remember, is that only GOD, our Resting Rock, has the right, power, and privilege to define the worth of someone. And He deems us worthy, for He knew us before He formed us in the womb. We are sons and daughters of the Most High and are restored in fullness when we repent, come home, and are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. You aren’t even given the right to declare your own worthiness or unworthiness. 

 When God checks your gut, He’s also seeing if you are working against Him and not for Him because as the party-pooper, you’ve crossed the line and you’re deciding who’s worthy and who is not. See how the party-pooper tried to define and redefine the worth and identity of the party-prodigal. He retorted in verse 30, “This son of yours….” Notice that he did not say, “This brother of mine.” As far as he was concerned, he did not have a brother. He was not worthy being a brother because he had devoured the inheritance given to him. Great choice of words, isn’t it?

 But it’s the father, once again, who has the last word because he has the last say when it comes to our worth. The father turns it back onto the party-pooper and says in verse 32, “This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and have been found.”  And that’s that.

 If you gut is out of sorts over someone in your life, it’s the gut check telling you that you’ve crossed the line and your still across the line. You’re judging that person’s worth, for in essence you are saying that they are not worthy of forgiveness, not worthy of grace, not worthy of “son-ship,” and not worthy of being thrown a coming home party.

 God alone determines worth. Not you. Not me. Not anyone. 

 Some of you are getting this gut-check right now. And it tells me that the Father is inviting you to come forward to the Resting Rock and slide that heavy burden off your shoulders. It’s amazing how much easier it is to dance when you’re free.