The Power of Grace, episode 155

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. As you listen, make a note of anything you hear God whispering to you. I know if I don't write it down, I always forget, so maybe that's true for you as well. In all my years of loving a prodigal and seeking to help others love their prodigal well, one word has been the key difference. It has made all the difference.

0:40 It's the change agent, and that word is grace. Early in my journey with my prodigal, God gave me a guiding word. He said, when you make mistakes with this boy, and you will, and I did, make them on the side of grace. If I had a theme verse, it would be from Hebrews 4.16. 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. I just love that. I've said it to myself, and I've quoted it many times.

1:23 He says, come on up, come up to the throne of grace. Be sure that you're welcome here, and you're going to get mercy, and you're going to find all the grace you need in your time of need. As we know, when you have a prodigal, it's a time of need. Let me try to convey the meaning and magnitude of this word as it reveals God and his involvement in our lives and the lives of those we are praying for. We are blessed as we come to him, for our need is great. It's deep, and for most of us, it's ongoing.

2:04 It's a long journey. Thus we have a means to discover the reality of God's grace in the intense crucible and classroom of our lives with our prodigals. So what is grace? In the dictionary, it is defined with words such as favor, goodwill, kindness, forgiveness, charity, love, mercy, clemency, pardon, leniency, reprieve, and sometimes seeing the anonyms also helps us understand the meaning, animosity, enmity, disfavor, harshness, disrespect, dishonor.

2:56 And so you see it's a very positive word, not a negative word at all. And we gain much greater insight into God's definition of grace from the Greek lexicon. The Greek word for grace is keras, which has the same root as words for joy, thanks, and gift. And here are some other definitions and descriptions that are in the Greek. That which affords us joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, and loveliness.

3:37 When you talk about grace in your speech, it would mean words like goodwill and loving kindness. It would talk about the favor of merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, strengthens them, increases them in faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of Christian virtues. So what does it mean to live in grace? It's a spiritual condition living in grace is of one governed by the power of divine, heavenly spiritual grace.

4:25 And there are many gifts of grace. All bounty, recompense, reward, resulting in thanks and gratitude. So are you getting a picture about what this word is? And when you mean it's from God, you begin to understand that all of those even non-spiritual definitions, when you see that it's coming from God, you begin to understand how great this gift He has given us. That power there is in it to how we live our lives. He tells us there are gifts the scripture has bestowed on us by the grace of God, delivered by the Lord Jesus, and continually poured out on us and in us by the Holy Spirit who lives in us when we know Christ.

5:21 He provides sufficiency for every need. Whatever I need, He's got it. There's grace for it. Redemption, incomparable riches, encouragement, strength, growth. Okay, do you get the picture? Grace is a gift of overflowing abundance. So as we find ourselves on our knees or on our faces, I was many times on behalf of our own protocols and many others. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be poured out on us and through us abundantly.

6:07 May the grace be evident in what we say and how we respond to the things our protocol does. We tend to get angry or frustrated or really unhappy, but God says that we're to be the channels of His grace. He gives it to us so that He can then give it to our loved ones through us. So I want to take a look at grace in action. And this is a prodigal story, but you know it, but I want to help us see the grace in it. It's called the story of the prodigal son, but most of us have learned that it's really about two prodigal sons, the younger and the elder, but it's really about the graceful father.

7:00 It is found in Luke chapter 15. So I'm going to give you a little synopsis and then some personalization and application. So there is the younger son. Here's what he did. He shamed his father by asking for his inheritance, which is equal to wishing that his father were dead because in order to get his inheritance, his father would need to be dead, but instead he's just asking for it. And the father, yes, we'll find out about it in a minute, but what he did, the son took a significant portion of his father's livelihood.

7:45 He and also stocked the livelihood of a farmer and a person who was raising livestock. And then he went and lived a life of extravagant sin, which is the real meaning of prodigal. He squandered all of his inheritance with wild living. And then he'd despaired. He got hungry. He didn't like living with pigs. He repented and he decided to return. He said, I'm going to go back to my father and see if he'll take me back as one of his hired hands because I am unworthy to be his son.

8:31 And here's what the father did. Well, he let him go and he let him have his portion. What? What generosity? And then he watched and he waited and I'm sure he was praying and he saw him coming back. We don't know if it's months or years later and he sees him in the distance, which tells me he's been watching for him all the time. And he ran to his son and he embraced him and he kissed him and the son's trying to say, I'm unworthy, please forgive me, please let me come be a servant in your home, in your household.

9:17 But the father, no, he couldn't do it. He just loved him. It says he put his robe on him and he put shoes on his feet because he didn't have any anymore and he hugged him and kissed him and he says, we have to celebrate. And he threw a party for him and reinstated him in the family. He didn't take him up on his humble offer to just be a servant. He says, no, you were part of my family. Does this make sense? Was the father crazy? Did the son deserve such grace?

9:58 No, of course he did not deserve it. Now let's pause a minute and I think, what have I done? I could make a long list of my sins, the usual ones, generally not very many big ones. I have sought to follow Christ to obey him, live and love like Jesus. But too often I have failed and especially with my prodigal, I have failed many times. I have disobeyed or shamed or dishonored. I have abandoned God's power and grace to me in order to tell my son what I thought of him and the choices that he had made and how unkind he was to us in return for the kindness we had given him.

10:52 I misused my Heavenly Father and his generous gifts of grace. So what did my Heavenly Father do? Well, let's see what all he's done. He created me in his image for definite purposes. That's true for you too. He pursued me. He purchased me. He redeemed me. He reconciled me. He's forgiven me. All true for you if you have Jesus in your life. He adopted me as his very own loved daughter. He invited me into his presence up to his throne of grace.

11:35 He talked with me. He enjoyed being with me. And he welcomed me back over and over of my own sins or my sins toward my prodigal. He extended amazing grace to me. Does this make sense? No. Do I deserve such grace? Not at all. And here's some of the things that my prodigal has done. He has done many prodigal things. He's lied, stolen, disrespected us, used and abused alcohol, drugs, girls, our home.

12:19 He went through 17 cars in five years. He spent time at juvenile detention and a night in jail one time. I'll stop there. Those cover most of the big things. There were plenty of small things, especially in the area of disrespect. And here are the things that I did in response. I established boundaries. I enforced consequences. My husband and I helped him to move out when he consistently chose not to respect us in our home.

13:03 I got counseling for him and for myself and for us as a family. I sought advice. I listened. I pleaded with him. I preached to him. I bailed him out of jail once. I have paid for more than I should have. I have prayed and prayed and prayed. I have welcomed him back, encouraged him, homeschooled him, promoted his work efforts so he could earn some money. I have mostly lobbed and increasingly extended grace.

13:44 I have done some things well, other things not well at all. Does he deserve the grace given over and over? No. But was I right to keep giving grace? I think so. It's what God said to me when you make mistakes with this boy. Make them on the side of grace. This picture is a contrast. You've probably, as I have been told, you have to be tough. Make them pay the price of their wrong choices. That in my mind is a picture of pushing away, of rejecting, of condemning.

14:26 Yes, there are consequences to choices, but when I come at it with a tough push away attitude, all it does is send them away. But the Father, our Father, His Father, runs to Him and to us, encircles us in His loving arms, welcomes us back, throws a party, believes the best about a future for me, for my prodigal, for your prodigal. Yes, yes, we and they need boundaries and consequences.

15:06 But even those are presented with welcoming loving arms. We make our mistakes on the side of grace as God, who isn't making a mistake, has done for us. He says, let my grace flow through you to them. So now it's your turn. Put yourself in the picture with your loved prodigal and with your loving God. How might we learn to help them learn by starting with a grace foot forward? Hopefully, as you've listened to what Scripture has said, what the definitions of grace are, how God has responded to you and to me, we are learning how He would like to use us as channels of His grace to our loved ones.

16:08 May I encourage you to look for every opportunity, even when you have to enforce consequences, to do it with grace so that they know that you're not pushing them away. You're not rejecting them. You are instead really putting arms of love around them to help them grow and learn of how much grace God gives them and how He wants it to flow through them as well. So may I encourage you, even as you look for ways to show grace, to check some things we'll put in the show notes, some articles that might be helpful to you, including the voice of grace, which I've shared before.

17:00 And also, I would really encourage you to take a minute, like this podcast, even subscribe to it and ask God to make His grace very real to you. God bless you.