God is Always at Work, episode 20 (rebroadcast)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass, and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. He's building his testimony. My friend Diane was a faithful prayer warrior on behalf of our son. I used to pass her on the way to my office, and she always asked how he was doing. On the days that there were more bad choices and more reasons to despair, she often responded, He's building his testimony. With those words, God kept reminding me of this important truth from Jesus. My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working. When our loved one is doing destructive things, whether from childish thinking, lack of thinking, trauma response, gratifying the flesh, evil intent, or from just being foolish, our tendency is often to sigh or cry or despair. Yet God is at work

1:30 even in all this. He is at work in our prodigals. He is at work in these circumstances, and he is at work in us. I hope you're hearing this. I've said it over and over. This is not just about your loved one who's making bad choices. Even as God works on them, he's always working on us as well, out of his love and grace. One of my favorite verses assures me that God was intentional when he made each one of us, including our loved ones, designing us perfectly for the plans he has created for us. Ephesians 2 10 says, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. The word workmanship has been translated handy work, but it should be work of art or a masterpiece. You are God's masterpiece.

2:38 Is that what you said when you looked in the mirror this morning? Work of art and your prodigal? Can you look at them and call them a work of art, a masterpiece? Often I take comfort in this promise for myself and for my prodigal. Being confident of this, that he, God, who began a good work in you, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with David the psalmist. The Lord will accomplish what concerns me, you, your prodigal. Your loving kindness, O Lord, is everlasting. Do not forsake the work of your hands. God will use choices, even poor ones, and circumstances to accomplish what he began in each of us, building a testimony for future good works as he has been doing in our prodigals. Job, just before the end of his ordeal, understood, I know, Lord, that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

4:00 Don't you love that? No purpose of yours can be thwarted. Not long ago, I reread Heinz's Feet on High Places, an allegory, the story of little Much Afraid and her journey to the high places to live with the Good Shepherd. It was a challenging journey. During a particularly difficult time, when Much Afraid spent her days making her way through a dense fog, she despaired that the shepherd had abandoned her and she felt she would never find her way. When the shepherd came to her and she asked him why she was lost in the fog, he replied, I am working in ways you cannot see. Oh, how true that is for us as we live in the fog of our prodigal's delinquency.

4:55 How many times have you held on to this next promise? And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Then, from my favorite prophet, Isaiah, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done, saying, my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. I love to hold on to those kind of promises of who God is and what he's like, what he's able to do, and what he will do. In other words, God knew what he was doing when he created your loved one. He knows what he's doing now and he is continuing to accomplish his good purposes in and through that life. Yes, and in our own lives as well. Let's go back to the beginning. That is, the beginning of this episode or the beginning of your waiting with your loved one or the beginning of time. For, of course, with God, there is no beginning or ending. He is the great I Am. God said to Moses, I am who I am. He is the before and the after, the Alpha and the Omega, who is, who was,

6:28 who is to come. He's the Almighty. As we struggle with time, with waiting, with the seemingly endless pain, with giving up hope, which is looking to the future, it is good to remember that though God created time, he does not live in time. He lives in eternity. But he also lives in the present, in the now. Again, his name is I Am. That's present tense. He calls us to live in the present, which is where we find God. When we dwell in the past, we relive fear, uncertainty, failure, pain. Or if the past held better times, we hold on to them wishing they would return. If we dwell in the future, we dream, project, we hope, which are not bad things, but we can't know the future and we certainly can't control it. God calls us to live in the present, which is all that we really have. And he is there with us. He tells us in Matthew, I am with you always. And God assures us through David that our times are in God's hands. That's true for those of us who love Prodigals,

7:59 and it is true for those Prodigals that we love. Their times are in his hands, and we can rest in that. And we can keep praying. For though we live in the present time, get this, our prayers live beyond us. Mark Patterson writes in his book Draw the Circle, our prayers never die. When we pray, our prayers exit the four dimensions of space and time that we live in. They have no space or time limitations because the God who answers them exists outside of our four dimensions that he created. You never know when his timeless answer will reenter the atmosphere of our lives, and that should fill us with holy anticipation. Never underestimate his ability to answer anytime, anyplace, anyhow. He has infinite answers to our finite prayers.

9:03 Patterson goes on to recount stories from his own life and others' lives, of prayers answered years, even decades later, sometimes well after the passing of the prayer warrior. Our God hears our prayers. He treasures them. Your prayers, we read in Acts, have come up as a memorial offering before God. Did you hear that? In Revelation, we see it again. And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held golden bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of God's people. So your prayers and my prayers for our prodigals, for those we love, for ourselves to know how to love them better, they're coming as a wonderful fragrance to the Lord. They are the incense that greets God at the Revelation at the throne of God. What a treasure our prayers are to God. And he answers them.

10:18 Isaiah 60, we read before, in its time I will do this swiftly. We can hold onto this promise from our God who is before and after time, but who dwells with us in the present. And God is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. Take courage from David's words on waiting with hope. I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Because I know who God is and what he is like, and because I understand that he operates in time, even though he lives beyond time, I can wait and hope. I can in my heart bind together the difficult present with a hopeful future in this world of God's involvement and goodness.

11:34 I can live in the light of God. I will eagerly anticipate what he will do. I will wait with hope. Here's something to think about. When has God worked in ways you could not see at the time, but later realized what he had been doing? How does that experience give you hope for your prodigal? Here's something you could do. What can you tell yourself right now to help you keep your focus on the present where God is living with you? God bless you.

12:16 Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. And for more helpful information, resources, and books, check out judydouglass.com. That's Douglass with two S's. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.