4 Gifts for the Hard Journey, episode 143

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. And also help and hope for your own life journey. And that's what we have some more of today. For our previous two episodes, we explored the hard reality of the grief that comes from walking with a challenging child for months and years. I hope you captured some perspective and practice for your grief journey. This week and next, I have gifts for you.

0:41 Gifts from God. They will give you what you need for all the twists and turns of your journey. So let's get into it. The first gift, and this you might never have thought of like this, is God Himself. He is available. He's the most important gift. Our gracious God has given us the best gift we could ever desire. He's given us Himself. He's given us Himself because He loves us. He didn't have to create us, but He wanted someone like Him that He could relate to.

1:25 Psalm 139 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture. God tells us that He was there, forming us and our mother's womb, making the intricate parts of each of us. He gave us our physical characteristics, our personalities, our strengths and weaknesses. I've often asked why I couldn't have been a few inches taller and that He could have given me a little musical ability, but He's not answered that. But He reminds me, and I am grateful, that He gave me words and I write them and I speak them and I love to play games with them.

2:11 He made each of us how He wanted us for the purposes that He had in mind for us. We weren't just randomly created. God was intricately involved and He had purpose. And yet He knew, even though He made us perfectly, He knew that free will would give us the opportunity to sin, to choose our own way. Now our Father sent His Son to redeem us, to forgive us, to restore our relationship with Him. Jesus came as one of us as a human, born as a baby, growing up.

2:56 He was a perfect gift with a heart willing even to die for us. One of His names is Emanuel. Jesus is always with us. That's what Emanuel means. What a gift! But there's more. Jesus knew He would be leaving earth and returning to the Father. In John 14, He tells His disciples that He has an even better gift. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit, Father, Son, and Spirit, the Holy Spirit will come and live in the disciples and in us and give us everything they needed, everything we need to live for Him, everything we need to walk in this journey and not give up.

3:50 That gift is still available to us, giving us all we need—comfort, wisdom, courage, peace—so much more. So it's like God has given us Himself as a bundle of gifts—of God the Father and the Son who died for us and the Spirit who fills us and gives us what we need day by day. But there's more. You know how much God loves you? Enough to send His Son to die in your place? He wants to share His love that He has for you, with you, for you to have, for your troubling child.

4:39 And we talked about that a little last week, but I want to remind us that God loves our wanderers, our prodigals, as much as He loves us. And He will keep on pursuing Him or her, leaving the ninety-nine to go after the one lost sheep. He doesn't quit, and He will enable us to not give up as well. When you grasp how much God loves you, when it sinks in, remember that He has that same love for your prodigal.

5:20 He's not going to quit loving them, no matter how bad they are. But here's the surprise. One of the main ways that God pours His love into and over your prodigal, your loved one, is through you. He can do it anyway that He wants, through other people, and He does, and just causing good things to happen, even though they don't deserve it. But the main way that His love is going to be conveyed to this person you love is through you. And to realize that, to me, has really helped me to change some of my responses and attitudes when Josh made life hard.

6:09 And it was an important part for my husband to come to the fact that even though he really was weary of some of Josh's choices, that God loved him and he would love our son through us. What a privilege. Last week I told you about the picture I had of God standing over me with a huge fat when I asked what was in it. It was my love for Josh. I'm sharing it with you, he said. So no matter what he does, you are not dependent on your own love for him. You have that, but you also have my limitless, unconditional love for him.

6:57 And then he told me even more about the love he shared with me and was available. Justice his love for me is unconditional. That is, I can't do anything to earn it or anything to lose it. There are no conditions on his love. And that is true as God kindly shares his love for our protocols. There are no conditions. We might have conditions before they can come back in our home or do some things they want. But we're tempted to say, no, you have to clean up.

7:37 You have to quit this. And God said, that doesn't stop love. There may be boundaries and consequences, but what for sure, no matter what the love flows and they can experience that. If I am God's child, I am a vessel, a conduit of his love to anyone, to everyone, even and especially the one who breaks my heart. So God gave this himself. He's given us his love because ours is usually a little inadequate. He also gives us something else that we're maybe a little inadequate on and that is abundant mercy.

8:26 Because of his great love, God is also overflowing with mercy. Now mercy is somewhat controversial for many people. They think people should get what they deserve or they will take advantage of your kindness. And that can happen because I tend to be on the merciful side. I've gotten a fair amount of kickback from people saying, you can't be that good to him. And I'm like, gee, God's been that good to me. And that helps me to choose to show mercy. Again, I'm not saying there are no boundaries and consequences.

9:09 But my way to relate to my loved one has been to love unconditionally, to give mercy even though they don't deserve it. Ephesians 2.4 tells us that our God is rich in mercy. Because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. And God makes that available to us. We're also told this is an amazing statement. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

9:49 And I know there are questions around that. But I understand that mercy is a huge value to God. It's why Jesus came out of his love to extend mercy. Probably one of the greatest evidences of that mercy in Scripture is the woman caught in adultery. Jesus, when they brought her to him because they wanted him to follow the law, he could have. He would have done what the law said and she would have been stoned to death. That would have been right in their eyes. But that's not what he did.

10:30 He said, Let those who are without sin throw the first stone. All you heard were stones dropping and feet shuffling away. And after all of those accusing her had dropped to stone, each one had Jesus asked her if no one had accused her. And she said, No, not one. And Jesus said, Neither do I go and sin no more. That is mercy. And then we find the greatest example as Jesus nailed to the cross, looks down on the people who are crucifying him and says, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing.

11:21 That's what he says to us when it comes to our loved ones who break our hearts, who do really bad things sometimes. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be consequences. Sometimes you won't have to provide them God will. But he calls on us to show mercy because that's what he has done for us. Again, part of the journey that you're on that I've been on is to grasp the mercy as God has given us and his desire that we pass it on. He doesn't leave you on your own. And so if what's required and needed is mercy, he's got it for you.

12:05 And he can give you wisdom on how to do it. And when it's the right thing, he wants to be merciful through you to the people that are hurting you. All right. So we've looked at God himself as a gift for our journey. Love unconditional love is a gift for our journey. Abundant mercy, more than most of us have capacity for, but God does, is available for us in walking with, living with those we love. And then finally, amazing grace. Hebrews 4.16 is one of my favorite verses.

12:47 I've probably said that quite a few times over these podcasts. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. I like to picture it says God's throne of grace, the God sitting on his throne and it's made of grace, that he's operating out of grace and all that he does. It's just a throne, but it's made of grace because that's where he would be because he is grace. And so he says to you and to me, come on up.

13:32 Let's talk. Let me show you what you can do here. Let me share with you the grace that I've poured out. Once again, he's saying, I haven't told you to be loving and merciful and gracious on your own. I'm giving you my love and my mercy and my grace to help you as you walk with the one that keeps breaking your heart. Not a grace giving God we have. I found that with people who break our hearts and cause us our pain. Our voices sometimes don't feel very full of grace.

14:17 So I'm going to share with you the voice of grace. If we stop before we open our mouths to say something we might be sorry for later. Let your conversation, we're told, always be full of grace, seasoned with salt. So let me read to you the voice of grace. The verse it's based on, Colossians 1-6, let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

14:57 How do we speak truth in love? How do we make sure our words are seasoned with grace? Here are eight steps to help you. First, wait. That's where the count of ten before you speak comes in. Or maybe twenty or thirty, however long it takes for you to speak with grace. Moderate. Moderate your voice. Speak slowly. Calmly. Gently. But firmly. Think. Will these words add fuel to the fire? That's what we say a lot, isn't it?

15:38 We throw out what we feel and it just makes the fire burn brighter. And that's not what we want. Consider. Would you like someone to speak such words in that tone of voice to you? Recognize. The words you speak today can be part of your relationship with your prodigal for all the years to come. You think, oh no, that's not true. I've heard many young people say they can still hear words that their parents said to them that felt hurtful or put them down in some way.

16:21 Teachers also. Realize your tone of voice can turn neutral words into destructive words. Remember you love this person. Pray. Make sure that you're filled with God's spirit. Ask him to govern your tongue, to release his love into your heart, to go to them. Also choose to be an instrument of God's grace. As I shared last week, one day after a hard conversation with my challenging protocol, God said, Judy, when you make mistakes with him, make them on the side of grace.

17:12 So we've talked about four amazing gifts God gives us himself, all the Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, unconditional love, abundant mercy, amazing grace. But that's not all. There's more. Next week I have four more gifts from God for you to help you as you walk on this hard journey to sustain you through it all, to give you himself, to flow through you so that you can have the kind of influence on your loved one that you desire.

17:54 God bless you.