Make Your Mistakes on the Side of Gracet (episode 12)

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. Welcome back. I trust you enjoyed and learned from our episodes on love, our foundation for living with and loving a prodigal. And hopefully our conversation with Josh McDowell was helpful and encouraging for building strong relationships with your loved ones.

0:46 And welcome now to the beginning of a series on grace. And the title of this episode is Make Your Mistakes on the Side of Grace. Hmm, we'll talk about that in a bit. I just think that grace is a co-essential with love. They go together in how we build and maintain relationships with our prodigals and improve the chances of restoration and reconciliation. Probably you have heard of the book or play or the movie Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. You might not have known that. It is a powerful story of forgiveness and redemption and grace. When Jean Valjean was released from a 19-year prison sentence for stealing bread, can you believe that? He was understandably a hardened man. Looking for a place to sleep, he was invited in to a church by a kind bishop. In the night, though, Valjean stole silver from the bishop and sneaked away. The next morning, the police found him and brought him to the bishop, silver in hand. The bishop's response, so there you are. I'm delighted to see you. Had you forgotten that I gave you the candlesticks as well? Did you forget to take them? And

2:22 to the police, he said, this gentleman is no thief. The silver was my gift to him. That was the beginning of Valjean's transformation. What the bishop gave Valjean is called grace. And grace is an amazing gift from God for everyone, but especially for those of us who love a prodigal. In Hebrews 416, God invites us to join him on his throne of grace. It says, let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. If you love a prodigal, you probably are in a time of need. God has much experience loving prodigals, such as, oh, you and me and all of humanity. So he is the perfect companion for us on this wilderness journey.

3:28 He goes with us. He comforts us. He gives hope. He relieves our fears. And he gives grace for all our inadequacies and mistakes and for the pain experienced by and caused by those we love so much. Most of us are not naturally full of grace. We don't receive it or give it easily. It's certainly been a journey for me to understand grace. So what is grace? In various dictionaries, it is defined with words such as favor, goodwill, kindness, forgiveness, love, mercy, pardon, reprieve. Now, does that help you grasp a little bit of the reality of this amazing gift? Sometimes the antonyms also help us understand the meaning of a word. Opposites of grace include animosity, disfavor, harshness, disrespect, dishonor.

4:38 But we gain even greater insight into God's definition of grace from the Greek lexicon, not where I usually spent a lot of time, but it was helpful to me with grace. The Greek word for grace is kauris, which has the same root as words for joy, thanks, and gift. Here are some definitive kind of other words that give us more insight into grace. Joy, pleasure, delight, goodwill, favor, merciful kindness. In our terms today, saying it as we might say it, grace could be defined as not getting what you deserve, such as a consequence for not doing your assigned work, or for lying about where you were going, or speaking harshly to a family member. So if you got grace, you didn't get the consequence that you deserved.

5:44 Grace can be being given something unexpected that you didn't deserve, such as a gift, a small one or a large one, that meets a need for you or a deeply desired wish that you had. I will always remember when I was 11, after asking my father for a horse for years, a friend of his loaned me his horse to ride, which I did for the next four years. Such a gift of grace, unexpected, not anything I really deserved, but a gift for me. Grace can also be giving a second or third or fourth chance. Our son made many mistakes or bad choices, and sometimes we gave him another chance to do it right. I think this sums it up a lot. Grace is like someone has paid it forward for you. I just hope that this helps you to get a grasp of what a wonderful and amazing and for us naturally impossible thing that grace is. And yet God loves to give us grace. We also learn from scripture that He just loves to give to us, and a lot of the grace He gives provides some specific gifts for us. For example, some of these grace gifts might include sufficiency for every need—patients,

7:20 financial needs, medical provision, relational needs. Is that wonderful? Provision for every need. Grace also is a gift for redemption and forgiveness, for my mistakes and to give grace when my loved one needs it. It also is incomparable—true riches, deep relationships, purpose in life, peace, things that we're all striving for. God gives us through His grace. Encouragement. Do you need encouragement today? I had a note from somebody this morning that really encouraged me. We all love that, and God gives us encouragement as a gift of grace. He gives us strength. It can be emotional strength, which we often need with a prodigal, mental, spiritual, physical strength—a gift from God. Growth. We don't want to stay where we are. We want to keep growing. He says grace is a gift to help you grow, to learn through this wilderness journey and become more the person He wants you to be. Wisdom. Yeah, every day, every moment, we need wisdom, don't we? That's a grace gift from God.

8:45 So I'm going to take some liberty with all that I've talked about. From the root word, are, that can cover grace, joy, thanks, and gift, and here's my definition. You might say grace is an undeserved gift from God, joyfully given and gratefully received. Early in our journey with our son, God said to me, when you make mistakes with this boy—and you will, and I did—make them on the side of grace. I'm just going to pause. I want you to think about that. Make your mistakes on the side of grace. This word from God led me to a much better understanding of grace, especially God's grace and how He continually has given me grace. But I also began to comprehend the role it would play in the life of our prodigal and the importance of my giving grace to Him to maintain a strong relationship with Him. In the next few weeks, we will consider several ways we can learn and grow in and live out grace on this wilderness journey. My prayer is that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will be poured out on us and through us abundantly.

10:16 And as we close, let me ask you some questions to think about. What meaning of grace has been enlightening to you? In what way? How has it helped you to understand the incredible reality of amazing grace? How have you seen the grace of God active in your life? And how might you extend grace to your loved one today and every day this next week? And next week we'll talk about the voice of grace. God bless you.

10:57 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.