Seeking Transformation, episode 166

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at the When You Love a Prodigal podcast, and also help and hope for your own life journey. Today I am going to share four words that I believe hold a secret to transformation in our prodigal's lives, in our families, in our own lives. Please remember to jot down any actions that you think you should take. In my conversations with those who love a prodigal, or with someone going through hard times even, with anyone in an uncertain time, I usually end up at the same place with four words that can make a real difference, even bring transformation in a prodigal and in our own lives.

1:00 These words are filled with encouragement and hope. When I remember them and choose to believe what God says to me about them, I am changed. Sometimes my circumstances also change, and oftentimes I see new ways that God is answering my prayers. Let's just take a brief look at what God has to say about each one. I will try to read each one slowly so you can let it sink in for yourself and for your prodigal. The first word is love.

1:43 Our God lavishes love on us always and forever. I'm just going to share some scriptures that talk about God's love for us and for our prodigals. The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with loving kindness. What? Is that just beautiful? Love is from Jeremiah 31, everlasting love and wooing us with his loving kindness. Psalm 103, one of my very favorites.

2:24 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him or love him or choose to follow him. It's as high as it is from heavens to earth. That's how much he loves us. And in Romans 5, for God put his love on the line for us by offering his son in a sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. That's how much he loves us. He sent Jesus to die for us.

3:06 I am reading them slowly because I want you to have time to comprehend. In 1 John 4, we read, there is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear. And that's what God has, perfect love for us. In Romans 8, we read, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

3:54 Does that just give you great encouragement about God's love for you and for your beloved prodigal? So keep in mind always God's love. I was just interviewing Casey Lewis who was up last time on our previous episode. And she as a counselor talked about the importance of love and where do we get the kind of love for our loved one who's breaking our hearts or hurting us in many ways. We get that kind of love because of the love God has for us and for them.

4:35 And he will give us the love we need even when it's hard to love. The second word is mercy. Of course you know of things your prodigal has done for which they desire mercy and you find it hard to give. But the same is true for each of us. We've done many things that God should find hard to give us mercy for. But because of his great love for us, the Father sent Jesus to take our sins and he pours mercy on us over and over and over.

5:16 Famous verses from Lamentations 3. The faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh each morning. I love that concept. It's not like I have to depend on the mercies from before when I blew it again and the same would be true for our prodigals. No, he says every morning he has new mercy available to us. Nehemiah 9 tells us, but in your great mercy, Lord, you did not put an end to them talking about those who had really blown it or abandon them for you are a gracious and merciful God.

6:13 So often we think God's angry and out to get us or at least punish us, which we deserve. But no, you are a gracious and merciful God. Micah 7 tells us who is a God like you who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance. All the people, the Israelis who blew it over and over, he forgives. You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy. I think sometimes when we do give mercy to our loved ones because of something they've done, it's a little begrudgingly because we're still angry and so we don't really want to.

7:07 But you, Lord, delight to show mercy. You also give your people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. It's what mercy is about is forgiveness. Because of the tender mercy of our God by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the path of peace. I hope you're enjoying hearing these beautiful expressions of God's love and mercy and desire to do good to us.

7:51 Ephesians 2 tells us, all of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. I love it. Because of his great love, he has made us alive even in our sins because of his mercy.

8:37 Here's a verse you might not have ever really heard. James 2-3 says, mercy triumphs over judgment. Now that raises a lot of questions and I don't have all the answers, but it sure does give me hope. And then in Hebrews chapter 4, let us then approach God's throne of grace. I love the concept of a throne of grace. It's like the throne God's sitting on is made of grace. We approach his throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

9:20 So you've heard me talk about his love. So so overflowing, overwhelming, overpowering. He loves us no matter what. And then his mercy, he loves to forgive. He loves to show mercy. And then it says there at the end of the Hebrews passage, and find grace to help us in our time of need. And that's the next word I want to mention is grace. I have a granddaughter named Grace. She has four brothers. And I thought, boy, God put that name on her because she's going to help those four boys have more grace.

10:03 And then as I watched her and how strong willed she was and opinionated, I thought, no, maybe she's the one who needs the grace. But it's available. It brings us to God's partner in mercy, which is grace. They go together. As we live in his love, rescued by his mercy, we can walk day by day and moment by moment in his generous gift of grace. In Romans 5, we learn, but the gift is not like the trespass or the things we've done wrong. For if the many died by the trespass of one man, Adam, too bad.

10:50 How much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many? One person sinned, paid, we've all had that penalty to pay, but God's grace is so great. It's a gift and it comes because of Jesus and his death on the cross. And in Romans 5, we can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.

11:31 God put his life on the line for us by offering his son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. We didn't deserve it. We didn't provide anything except that God loves us and he has mercy on us and that causes him to have grace for us. And Thessalonians 2, may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our father who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope.

12:13 So will that encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word. Do you like the gifts that come with grace, eternal encouragement, good hope, encouraging our hearts and strengthening us to do the good deeds that we would like to do? Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, probably you've heard this, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of yourself. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. You can't earn it.

12:54 You can't make it yourself. God's given you grace and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. So he's saying in order for you to do the good works for which I've created you, I'm giving you all the grace you need, all the time that you need it, everything. You have grace for the good works that I have for you to do. My grace, we learned in 2 Corinthians 12, is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.

13:41 When we think we're too weak to live as we should and we're certainly too weak to know how to guide our prodigals well, he says there's grace for that. My grace is more than enough for whatever you need. Then let us approach God's throne of grace. I know I read this under the previous section, but I just love this concept. Let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace. Confidence, we can have confidence to come to God who's sitting on a throne of grace and he will receive us.

14:23 So as I began to comprehend the unfathomable love of God, I recognized that his love prompted his mercy to forgive all my sin. Then he gives even more. He forgives, but then he gives us amazing grace, all sufficient grace, endless grace to take us through every part of our journeys, every part being the good things that we love and the hard things that we experience and some of the bad choices that we make. But there's one more word I want to mention. We've talked about what? We've talked about love and mercy and grace.

15:06 He's given everything we need and for us to give to others, including our prodigals. And here is that other word. The word is blessing. Now I don't know about you, but sometimes I found it challenging to bless my prodigal who has caused me lots of pain, done things that I'm really not happy about, is continuing to make not great. Well, actually he's making mostly, but I'm sure you have prodigals that still are causing a lot of pain for you. Blessing. Here's a story of blessing. Now if you've been listening to my podcast for a long time, you might've heard this story because it's one of my favorites.

15:53 Here we go. Once again, our prodigal had aggravated me. That's probably an inadequate word. My natural reaction was to raise my voice and assign a consequence. Instead, as he stormed out of the house, I went to his room, gathered his scattered dirty clothes and headed to the laundry room. Doing his laundry was his job, not mine. But today it was mine. And as I threw each shirt and shorts into the washer, I said, my son, Josh, I bless you.

16:34 I don't know if he felt blessed or if he even remembered or recognized that I had done it for him. But it did wonders for me in my anger to choose blessing instead of harsh words, condemnation, harsh penalties. Why did I do that? Because God has convinced me of the power of blessing and the challenge to live it out. He tells us, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, you ready?

17:14 Repay evil with blessing because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. He says, you're called even in the hardest thing to bless instead of to curse or to be angry. So what really is blessing? What does it mean to bless? Let me help you with some definition here. Blessing is the projection of good into another's life. That comes from Dallas Willard, a great teacher and author. Or it means to bring God into the situation.

17:56 To bless is to offer prayer to God for someone's welfare and benefit. What a wonderful thing to ask good to happen in another's life, even if they have just done something to be hurtful to you. Given the realities of family stress with financial needs, racial tensions, fires and hurricanes and many other challenges in our lives today, I imagine there is a great need of blessing in word and deed in our homes. Think about that. The world, our lives are full of stress and hard things.

18:37 And even in the middle of that, rather than let our anger and our frustration take hurtful words, give hurtful words, that we would instead choose blessing. The call to bless extends well beyond our families, to neighbors, to coworkers, to those with different political views, to those with divergent cultural and racial attitudes and opinions. God says, bless, don't curse. When speaking your thoughts, expressing your feelings, describing the reality of your experience as God's children, we speak in love, not animosity, with blessing, not cursing.

19:27 And it goes one step further. Jesus himself admonishes us. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That's Matthew 5. Paul affirms this in Romans 12. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Seriously? Really? Bless my enemies, people who have harmed me or demeaned me or even destroyed my life and the people I love. And even my prodigal who has caused so much hurt.

20:08 Bless. Bless. Bless. The power of blessing. We know that hate multiplies hate, but blessing multiplies blessing and comes back to us. So not only do we cause good for people or our prodigal, but we get blessed as a result of our blessing others. I'm convinced that we need to extend blessing to our loved wanderers, but also those we disagree with, to our nation, to the nations of the world. So this is not just for our family and our prodigals, but it's for anybody in our lives, whether they're neighbors we know or the people out there making decisions that we don't like.

21:02 And what is our response to be? To be on our knees repenting. If my people who are called by name, who humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. What if all of those of us and others who are vilifying each other, filling social media with anger and accusations, were to speak words of blessing instead of cursing? What if media outlets would seek to bring together rather than stir up strife?

21:46 What if we were to bless? And my response to bless those I live with are prodigals that break our hearts and also people near and the ones we encounter with hopeful words, with encouraging eyes above my mask when I'm trying to have a face that's nice but doesn't really feel nice. No, we can offer a listening ear and we can help to meet real needs. And looking for ways to do these things is usually beyond my immediate capacity. And surely allowing the love, mercy, grace, and blessing from our God to flow through us to our loved ones who have and continue to break our hearts can bring transformation in their lives and ours.

22:42 Most of all, I will choose to bless on my knees, praying for our loving God to do His good for them, whether it's our child who's hurt us or other family members who have been spiteful or it's our neighbor who made a mess in our yard or it's those online and every place you turn your face who makes you angry. To bless them, to bless them, to send the blessings that God would like to give them and we're the channel of that blessing.

23:24 We can't do it on our own, but God will do it through us as we allow His love and His mercy and His grace to flow through us, there will be blessing that comes to us and then goes through us to our loved ones and to anyone else around us that we need to bless as well. So what about you? Which of these words encourages you the most? Is God saying, my love is available to flow through you? Is He saying, I'm going to forgive you no matter what?

24:07 Is He saying, there's grace to enable you to make those right choices, to choose the right way to talk to your loved one, to bring change in their hearts, to help them to believe that they are valued and loved and cared for? And then God says, you can bless, but know this, you will be blessed. The more you bless others, the more you will be blessed because my blessing comes back on you and flows through you to others. So may you experience today, this next week, God's love in new and powerful ways.

24:52 And may you, even as you make bad choices, know that you have been given mercy and may that enable you to give mercy to your loved one. And then that there's grace because it's not going to be easy overnight, but God gives grace for everything that you need. And then to take a tangible positive step and bless, whether you're praying the blessing or doing something that blesses them, like doing their laundry, or just speaking words of blessing instead of words of anger and resentment.

25:34 And then see how God will flow that blessing into you and through you. God bless you.