Gifts 2—Unconditional Love and Grace, episode 89

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover, help, and hope for your wilderness journey

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right here at When You Love a Prodigal.

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And also help and hope for your own life journey.

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Today, we continue our wilderness exploration looking for treasured gifts.

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Were you able to see God's mercy in your life from last week?

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Were you able to extend that mercy to your loved ones?

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So as you listen this week, be sure to jot down any aha moments you have about possible

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gifts and how they might affect your relationship with your prodigal.

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Several times on this podcast, I have mentioned this statement that I received directly from

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God.

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By definition, unconditional love doesn't require love in return.

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I know it's true.

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God loved me first, long before I loved him, when I was definitely living in my sense.

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And even after I responded to that love and accepted his gift of salvation, I haven't

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always loved him well, you know, by obeying him.

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But he has never quit loving me.

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That is unconditional love.

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Parents learn this early.

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Even before a baby is born, they love her.

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And the moment they see her, they are head over heels in love.

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And that's a good thing because that baby demands everything and gives no love in return

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for quite a while.

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Unfortunately, they grow up and usually learn to love.

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Unfortunately, when they become teens, sometimes they break our hearts with words like, leave

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me alone.

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I hate you.

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Or in our case of our adopted son, you're not my real mother.

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Our son often made it hard to love him.

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Many of his actions were enough to eradicate all my love for him.

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But they didn't.

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And I thought I was loving unconditionally.

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He first came to us because his birth mother couldn't care for him.

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And he was hurt and confused.

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He couldn't call me mom and he couldn't love me.

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That would be betraying his real mother.

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As the years passed, though, I grew to love him deeply.

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But as he grew, he had much pain to work through.

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He made lots of negative choices.

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He was trying to figure out who he was and loving me was not a priority.

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And sometimes that was painful to me.

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And I would say to God, would it be so hard for him to be able to say, I love you to me

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just once on a birthday card or a Mother's Day card, not even real words?

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And the Lord responded so clearly, Judy, unconditional love doesn't require love in return.

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Yes, we can desire it, but it's not guaranteed at all.

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And if our love stops because we don't get love back, then it wasn't really unconditional.

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What a gift Josh gave me, helping me begin to understand the depth of God's love for

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me.

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If I never loved him in return, God that is, or did what he asked me to do, or lived in

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a Christ-like manner, or even if I committed a terrible crime, God would keep loving me.

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I couldn't make him quit loving me.

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That's the kind of love, truly unconditional, that God asks us to have for our prodigals.

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When I began to understand that, I began to just keep on loving, no matter what he did.

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I will never forget the day Josh said, I love you.

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Those words came from a painful situation of his own.

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I was grateful for the I love you that day.

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And I am grateful even now when those words come easily off his lips and are proved in

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his actions day after day.

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But it was a long wait, like 12 years, before he could say that to me.

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And I thank God that he used this boy, now a man, to teach me the real meaning of unconditional

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love.

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Most of us, we have some conditions, and we want this to happen, or this to be said, or

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this not to happen, and God says.

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Those may not be good behaviors, but they don't affect my love for you.

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And I will give you my unconditional love and let it flow through you for this loved

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one who is causing you pain.

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So that's another gift.

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Mercy we looked at first, love, unconditional love, and then a gift of grace.

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And you think these all seem related.

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Well, they are all related.

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So let's look at grace.

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Grace was not a word in my early life that I knew anything about.

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I wanted my own way and pursued it relentlessly.

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I wasn't mean usually, but I had no concept of what grace was.

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So what is it?

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It's a hard word to get your head around.

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In the dictionary, it is defined with words such as favor, goodwill, kindness, charity,

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love, mercy, pardon, reprieve.

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Grace is in all of those.

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In scriptural terms, we learn that grace is the merciful kindness of God to love us, pursue

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us, extend forgiveness, draw us into a relationship with him.

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We can't earn it.

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It is a gift.

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It is the gift of Jesus dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.

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It is the gift of God meeting needs and pursuing our hearts and giving us the ability to keep

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loving and giving grace to our prodigals who cause so much pain.

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When I met Jesus in high school, I began to get a little glimpse of grace.

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After all, I was saved by grace through faith, and that began a journey of beginning to understand

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it.

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Looking back over the years, I see how the grace of God protected me from wrong choices.

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He extracted me from the wrong crowd in high school.

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He said if I married the good man I was engaged to, I wouldn't be able to do what he wanted

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me to do.

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I see now that those were his grace to let me be able to make wise decisions.

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I remember sitting by the pool at Arrowhead Springs in California, looking out over the

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valley asking, why me, God, why am I so blessed?

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He really showed me this was his grace, that he had given many things to me.

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The work God called me to, what an incredible gift of grace.

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Living my dream to be a magazine writer and editor for him.

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The amazing privilege that I had of working with the crew founder Bill Bright, of meeting

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humble servants of God, of writing about what God was doing in people's lives all over

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the globe.

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So much grace.

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I didn't deserve that.

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God was kind and extended grace to let me have the dream of my heart serving him.

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It didn't feel like grace when I waited and waited through five years of dating for Steve

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Douglass to decide he could, should, would get married.

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But when he finally proposed to me, I was overcome with God's grace to give me such

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a man.

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And oh how I miss him now.

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Children are great grace instructors.

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It took a lot of grace to make it through my first daughter's first months.

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She had a hurting tummy and cried constantly and hardly slept at all.

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Gratefully, daughter too slept much of her first year, a kind grace from the Lord after

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the first one.

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And they both have been grace to me throughout their lives.

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And even in especially in the past couple of months.

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My greatest teacher about grace, our son Josh.

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Oh such grace I have learned.

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God gave grace first to this boy to lift him out of his unstable situation into a home

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where he received love and security and many advantages.

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Though it took a while for him to grasp that.

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It took God's grace to give me understanding of his grace.

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I needed to go much deeper into grasping how God had shed his grace on me and how needy

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this boy was of a lot of grace.

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Grace to endure and persevere through Josh's wilderness journey for me.

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Grace to rise above what he thought he would be into something that God had planned for

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him.

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Grace for me to give, extend, repeat, offer sometimes grudgingly, sometimes through tears,

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but increasingly freely and joyfully grace to this boy.

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As is true for all of us, comprehending something of the grace of God takes a journey.

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Sometimes a long one, but God never gave up on me.

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He kept pouring it on, opening my eyes and my heart to see grace and even showed me how

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to give grace to others.

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The grace to give and to receive that I learned from Josh has been extended broadly and deeply

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to family, friends, co-workers, and strangers.

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I understand more each day that God calls us to be his arms of grace to all those that

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we encounter.

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And yes, to me, oh the grace that he keeps giving.

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So what has it been for you?

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When has it been challenging for you to keep loving your prodigal?

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How could you apply unconditional love to the situation?

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To love even though they don't deserve it?

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To love even though they throw it back in your face?

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Unconditional love, it goes hand in hand with the grace that God has poured on us and given

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us through Jesus.

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How have you seen grace in your life through loving your prodigal?

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Where have you given unexpected grace, surprised your prodigal, or others who were watching?

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When might you give grace today?

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Write it down.

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You've heard me say it week after week after week.

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I think I'm going to remember something that God touched my heart or my mind with, but

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if I don't write it down, it's usually gone.

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And next week, well, we're going to explore deeper in the wilderness and look for some

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more gifts that will transform our lives and the way we relate to our prodigals.

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Be sure to check out the show notes.

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We'd love it if you subscribed to this podcast.

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That would bless me, give some grace to me, and really love it if you would tell others

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as well or even write a review.

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Thank you.

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Bless you.