Four More Gifts, episode 144

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal podcast and also help and hope for your own life journey. Last week we talked about four gifts that God gives us during our prodigal journey, gifts that sustain and equip us for all the challenges. Would one of these gifts God himself, love, mercy, or grace bless, encourage, or help you? Today, we are going to talk about four more gifts our gracious God offers us, valuable resources on our journey to help us with our loved one and to appreciate the good work our Lord continues to do in each of us.

0:54 I've said something like that several times, haven't I? We need to recognize that God's not only concerned about and working on our prodigal, our person who's breaking our hearts. He's also working on us. That's a key for us to understand what's going on. God's at work in our prodigal and in us. Here's an amazing gift that he gives us, prayer. Prayer, you think, oh, well, prayer, you know. I said, yeah, do you know? I've known Jesus for 65 years.

1:36 I've been praying for at least that long. And I work in a ministry where we pray. We pray mornings and meals and bedtimes and beginnings of meetings. If the meetings aren't going well, we might stop to pray. We pray at the end of whatever we're doing. We're praying people right. Right? Yes. Then I had a prodigal. And then I discovered that prayer really needed to be a way of life, that it was a constant kind of thing. I consider it a way that I breathe in the sense that I'm talking to God. I'm including him in my thinking, in my conversation, in my fears, in everything that's going on.

2:24 I'm including him in that. It's like breathing. Then God showed me these really wonderful verses in Isaiah 62. It says, I have posted Watchman on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest. Be in prayer all the time. But then I love this part, and give him, that is God, no rest until he, in this case, establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth or until he responds to your prayers.

3:11 So he's saying, don't quit. Keep praying. Continue to pray. Give yourself no rest. But then he said, give God no rest. God invites us to bombard him with our needs, our cares, our requests. Now there's more that's going to come in with that in a little bit here. But he sent this invitation. Come and tell me what you need, what you desire. We can talk. We can tell him what we think, how we feel, what we are afraid of, what we wish would happen.

3:54 He invites us to come in honesty and vulnerability with our needs, our hopes, our dreams. We are welcome at his throne of grace. I have listed in the show notes for today some resources to help you as you're on your knees or sitting in your chair or driving in your car, bringing your loved one to the Lord. So that's our first gift for today is prayer. Big, wide open invitation from God. The second gift, oh, I don't know if you'll like this, perseverance.

4:37 That wasn't a gift you wanted. Me either. Who wants that gift? But listen to what James says about that gift. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Once again, we see this is not just about our protocols, but it's also about us. And he's calling us to persevere. It's a gift that God gives us to do the needed transformation in our lives.

5:18 He gives or allows challenging circumstances in our lives to do the perfecting work in us so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. That's really a wonderful promise. Even though the way to get there doesn't sound wonderful, God says, it's worth it. It's worth it. I'm working in you as much as I'm working in your loved one. So to see in the trials of, for some of us many years with our son or daughter, as God's means of doing wonderful work in us, so we become mature, complete, lacking nothing.

6:07 What a gift. He gives us prayer and he gives us perseverance. Oh, and then another hard gift. He gives us a call to surrender. My timetable for my son's recovery from his addictions and hurtful, even frightening choices was much quicker than God's. I wanted it to happen soon. Guess who's timetable one? God's did. It was a long journey. His working perseverance in us takes time.

6:48 Our patience wears then. We threaten to give up and that brings us to surrender. We give up, we surrender not to the desires we have for our loved one to change, but to God himself and what his plan is in this. It's another gift from God. Here's a challenging word for God in Isaiah 30. This is what the sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says, in repentance and rest is your salvation and quietness and trust is your strength.

7:32 But you would have nothing to do with it. You would have none of it. You didn't want to repent and to rest and to be quiet before the Lord and trust him. You wanted it to happen the way you wanted. We want God to do things our way on our timetable. I was talking about myself there. Probably you can relate. We want God to do this the way we want. But over time I began to realize I'm still wanting my own way. I'm not easily saying I choose your way, Lord.

8:12 One of the gifts that Josh really has been to me was to surrender to God's plan instead of always wanting it the way I want. No, we don't like the pain. We don't like the fear of what might happen. Yet God's still loving us and loving our loved one. What does it take to be able to walk through this? Surrender. What does that look like? God mentions four things here. He says to repent. I take that as to quit demanding your own way. Yes, we can be honest and tell him our desires, our hopes, and our dreams.

8:59 But we let go of our demands and that it happens the way we want. He says to rest. Do you find yourself exhausted in this ongoing battle? Our Lord invites us to rest, to let him do his work in our loved ones and in us. He says to be quiet. If we quit making so much noise like saying, I want this, I want this to be different. I want to see progress. I want to see a major change. I want to see you work, God. Why aren't you doing this?

9:40 I've said things like that to God. He asks us to quietly surrender and listen to him and to trust him. He is God and he is good. He loves each of us. He loves you. He loves me as well as our loved protocols. He urges us to persevere, to be patient, to take a breath, to rest knowing God is at work. He never quits working. And as we surrender to our trustworthy God, we come to this treasured gift, life-changing one for me, and that is the gift of gratitude.

10:32 One of the best gifts that I have received on our journey has been gratitude, learning to give thanks in everything. I was just this past weekend with some of my grandchildren, one of whom had a birthday. She received gifts, of course, and as she opened each one, her mom said, what do you say? From an early age, we keep reminding them to say, thank you. It can take a long time before it becomes a way of life. It has been even more specific.

11:12 He encouraged us to give thanks. Even, well, we can give thanks when we feel really grateful, when we like the gift, when we get what we want. He's delighted when we do that. But he says we are even to give thanks in everything, things that we don't like, things that aren't going the way we were hoping. Is that possible? Can we really do that? How can you say thanks when something terrible happens? He doesn't say give thanks for it, but in it. He says, in, in the event, in the process, in the situation, give thanks to God, that he is in control, that he is working here, that he will bring about his good plans even in the midst of something that is incomprehensible to us.

12:12 Here are some practices that God has given me that has helped me be able to almost always in little things, like when the light at my, getting out of my housing area takes forever and I'm already late. I can say thank you, Lord, and in great big things like when my husband left, when I prayed with my children, the only words coming out of my mouth were thank you, Lord. So this has become a real thing for me. Here are these practices. For the most part, the most important transformed practice is to walk in the Spirit.

12:58 Jesus said his Spirit will live in us, offering all we need to live this life, that Jesus has purchased for us by his death. We recognize we can't do it on our own, so we invite the Holy Spirit to fill us, to empower us, to give us wisdom, to give us courage, to give us perseverance, whatever we need. And so if I'm struggling with trusting God, being at peace, I can stop and check. Who's in control in my life? Am I really surrendered to the Spirit of God?

13:39 Next, this is a really easy thing to do in a way, but not always. That's to look for the good. When things don't go the way we want, our natural response is to notice everything that's wrong. And some people do that as a way of life. They're always seeing what's not good, whether it's that empty glass or that somebody's out to get them or nothing ever works right for them. But God has taught me over the years to look for the good. And even in the midst of hard, very bad things, I can find something that's got a good tent to it that looks like it's going to make a difference, that gives hope.

14:25 And so that's been an important thing for me. Look instead for glimpses of good that God is doing. That gives you some hope, especially when you're thinking about your loved one and all you've seen are the bad things. There are times when there's something that gives you hope. And to look for those and hold on to them. This really helps me get my eyes, my mind, my heart off the negatives and instead stopping to acknowledge the potential positive outcomes. And why can we do that? Because God is involved.

15:06 He is there. And as I do these things, as I walk in the spirit and look for some good, I find myself beginning to say thank you, Lord, to give thanks. Not thank you for something that is scary or hurtful, but thank you, Lord, because I can trust you even in this. So we get to give good gifts to our protocols, our loved ones by loving them and showing mercy and grace, but they are also amazing gifts that we receive from our protocol, even if indirectly.

15:54 We looked at the gifts last week of God himself, of unconditional love, of abundant mercy, of amazing grace. And today we have talked about prayer. We get to talk to God himself and he loves for us to come and talk to him. Perseverance, God enables us to not give up, but then he does a great work in our lives of making us complete and lacking nothing. Surrender. You know, if I'm holding in my hands what I want, God say, well, when you can let go of that, I have something I want to put in your hands.

16:38 And so our demanding our own way rather than surrendering with open hands, open heart, open mind, so that God can do his good work in us as well as in our loved one. I'm always amazed in awe of how God multitask. He takes his transforming work in us, even as he's doing transforming work to redeem and restore those who have gone astray, all through the same circumstances. So which gift do you need most?

17:19 I will have some good references or good resources for you in the show notes to prepare for what's ahead and what's ahead coming soon is the Worldwide Protocol Prayer Day. Next week I'll give you a little more information on that. God bless you.