Banishing Fear - Fear 2, episode 147

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. This is the second of three posts leading up to June 2nd, the Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day. Our theme this year is Fear Not. These podcasts are designed to prepare us as we engage in the battle for the hearts and minds of loved ones who are prodigal in one or more of many possible ways. If you have any fears of any kind, stay tuned. You'll get some help.

0:46 When you love a prodigal, the fear can be overwhelming, right? That was my experience. Just think of all the possibilities. I'm going to list a lot of them. I'll mention the ones that we experienced in our 15-year wilderness journey. Addiction. Oh, yes. Pregnancy. No, not with our son. Overdose. I don't even know about that. Wrong friends. Yes. Cutting. Suicide. Well, he came pretty close. The call from the jail or the hospital, we got both.

1:26 Accident. Harming self or others. Yeah, he and his friend could have died in the accident they were in. Doing something crazy while high. Yeah, I'd say that happened. Identity confusion. No. Visit from the police. Oh, yes. Harm to our other children. No. Living without God. Not really. Not knowing where they are or what they are doing. Well, that was pretty common. Failing school. Yeah, that happened. No future. We used to say, if something doesn't change for this boy, his future is he will be in jail or dead.

2:16 That was what he was leading to. Fear for your own life. I was never afraid for my life with him. No contact for months or even years. I know a lot of people in that situation. No access to grandchildren. And I also know a lot of people who have not even met their grandchildren because their prodigal won't let them. That's quite a list. All of those are possible. Whether your prodigal is your teen child or an adult child, a spouse, a sibling, a parent, a friend, and fear can be pervasive when you love a prodigal.

3:03 I know it has been for me. Friday nights were always the worst because our son and his friends felt it was their right to have a wild Friday night. And even today, when he is seeking to make good choices to choose a better life, the fear lingers and lurks. Will the past return to haunt him? Will one more hard life event trip him up again? So how do we not live in fear? God's told us we live in love.

3:44 God's love for us and for our prodigals. God's word says perfect love casts out fear. And only our Lord has perfect love. He is perfect love. There are other things we know that are true. Jesus is God. He's sovereign, almighty, omnipotent. The Most High God. Gratefully, he is also good. He does all things well. He's always looking for ways to do good to us. He invites us to taste and see that he is good.

4:25 Yes, he is love. He doesn't just love. He is love itself. And all the possibilities of his love are for us and available to us for our prodigals. I hope that gives you some hope because to know that God who is love loves you and the one you love has helped me a great deal in the hardest times. However, bad things still happen, don't they? Wrong choices lead to painful consequences. Some that last a lifetime.

5:07 People get hurt. There's injury. There's prison. An unexpected child. There's death. And there's possible rejecting you. So where is God's love in all those things? Well, we have no way of knowing all the ways that God, because of his great love, has intervened or protected or rescued. We don't know what we don't know. God's been looking after us. And many times, I'm sure he has stepped in and intervened. When my son and his friend were in an accident, they really should have died.

5:48 They ran into an electric box and the vehicle caught fire. And yet they both made it out. I think that was God's intervention. But we also know that God allows us and our prodigals to make choices, to follow our own paths, to pursue our own desires. And sometimes those choices, those paths and those desires can have extreme consequences. Jesus assures us. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

6:28 No one will snatch them out of my hand. My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one can snatch them out of my father's hand. I and the father are one. Jesus is saying, God's still in control. He allows us to see consequences of choices for us and for those we love. But he's still in control, operating in love. Love is his bottom line, his guide for everything that he does. But when I can't understand what is happening, when it seems that there is no good insight, when surely someone did snatch our loved one from God's hands, I can't rely on what I see or what it seems God is doing or allowing.

7:24 I must go back to who he is. And he is God, he is good, he is love. And just remember these promises of his love. He says in Ephesians 1, I am a treasure to him. He reminds me that I am part of the riches of his glorious inheritance. All that Jesus gets is, so to speak. I'm part of the riches that he receives. Zephaniah, we read that he delights in me. He delights in you. He delights in your loved one.

8:06 I am told that he is with me, that he takes great delight in me. He quiets me with his love and rejoices over me with singing. Can you just picture that? God's watching you, he's watching your loved one. And he's just, the love is pouring out of him so much that he's singing over you and your loved one. Hebrews tells us that I am his joy. I learned that Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. And what was that? The joy was a restored relationship with me and you and your prodigal.

8:51 And so Jesus, his desire to restore relationship, to have a deep personal relationship with each of us. That's why I went to the cross. That's what his purpose was. Jeremiah tells us that God keeps doing good to us. God promises I will make an everlasting covenant with them. I will never stop doing good to them. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. It helps me a lot to think that God is committed to doing good to me and therefore to the ones I love.

9:37 And the same is true for you. So in the hard times when this fear tends to overtake, I must lean into that love. Believe that his love can bring good from the worst situation and that he is able to rescue and redeem the most degenerate. And here is an amazing, wonderful reality. That love is for you and me and our wanderers and one of the main ways that God pours out his love on our prodigals is through us, through you and through me.

10:20 So he doesn't just do it. He uses us to let them experience his love. One night God revealed to me that he was sharing his great love for my son with me so that I could be a constant source of his love going to him. God pours his love out on him, but he also pours it out through me, to him, through you, to yours. That love will cover me with grace and flood me with peace and that love can banish my fears and yours and your loved ones.

11:03 May this week be a week of living in love, not fear. When the fear comes, take some time and go to the Lord and tell him you're afraid and he will be glad to give you the confidence that he's still in control and that his love is far more than enough for the worst situation. So do you have a loved one? And I'm sure you do if you're listening to this podcast. And you want prayer for them. You pray for them, but I'm sure you would love others too. And on the June 2nd, Prodigal Prayer Day, that's what we do.

11:47 We have a list of thousands of names. We only use first names. And we pray and people all over the world join in praying. Some of us pray for the whole list. Others pray for just parts of it. But if you'd like to be included in that, just write to us at prayerforprodigals.gmail.com or go to the prayer for prodigals Facebook page and you can give us a name or tell us you'd like to know how to participate. I will give you some instructions on that in the show notes so that you can be a part of this amazing thing that God called into being just because our son needed a lot of prayer.

12:32 I'm also going to have in the show notes a list of some songs that I think will help lift you beyond the fear. God bless you.