We Prayed. Now What? (episode 36)

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. I have a wonderful word for you. Your prayer has been heard. We've talked about different ways to pray and I assure you that God has heard every word.

0:45 Another story about our son. He'd been gone for a month living with a friend in Tennessee. You see it was one of those times where his actions indicated that he had chosen to move out by repeatedly not living by our agreements. But where he was in Tennessee he couldn't find a job and he was getting hungry. He arrived at night at our home. It was the only home he really had. And I was very kind and said, all right, you can stay here tonight, but you need to find a place to go tomorrow. My daughter was home from college and came in that evening not happy to see that her brother was there. The next night my husband and I were out and Josh showed up with his drunk high friends. He fell asleep and my daughter came home. And when she saw Josh passed out and his friends doing things they shouldn't be in our home, she made them leave. She pushed them out. And when we got home, she said, after telling us what had happened, if he doesn't leave, I will. I cried out to the Lord once again, how long Lord? Now I have to choose between my children. My daughter

2:23 won on that one. For the next six months he slept on the couch at a friend's apartment. God certainly understood our emotions in this battle. Over and over he asked, how long, oh Lord? How long, Lord, he says, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? I know I've said those words and I imagine you have as well. Another of my hard times came when it seemed that my son was moving in a good direction. Yay! Hope was being fulfilled. His life was changing. Something happened. He reverted. Bad choices returned. Hope was dashed. Despair set in. How long, oh Lord? I know of another person in scripture who surely asked that question for seemingly a long, long time. Unanswered prayer, longing and waiting. His name is Zechariah. He and his wife Elizabeth had pleaded and waited for a child for decades. Then a word came from God. Do not be afraid, Zechariah.

3:50 Your prayer has been heard. This message was delivered by a heavenly messenger assuring Zechariah he had nothing to fear. And his decades of prayer for a child had not fallen on fears. God had heard. Now was the right time for God's answer. His son, John the Baptist, would prepare the way for the coming Christ. Now I'm not a heavenly messenger, but I'm saying to you, your prayer has been heard. God has this message for us. For every time we say, how long, oh Lord? Every time I say, how long, oh Lord? I find myself going to these kind of comments and things that I throw back at the Lord. Are you listening, Lord? Do you even care? What about the promises? Can I believe you? I'm afraid. I'm afraid for the future of my loved one. Will change ever come? Is there sin in my life that blocks my prayers? Or am I just not an effective prayer? Will my hope for him ever be fulfilled?

5:13 Or will hope always be disappointed? Those are the kinds of questions that we're asking in our desperation. And there are others. You know what yours are. But the right answers to these questions is not in things, listen, not in things turning out the way I want in my pain, leaving in the answer that I desire. The answer is in God himself, in who he is and in what he is like. I can never understand all that he is doing or how he is working. But I do know this. He does all things well. He is good and is always looking for ways to do good to us. And his promises are true and can be trusted. And I can know with Zechariah that my prayers have been heard. In times that are often full of bad news and disappointment, as we wait for an answer, may you know that God has heard your prayers and his answer will be right and at the right time. I want to read that again. It's so important to remember. Know that God has heard your prayers and his answer will be right and at the right time. So imagine that you've stuck with me through all of these sessions, these podcasts

6:52 on prayer, and you've been trying to bless and you've been giving thanks and you've been resisting the devil and you've been talking to God about everything. And then you say, well, now what? What do I do now? What else? What comes next? Everywhere I go, I see greater evidence of the intensifying efforts of the evil one to capture hearts and minds, especially of young people, and to carry out his steal, kill, and destroy agenda. God calls his people to battle on their knees. What a battle. I pray for my prodigal and for those loved by others. When I spend extended time praying for prodigals, I am always exhausted at the end of that because we have an enemy and he doesn't like that I'm on my knees. We and those we pray for have an enemy and he's going to resist, but we keep following the instructions of the Lord that we resist him. God's word reminds us, but thanks be to God who always leads us as captives in Christ's triumphal possession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. Our prayers are like incense,

8:29 an aroma, a fragrance going up to God. In Revelations it talks about that. So after you've prayed long, speaking out everything you can think of to pray, what do you do after any of us prays, then what? Here are things we can do or will need to do. We wait. Oh, that's just what you wanted to hear, isn't it? I've already been asking, how long, how long, when do we see an answer and you tell me, wait? Because I think that's one of God's very favorite words. We wait to see what God is doing because he's not off doing something else and ignoring us. He's not just laughing at our pain. He's watching because he's doing something good. Sometimes we see immediate answers and we have on a number of occasions, but other times we await the unfolding of change. He is often kind to give us little glimpses of his response to our prayers. Some of us will rejoice in amazing transformation.

9:46 Most often we're going to wait a while because the next thing we need to do is trust. Trust God that he heard and is answering our prayer. We have great assurance from God's word that he desires for our prodigals to return to him and to us. So we take comfort from these verses. This is the confidence we have in approaching God. If we ask anything according to his will, does he want your prodigal to come back? Oh, yes. If we ask according to his will, he hears. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked. Is that a promise you can hold on to?

10:37 Another thing that we need to do is thank. And I know I just talked about that, but I can't tell you how important it is. We thank God that he is moving even when we don't see it. We are admonished to give thanks in all things, even when we don't observe the answer we have hoped for. We must remember that we look through a dark glass and God is always working even if we can't tell what he's doing. What else can we do after we've prayed? We give to our loved ones love and grace. We are the hands and heart of our Savior to these prodigals. There will be other people God puts in their lives, but we're the primary people to love them, to give grace to them. Our Father says he will woo them back with his loving kindness. We are the ones that make that loving kindness tangible and will eventually draw them back to God and to us. We hope, oh yes, most of the time we know quit hoping. We're always hoping. Sometimes we become so desperate that we just throw it away, but it comes back. And we can know this. We have a strong anchor to hold our hope. Jesus himself is the anchor for our hope. We remember this. Oh, I love this. God's

12:14 promises are all yes in Christ, so we have confidence to keep on hoping. The promises that God makes and all these assurances that we've been reading, Jesus is the yes, and we can have confidence to keep on hoping. And then finally, so essential, we walk in the Spirit. Remember and appropriating all the Spirit offers us. I'm going to say more than I even did last time of what the Spirit offers us. He advocates for us. He encourages us. He comforts us. He shows truth to us. He sets us free. He gives peace. He fights for us. He's there when the devil attacks. He empowers us. We do this. This whole walk, this whole prodigal wilderness journey, this whole prayer journey, we do it as we walk in the Spirit moment by moment. When we get out of the Spirit, we're depending on ourselves.

13:32 We need to be in the Spirit, and we keep praying. We pray with hope, with perseverance, with assurance. We still need to keep praying, asking God for the release of His grace and power into the lives of those we love so deeply. Think about this. When have you doubted that God has heard your prayers? From the list of things that we can do after a time of prayer, think, trust, thank, give love and grace, hope, walk in the Spirit, keep praying. Which is the hardest for you to keep doing? Ask God to set you free in that so that you can continue to trust Him. Let me give you this wonderful word of hope here. You can find all of these prayers and more in chapter 6 in my book, When You Love a Prodigal. If you couldn't possibly, and I'm sure you couldn't as I was talking, capture all of this to apply it, you can find it in the book and spend some more time there letting God assure you that He's heard your prayers and that He is working. You may not see the answer when you

15:03 don't. You may not see the answer in your lifetime sometimes, but God will not abandon you or your loved ones. God bless you. 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.

15:57 Until next week.