Lawrence Tong, International Director Emeritus of OM International, closed the third evening of the Arise Asia 2026 Congress challenging participant to confront a stark reality: that the greatest obstacle to world mission may not be distance, difficulty, or danger, but the condition of the heart of those already gathered in the Father's house.
Drawing from Luke 15 and its three parables of the lost, Tong pressed approximately 4,000 young Christian delegates gathered in Manila to ask themselves a searching question: "Do I understand the heart of God? Or am I like the older brother — living in the house of God, worshiping in this big hall, but never really understanding the heart of God?"
His address, rooted in the story of the prodigal son, identified four qualities of the older brother that, Tong argued, are not ancient character flaws but present realities that still prevent Christians from crossing into the mission field today.
A coin, a sheep, a son
Tong opened by tracing the logic of all three parables in Luke 15. In each, something of value goes missing — a sheep, a silver coin, a son — and in each, someone goes looking. The shepherd leaves his flock. The woman lights a lamp and sweeps the house. And when the lost is found, there is celebration.
But the pattern breaks with the third parable. When the younger son is lost, no one from the household goes to find him.
"When it comes to the lost sheep, someone went out looking for the animal," Tong said. "When it comes to the lost coin, someone went out looking for it diligently. But when it comes to a lost neighbor, a lost cousin, a lost brother — no one."
He paused on that silence. Why? The answer, he said, is found not in the younger son's story but in the older brother's response to it.
"The main message of Luke chapter 15," Tong told delegates, "is not about the lost sheep. It is not about the lost coin. It is not about the prodigal son. The main message of Luke chapter 15 is about the older brother — the man who lived in the father's house but did not understand the father's heart."
Self-centeredness: the first barrier
The older brother, Tong noted, returns from the field unaware that his brother has come home. He has to ask a servant what the music and dancing are about. Even then, his first instinct is not to go in but to stand outside and confront his father.
His words — "All these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me a young goat so that I could celebrate with my friends" — expose a preoccupation that crowded out any concern for another person's welfare. "It's all about me. I, mine," Tong said.
This inward orientation, he argued, is precisely what prevents a person from seeing the need around them. "He was completely self-centered. And for a person who is completely self-centered, it is very difficult for him to see the needs of other people."
The older brother could hear the celebration from outside and still feel nothing but resentment. "The tragedy is that the older brother who was physically near the father was relationally so far away," Tong said. "And he too needed to be invited in — not just into the house, but into the heart of the father."
Self-righteousness: the second barrier
The second quality Tong identified in the older brother shows up most clearly in how the older son refers to his brother: "this son of yours." Not "my brother," but "this son of yours."
"He was disowning his own brother," Tong said. "He refused to say, 'my brother.' Instead he distanced himself emotionally and relationally — as if to say, it is your problem, not my problem."
Self-righteousness, he said, defines people by their failures and refuses to look past them. The older brother focuses on what the younger son had done — squandering the inheritance — while the father has already looked past it to restoration. "He defines his brother solely by his failure, not by his father's forgiveness. His focus was on the past, not on the future."
Tong also noted the older brother's reaction to the feast: it registers not as good news but as personal offense. The fatted calf is not abundance but waste. "He was angry at grace," Tong said. "Self-righteousness is scandalized by grace, especially when it is given to someone it deems unworthy."
The irony, he said, is that while the younger son sinned openly and returned openly, the older brother was "sinning internally, hiding pride, resentment, entitlement, and self-righteousness under the cloak of obedience."
No compassion: the third barrier
The third reason the older brother did not go was, in Tong's telling, the one he knew most personally.
He recalled an early experience as a 23-year-old OM missionary sent to Venezuela ahead of one of the organization's ships. He had just received a brand-new briefcase — a gift he prized because it made him look important when meeting government officials and church leaders. Then a young man on a motorbike snatched it from him on the street and refused to give it back.
"We were both struggling," Tong recounted. "The briefcase flew out of his hand. It came open. All my things scattered on the road. The briefcase was broken. All the boys stood there watching and laughing." When the young man taunted him again, Tong lost his composure. He said to him, he told delegates quietly, "Go to hell."
The rebuke came immediately. "The Lord said to me: 'No. I don't want him to go to hell. That is why you are a missionary. You were supposed to rescue him from hell, not send him there.'"
"For the first time I realized that my briefcase was more important to me than the salvation of that young man," Tong said. "I was so insensitive to his lost state."
The young man later came to faith through someone else's witness, and Tong arranged for him to spend two weeks aboard one of OM's ships to begin his Christian journey. But the episode stayed with him as a vivid picture of the older brother's failure. "He was so insensitive to the lost state of his brother," Tong said. "He heard music. He stood at the door. And he would not go in — even when his father came out and pleaded with him."
Unavailability: the fourth barrier
The fourth reason Tong cited was a choice: the older brother chose to stay.
Referencing an earlier session at the congress that morning, Tong drew a pointed contrast. God, he said, is not looking for the able. God is looking for the available. The older brother was present, capable, informed about his brother's condition — and simply unwilling to go. Availability was what he withheld.
To close, Tong offered a retelling of what a different older brother might have said. In this version, the loyal son approaches the father and says: "Father, I know how much you love my brother and that you will not rest until he is found. Every morning I saw you look at the bed where he once slept. Every time we sat at the table, you would look at his empty chair. You would look out the window into the hills beyond, expecting him to come back. Father, for the joy of seeing my younger brother return to you — please let me go and find him. Here am I, Father. Send me."
Tong acknowledged this story does not appear in Scripture. "But I think it is very close to the Bible," he said. "It reveals the father's heart."
The reason it had to be invented is precisely the point. "The older brother, though he lived in the father's house, never truly understood the father's heart. Instead, we have the life of a man whose whole life is a joyless existence. A man who could sit in the presence of his father, but never really know the father."
He closed by challenging participants to reflect on the central question that Luke 15 poses to believers: "Do I understand the heart of God? Or am I the older brother?"
Follow Christian Daily International's full reporting on Arise Asia 2026.
