Finding God in a Target Parking Lot – Learning to Run to the Father

Have you ever found yourself trying to soothe your soul with things that never seem to truly fill you? Maybe it is shopping to chase away stress. Maybe it is eating for comfort. Maybe it is binge-watching to avoid facing your thoughts. I know that feeling all too well.

For years, I ran to “things” to try to ease my pain or give me a quick boost of happiness. But no amount of shopping, Netflix, or comfort food could heal what was hurting deep inside. What I really needed, though I didn’t know it at the time, was to run to Jesus.

Yesterday, I found myself in that familiar place of overwhelm. Nothing seemed to be working. I was anxious, exhausted, and desperately needing God’s peace. I knew where to find my help, but the noise in my mind made it so hard to quiet down and be alone with Him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the heaviness. I needed to get out of the house. But where would I go? Would I run back to the old “comforts” that never truly comforted me? Or would I embrace the quiet and seek the One who could?

The rain began to fall as I drove. I didn’t know where I was going, but my heart was prayerful and my eyes set on God. Then I pulled into the Target parking lot. This was the very place I had escaped to so many times before. But this time was different. I wasn’t running away from my feelings. In fact, I didn’t even know if I would go inside. But I did know I was supposed to pull into that parking lot. Was God wanting to show me something? Or was the enemy trying to trick me into falling back into my old ways?

As I sat in my car, watching the rain hit the windshield, God began to whisper to my heart. When the rain slowed, I stepped inside, not for retail therapy but with a heart open to listen. As I walked through the aisles, I began to see the heaviness on people’s faces. The chaos. The quiet desperation. And I realized they were doing the very thing I had done for so long, looking for hope in all the wrong places.

I left that store with tears streaming down my face. God gently revealed to me that the problem wasn’t our consumer culture. It was that so many of us don’t know who we are. We don’t know our value. We don’t believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We have no idea what we carry inside of us.

Inside each of us is a seed of Christ that God longs to water and grow. But so often, we don’t even realize it’s there. Instead, we grab at temporary fixes, hoping they’ll solve our deepest hurts, only to find ourselves in more pain later. We miss the true solution because we’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

The problem isn’t that we need to be “fixed” or soothed. The problem is that we need to grab hold of our identity in Christ and run to the Father so He can water that seed and grow us into the fullness of who He created us to be.

If you’re reading this and you’re struggling to find peace, joy, or hope, know this: you don’t have to keep running to empty places. Run to the Father. He is ready to meet you right where you are, and He has everything you need.

If this message encouraged you today, share it with a friend who might need to be reminded of God’s love. Your small act of sharing could be the seed that grows into hope for someone else.