Touré Roberts - Finding Home

I want to talk to you today about finding home. I think it's pretty awesome that on the day I preach a message called "Finding Home," the incredible woman whom I had the privilege of growing up nearby, my Aunt Sally, is here. Aunt Sally, I just want to honor you; I'm so glad you're here. Your example of what it means to be a Christian woman of faith means more to me than I can express. So, I want to talk about finding home, and we're going to look at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. I've been reflecting on this subject, and maybe it’s because I recently moved, but the sense of home and what it represents is so important.

You know, I used to argue with people about the concept of home, especially because we’re here in Los Angeles. Many people move away from home; they come to Los Angeles, and thousands have found one church, resulting in many finding the Lord and a sense of purpose and destiny. They leave home, but who they were when they left is no longer who they are. They used to say, “I’m going back home,” and I would get a little salty about it because, you know, this is home too. I get that that's where Mom and Dad are, but I had to correct myself because I realized that was still home too.

It’s somewhat awesome to be able to go back home, right? You don’t have to pay bills, you don't have to cook dinner—you can go there and be 40 years old and still feel like a kid because they’ve got it covered. I think I failed to value or appreciate some people's perspective that their origin is, in fact, home. I had to change the way I spoke about it because home does afford us things we need—like a sense of safety, security, and the comfort of knowing everything will be okay. I’m generalizing, of course, because that’s not what home represents for everyone. For some, coming to California was about escaping. Let’s just be honest, you don’t have to say “Amen” or anything; it’s true for some of you. You escaped to California, and that’s okay too.

My perspective on home is a bit broader now, and as I dug deeper into this topic, I wanted to discuss home—the necessity of finding and cultivating it, and the relationships and environments that create a sense of home. God took me deeper in my understanding of what home is, and that’s what I want to share with you today. My hope is that for some of you who have never truly experienced home, you’ll understand how to get there. For others, you may feel a sense of homelessness because you left "home," and you’re going to discover home through this message. Then, for some, I think you had a home but need to come back to it.

These are the goals I want to achieve in the next few hours we spend together. As I began to unpack what home is, I sought God’s face about it. I realized that home has to do with origins. God began to talk to me about how home isn’t necessarily where you feel comfortable but where God originally intended for you to be at a certain point in your life. Home is about origin, and often home can be moving. It is a blessing when your natural home is the same as your divine home; that’s a major blessing. But often, that is not the case.

As was the case with Abraham, God needed Abraham to leave his natural home in order to guide him to his divine home. If he had stayed in what he considered home, he would have missed his true home and would have always felt a longing inside and a search for things that mattered.