The Relentless Love of God (episode 7)

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Do you love a prodigal?

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Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness?

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Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast.

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I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness.

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I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey.

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Welcome.

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I am excited now to begin to cover some helpful topics developed in some depth in my book,

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When You Love a Prodigal.

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We will begin with several weeks looking at the foundational concept for loving a prodigal.

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And that is love.

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God's love for us, His love for our prodigals, and His desire to love our prodigals through

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us.

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We will begin with the relentless love of God.

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I hate you!

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If you are a parent, you might have heard those words from an angry child.

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If you love a prodigal, you almost certainly have heard those words, whether your prodigal

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is a child or an adult.

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It is our love for this person that keeps us going, reaching out, pursuing, loving,

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no matter what they do.

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And they are smart enough to know that the greatest way to hurt us is to hurl that love

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back at us with those words, I hate you.

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Our son said it a number of times.

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This particular time was especially hurtful.

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He hadn't done something he was supposed to, and he didn't like the consequence.

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And he yelled at me, he said, you don't love me, you just love your girls.

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You're not my real mother.

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I hate you.

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I love my prodigal, and you love your prodigal.

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But often it's not easy to love them.

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Our love is tested and stretched, unappreciated and questioned, not returned, even thrown

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back at our faces.

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And we can grow weary and discouraged.

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How do you keep loving as the years unfold?

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What does love look like when our prodigals keep making bad choices?

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We know that God's love is unconditional, unfailing, radical, sacrificial.

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That is the love which God has always had for me and for our Josh.

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And I knew this love was mine to access for Josh, but I couldn't always grab hold of

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it.

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But this I know.

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I'm really not capable of that kind of love.

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Jesus set an impossibly high standard.

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So how?

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How do we love and keep on loving our often hard to love prodigals?

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It's times like these that we need the absolute assurance that we are loved by God Himself.

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And He makes that abundantly clear.

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In 1 John 4 19, He tells us that we are able to love at all because He first loved us.

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This is even clearer in the message paraphrase.

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It says, we though are going to love, love and be loved.

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First we were loved, now we love, but He loved us first.

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So if we're going to consider how we can radically love our loved ones, we ourselves

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must be certain of, confident in, and comfortable in God's love for us.

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You see, all scripture is a love letter to us.

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There are so many verses and passages that declare and affirm His unfailing, everlasting

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love for us.

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Here are just a few of those scriptural affirmations.

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And know this, they are for you and for me, they are for us.

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Zephaniah 3 tells us that the Lord your God will rejoice over you with gladness.

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He will quiet you with His love.

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He will rejoice over you with singing.

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This first paints a rich picture for me of God singing a love song to me, calming me,

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encouraging me with words of love.

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And oh, how often I need to hear that love song.

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In Jeremiah 31, He tells us the Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you

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with an everlasting love.

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I have drawn you with loving kindness.

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I love this promise.

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God speaks tenderly to His people, to us.

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His love is everlasting, never ending, always there forever.

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His love is also unfailing.

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It will never let us down or abandon us or make a mistake.

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And with this everlasting, unfailing love, God draws us, He calls us, He woos us to Himself.

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And then in Romans chapter 8, these amazing verses, for I am convinced that neither death

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nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

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neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us

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from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Sometimes I am sure I have sinned or failed so badly that I have lost, destroyed, or canceled

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out God's love.

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How can He still love me?

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Yet these verses drill into my heart, to our hearts, to remind us of this truth.

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We can't make God quit loving us.

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No one, nothing else, can separate us from that everlasting, unfailing love.

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So much comfort, so much hope in that.

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Timothy, we read, for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of

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love, and self-discipline.

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There are lots of things in that verse, but we're just going to look at the spirit of

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love that God has given us.

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Specifically, His spirit living in us will love through us.

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Did you get that?

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His spirit comes to live in us, and because of that, He can love through us.

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We'll talk about that some more in the next few weeks.

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All that amazing love we just considered is not only given to us, but also given through

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us.

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Remember that core verse, 1 John 4.19, that we did at the beginning?

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He loved us first, because God first lavished His love on us and sent His Spirit to live

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in us.

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He makes it possible for us to love with His love, which is surely the love we need for

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our prodigals.

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In the Psalms, I have found help to believe God's love in the midst of pain, uncertainty,

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rejection, failure, hopelessness.

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I received in Psalm 103 especially the assurance that God will not abandon or reject me.

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Now this Psalm is so rich that you can spend a long time in it.

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We're just going to look at a few of the sections of it.

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Just to get you started, I encourage you to go further into it with the Lord, asking more

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what He wants to say to you personally.

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As I name some of these benefits that He promises in Psalm 103, be reminded of what God's love

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has done for you.

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And pause to remember that He says the same thing to your prodigal.

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So here are some portions of Psalm 103, followed by a few comments from what God said to me

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as I was in this passage.

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Verse 2, praise the Lord my soul and forget not all His benefits.

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He has done so much for us, given so much to us to praise Him for, and yet we forget.

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I don't want to forget, especially in the hard times.

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He says, remember what I've done for you.

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Verse 3, oh, He says, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.

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When I was looking at this, I went through this for myself, thanking God for forgiving

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my many, many sins.

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And then, as I had no trouble recounting my prodigal's many sins, I was grateful for God's

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mercy toward him, as well as for the healing that He promised.

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Now, I have plenty of areas in my life that can use some healing, but my prodigal has

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more parts of him than need healing than I can name.

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God is working on His healing, too.

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Verse 4 tells us that He redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and

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compassion.

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Most of us have some acquaintance with the pit, but our prodigals often live there.

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But God says, no, I will redeem them, just like I've redeemed you, and I will pour out

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my love and compassion.

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Verse 5 says, He satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed

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like the eagles.

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Too often, it is our prodigal's desires for unhealthy things that send them spiraling

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down.

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So, what a wonderful promise that He will give us desires for the good things, the things

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that will be helpful.

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May He do that for our loved ones as well.

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Verse 8, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, just the

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way we always are to our loved ones, right?

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Our prodigals, hmm, maybe not always.

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Every day I am grateful that God is compassionate, that He's gracious, He's slow to anger,

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and He's abounding in love toward me.

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I pray that I can act like God toward my loved one.

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Verse 10, He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

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By that time, I was on my face with gratitude that this is true.

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His grace and mercy are overwhelming.

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May I pay them forward to my loved prodigal.

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Verse 13, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those

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who fear Him.

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Sometimes, I think we need a greater measure of the Father's compassion for our prodigals.

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Sometimes, that's not how we treat them.

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And then, this is one of my very favorite verses in the whole Bible, Psalm 103 verse

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14.

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He knows how we are formed.

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He remembers that we are dust.

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He made us from dust.

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We go back to dust.

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And so, when I think there's no way I can live up to the standards that I know God has,

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I'm reminded that He knows that I'm dust, and He has compassion, and He's got mercy.

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Thank you, Lord.

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Can I remember that my prodigal is also dust?

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And finally, verse 11, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His

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love for those who fear Him.

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There is that amazing love of God again.

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I find I must recall every day that God is on His throne in heaven, and He rules.

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Because every day, things happen when you love a prodigal that are out of your control,

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or that you have no idea how to help that person you love so much.

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But God rules.

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He will do what He says and what He wants.

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God told me that this passage I've just been reading from shows what His love for me and

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for my prodigal looks like.

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So I prayed that morning from these verses that my loved one would grasp the reality

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and depth of God's love expressed here.

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And that would happen mostly because He sees it coming through me.

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And I would urge you to do the same.

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Say, Lord, I can't love like You do, but I want to love this child, this adult in my

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life, this spouse, this whatever, whoever it is, says, I want to love them with Your

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love.

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But don't stop there.

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Ask God how you might demonstrate this kind of love to your very loved wanderer.

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May God speak His love and truth into your heart and mind from this psalm.

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May you be able to rest in His love and live it out with your prodigal.

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And I would ask you, which of these benefits of God's love for you encourages you the

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most?

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God bless you.

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Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast.

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If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts

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or wherever you listen.

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Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus.

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Don't forget, take a look at the show notes.

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And for more helpful information, resources, and books, check out judydouglass.com.

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That's Douglass with two S's.

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You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417.

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Until next week.