How to Love a Prodigal, Part 2 (episode 10)

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. Last week we took some first steps in learning how to love a prodigal. Were you able to put that into practice? To love with kindness and patience and not keeping a record of wrongs?

0:43 Today we will go further and discover the real secret to loving as Jesus loves. It was our son's, his sister's 21st birthday. We were having a family celebration. He went to the beach with friends promising to be back in time, but he did not come back in time. I was angry, angrier than I had any real reason to be. How dare he be so uncaring about his sister and so careless with his promise. Love for him was not visible in me at that point. The Apostle Paul exhorts us to really love. Note how the New Living Translation presents these thoughts from Romans chapter 12. Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold to what is good. Really love them. The Apostle John affirms the same. Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other. Let us show the truth by our actions. The obvious question is what does real love look like?

2:07 We looked at it some last week from 1 Corinthians 13 and we'll end up there, but first here are five things that I have found will help me love my prodigal with real love. First, love speaks truth. You said, well of course. I knew you would say that. Often the first expression of love we jump to for a prodigal is what people call tough love. After all, we have a responsibility to provide correction and discipline to help them turn from their wicked ways. We must speak truth to them, explaining what is right and helping them understand that choices have consequences. And scripture affirms that this is following God's example. Hebrews 12 tells us, the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chastens everyone he accepts as a son or daughter. Real love will let them experience natural consequences or if necessary, add some consequences appropriate to the choices made and the nature of our relationship with this prodigal. But tough love is often not God's primary approach, nor should it always be ours. The second is that love gives mercy. Earlier we were reminded

3:42 not to keep a record of wrongs. Any list we have needs to be forgiven. But of course our prodigals keep on sinning, as do we. So often, maybe daily, there are new offenses that also do not need to be put on a list, but need to be forgiven. Peter tells us this wonderful truth. He says, above all, love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins. So many times I have thanked God that his love has covered my multitude of sins and that he has poured out his mercy on me. Can I do no less than forgive my loved one?

4:33 Love also extends grace. So love speaks truth, it gives mercy, it extends grace. Even as God has repeatedly forgiven my many sins, he has also given me grace over and over. Sometimes it is grace instead of the consequences I deserve, or favor with someone who could help or hurt me, or maybe it's even the strength or courage or power to do something I have not been prepared to do. I have written this before in my book. If you read it, you'll get to this. And I have lived by this. This is something that God told me early in my relationship with our son. His desire for me to extend grace to my prodigal caused him to say to me, when you make mistakes with this boy, and you will, and I have, make your mistakes on the side of grace. Most people just can't even get over that. They're like, seriously? Make mistakes with grace? That's what God gives us, is that kind of mercy and grace, and he asks us to as well. 2 Corinthians chapter 9, and God is able to

6:04 bless you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. He gives us everything abundantly. He gives us mercy. He gives us grace. And if God can extend that much grace to us, he can enable us to do the same toward our prodigals. Love also bestows blessing. Over the years, my love prodigal has done many things that made me want to return in kind, to say, see you later. Give up. I speak with a curse to him almost. Every time God reminds me of his instruction through Peter, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. And God has had me through our son on this learning to bless journey. I remember one time I was so angry at something he had done, and God said, bless, bless, give grace and bless.

7:28 And he was gone, and one of his chores was to do his own laundry, which he usually cared what he was wearing, so he did. But I knew at this point that his room was covered over with dirty clothes. And so I went up to his room, he was gone, got all his dirty clothes, brought them down to our laundry. And one by one, I put his clothing into the washing machine. And each time I said, I bless you, I bless you, I bless you, Josh. Now, I don't know if he felt that blessing, but he was being blessed. And I was being blessed to do that for him. And God says, make blessing the way that you speak to people. And I've been practicing doing it. Speaking a blessing, doing something kind for him, reading a blessing I have written for him. In fact, I write blessings for people. That's how important it's become. It's transformed my attitude over and over. And it's convinced him that my love for him is real.

8:44 Love confers honor. I mentioned this last week. Sometimes I can start thinking I'm better than my prodigal. After all, I have not done what he has. I walk with God fairly consistently. I keep loving him no matter what. But God is quick to remind me of his words in Philippians, chapter two, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, get this, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Is that amazing? Can you do that? Can I do that? Put aside the fact that I am clearly better than he is. No, I am to lift him up, think more highly.

9:43 In fact, Romans 12 tells us, be devoted to one another and love, and honor one another above yourselves. Now, you know, when it's somebody who's very good, very accomplished, and it's easy to honor them above yourself. But your prodigal? Yeah. Now we're going to jump back to finish this part on love to 1 Corinthians 13 to discover the wrap up for God's description of true love, the love that we are to love our prodigals with. When our son came to our family at almost 10 years old, he had experienced significant rejection and abandonment. He did not trust. He was certain we would do the same, reject and abandon.

10:40 And he gave us many reasons to. It took him more than 10 years before he truly believed we would not reject him or abandon him. Why did it take so long? I'm sure there are many reasons, but two come to my mind. First, betrayal destroys trust. And second, trust takes time to heal and rebuild. And I'm sure our efforts to love him well were inadequate to easily overcome his past. But we did choose to love as God loved us. We were guided by these challenging descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians 13 verses 7 and 8. It tells us that love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, and never fails. Now those are not wishy washy descriptions. Always means always. And never means never. We're usually a little loose with that, I think. So let's quickly look at these. Love always protects. Surely this abandoned boy needed protection. For starters, he needed to be protected from his past, from the patterns of his life, and from himself, the past. So much had been taken from him,

12:14 so much had been done to him, and we needed to protect him from the consequences of those things. He had learned really poor living patterns of how to live and what it looks like to care about people. And certainly one of those patterns was no one could be trusted. We had to help him learn some new patterns. And himself, what he believed about himself, the choices he made, the danger he would put himself in. Many other things. We tried to provide that protection as a part of our love for him. Love always trusts. Well, we wanted to trust him, and to assure him that we trusted him, he'd say, you just don't trust me. Yeah, but it was difficult to trust him because he made a lot of bad choices and he lied.

13:15 We sought to help him learn to live in a trustworthy way. And trusting for us really meant trusting that God was always working to redeem and restore this child. That God was trustworthy, and over time, as our son grew, our trust in him could grow as well. Love always hopes. Have you given up hope? Yeah, it can happen, can't it? Sometimes hope was all there was for us. He didn't have hope that he would make it through school, get back with his mother, know his dad, overcome his life habits, or have a future. And often we despaired along with them. But God's promise of hope for a future kept us steady, hoping and giving hope to him that he had a future. Love always perseveres. The results of his birth mother's choices while pregnant with him made school really difficult for him. We ended up homeschooling through high school, which he did not appreciate, nor did I enjoy very much. Each day as I gave him school assignments, his attitude annoyed me, even angered me. I would leave his room

14:45 declaring to God, I quit. He doesn't care. Why should I care? I can't keep doing this. And God always had the same response. He says, so Judy, when did I give up on you? I know never, but you're God. And then he said, yes, I love this young man. I have shared that love with you, and you can do this. You can persevere in loving him. So I did. Finally, love never fails. Always, always, always, and never. It never fails. God's love flowing through us always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. And it never fails. I'm grateful because I fail. Too often I try to love in my own power. I let the rejection of my love make me want to withdraw. I want to give up. But God's love never fails. He promises to love through me, which brings us back to where we started last week. We love because God loved first. He loved us first. We love it when God does big miracles quickly, but we

16:15 all know that he usually works over time. When you love a prodigal, you must be patient. Don't despair. Keep loving your prodigal as God has loved you. Let me end this with a story. The night that Josh met Jesus, I was thrilled, rejoicing, hopeful. Maybe things would change. Then as I was going to sleep and praying and thanking God, I just had this picture that God was above me, and he had this huge vat. He was opening me up, and he was pouring from this huge vat into me. I said, So what is that? He says, Oh, Judy, this is my love for Josh. I'm sharing it with you. You're going to need it. And I got it.

17:22 And I've been getting it ever since. We can't love like Jesus loved. We can't even begin on our own to have the kind of love that we've been talking about for two episodes now. Unstoppable, relentless, merciful, gracious love for us. All of that. And that impossible command to love as Jesus loved, giving up his life. He says, No, you can't do it yourself, but I've done it for you. And I've sent my spirit to live in you to make it possible for you to love. And it's like I have this picture of God as a flow through God in that we're his flow through. He pours his love into us so that it can pour through us unto all the people we encounter, and especially to that prodigal who's so hard to love. So when we understand the human impossibility of truly loving anyone, including our prodigals, the way Christ loved, we must go to our knees and say, Yes, Lord, I need you. Fill me with your Holy Spirit.

18:49 Fill me with your love. Give me your supernatural power to love as you have loved me. Can you do that? Can you say, Lord, pour your love into me? Allow your spirit to push it through me to touch that loved one, that prodigal who's so in need of our love and God's love. Next week, I hope we're having a very special guest on the podcast. I'm hoping that you'll get to hear from Josh McDowell. He's a good friend of mine. He played an important role in our son's life. And he has some good things to share with us. God bless you.

19:44 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.

20:25 Until next week.