We Prayed. Now What?, episode 66

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover,

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help and hope for your wilderness journey

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right here at When You Love a Prodigal.

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And also help and hope for your own life journey.

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Did you ask for prayer for your loved one

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on the Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day

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a few days ago on June 2nd?

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Did you pray?

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Were you expecting an answer within a week?

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Of course you were hoping for one.

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Do you grow weary of praying

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when you don't see what you want to happen?

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Do you think the answers you ask for will never come?

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Do you feel like you have no idea how to pray effectively?

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I have felt all those emotions on many occasions,

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even right after the Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day.

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Now you can be sure that many people prayed

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and your loved one's name

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was brought before the Lord many times.

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And God heard, he knows that person.

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He knows your heart.

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And so the prayer,

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the most effective thing we can do, happened.

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It's an incredible privilege to pray for each other.

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But it's also a battle.

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I am always exhausted at the end of June 2nd,

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because the evil one doesn't like

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that we are praying for these that he thinks belong to him.

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We and those we pray for have an enemy

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who doesn't like that we are on our knees on their behalf.

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So what do we do now that we have prayed?

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First, we wait.

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Just what you wanted to hear.

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We wait to see what God is doing.

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Sometime we see immediate total answers.

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Other times we await the unfolding change.

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Sometimes there are little glimpses

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of his responding to our prayers.

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Some of us will rejoice when we see this happen.

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Some of us will rejoice when we see

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this amazing transformation.

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But mostly we get to wait, which means we trust.

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We trust that God has heard and is answering our prayer.

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We have great assurance from his word

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that he desires for our prodigals

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to return to him and to us.

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So take comfort in these verses.

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1 John, it says, this is the confidence we have

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in approaching God, that if we ask anything

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according to his will, he hears us.

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And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask,

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we know that we have what we asked of him.

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He tells us that, that it is his will that they not perish.

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He wants them to come home.

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In Luke 15, he demonstrates the Father's great love

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and welcoming home of a prodigal.

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And that's what he's doing.

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It's just that we don't understand his timing

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and his ways of making it happen.

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But the best thing we can do next is thank him.

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And I know that's a hard thing to say.

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It's hard to think of saying thank you, Lord,

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when you're in pain and confusion and doubt

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and you're not seeing the prayers answered.

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But if we thank him, we're recognizing that he is working

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even when we don't see it.

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We are admonished, encouraged to give thanks in all things,

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even when we don't observe what we hope for.

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We must remember that we look through a dark glass,

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Paul says in Romans, but God is always working

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even when we can't discern what he is doing.

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We wait, we trust.

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Out of the trust, we can say thank you.

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And we give love and grace

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as the hands and feet of our Savior to our love prodigals.

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And if they keep hurting us and doing destructive things

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or totally separating from us,

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it's hard to think of showing love and grace.

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And yet that's what God calls us to do.

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He will woo them back with his loving kindness,

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he says in Romans.

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We are his primary means of extending that love

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and grace and kindness that will eventually draw them back

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to God and to us.

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We can keep hoping because we have a strong anchor

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to hold our hope, Jesus himself.

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We remember that God's promises are all yes in Christ.

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So we have confidence to keep on hoping

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as we ask in the name of Jesus.

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And we keep on praying with hope,

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with perseverance, with assurance.

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A day set aside to pray for prodigals is wonderful,

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engaging us and our God for release of his grace and power.

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But we still need to keep praying.

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We are invited to keep on asking, seeking and knocking.

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Don't quit, keep praying.

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Yes, the waiting is hard, but guess what?

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That's when we learn and grow.

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Because you see, it's not all about our prodigals.

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God's also working on us.

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He's very efficient.

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Even as he works on them, our hearts open up

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for him to work on us.

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Don't give up because God's doing something in you.

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We hear the scripture that sustained me

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through more than 15 years.

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I can't tell you how many times I went back

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to this scripture, it's in Isaiah 60, 22,

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just the last line.

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And God says, I am the Lord.

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And I think he pauses there so that I can recognize,

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and I am not.

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He's the Lord, Judy is not, you're not.

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Then he says, in its time, I will do this swiftly.

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If you've been listening to this podcast very much,

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you know I've quoted that verse

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because it was probably the most significant one.

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Keep praying, keep waiting.

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I'm working, but in my time, God says, not in my time.

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I have learned so much in the years of waiting

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of hope born and hope dashed,

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of tearful prayers and answered prayers

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and not yet answered prayers,

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and surprises in some of the answers.

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I have gained appreciation for ways

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that we made the journey well.

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And I see how some of our mistakes

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and approaches could have been better.

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Here are a few reflections that I have had

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as I've been in the waiting.

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I was eager for our son to get restored,

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but we were waiting.

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And God was doing these kinds of work in our lives.

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First of all, he enabled us to do some things well.

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Some things like we gave him lots of opportunities

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to explore what he liked, enjoyed, and was good at.

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We did soccer, he loved surfing, he loved fishing,

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he loved paintball, he tried bowling, he did photography.

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Whatever he was willing to try,

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we want him to see some things

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that show what a valuable person he is

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and that he has things to offer.

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That was more in his younger years.

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We allowed him to have several pets.

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I like animals, but not as many as he liked.

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He had up to three dogs at once, he had a couple of cats,

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he had a couple of iguanas.

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Once was named Al, that was short for alligator,

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it was so big.

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He had mice who had babies, and he loved snakes,

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which makes me shudder.

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We'd had some fun family travels,

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and he really enjoyed them and probably was happiest

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in his time just with the family.

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When we went to Texas or to Colorado,

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the two main places we would go.

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We introduced him to men that were friends of ours,

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but who chose to invest in his life.

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And they spent time with him, and they prayed for him.

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Probably one of the best was the surfing pastor.

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Josh loved to surf, and a friend sent him

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all the way to California to spend a week with this pastor

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who taught kids how to surf

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and helped him with church set up.

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It was a wonderful week he came home and said,

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that's the most fun I've ever had.

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And I've reminded him of that occasionally

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when he wanted to do something he thought was fun.

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Another thing that we did well,

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we introduced him to friends of the children of our friends,

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and some of them became his closest buddies.

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We took him to church, youth group,

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prayed with him every night,

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provided spiritually enriching opportunities.

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Again, this was more in his younger years

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when he was growing up and living with us,

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and those things didn't happen as much as he was on his own.

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As he made increasingly destructive choices

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and seemed out of control and unwilling for us to help him,

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we reluctantly put him in a residential program,

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which I've mentioned, and it was a challenge,

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but a very valuable time.

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So those are things we think we did a pretty good job.

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Now here are the things that we think

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were the most important that we did well.

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We kept loving him unconditionally.

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Because of abandonment issues with his birth family,

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he didn't believe that we really loved him.

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So we never quit and made every effort

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to help him know that we loved him and would not quit.

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We had appropriate boundaries for him and for us

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with corresponding consequences,

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presented and enforced with a lot of grace,

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and we usually lived by them.

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Not perfectly, but we extended grace and mercy

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over and over because he needed it.

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And all of us need grace and mercy,

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especially from the people we love.

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And we prayed and prayed and prayed.

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Now, in my reflection on what was happening

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in our son's life while I waited

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to see the answers to prayer,

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I did recognize that we made plenty of mistakes.

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And just a few of those, because we didn't comprehend

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the damage done to him in utero by his birth mom,

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we didn't know how to respond to some of his special needs.

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And we had to learn those and adjust to them,

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but it took time.

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Because his needs and his choices

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required a lot of attention,

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I focused so much of my time on caring for him

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and supervising him and trying to help him

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that too often I neglected my other children.

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And I deeply regret that I didn't handle that better.

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My husband and I also did not always agree

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on the best approach for him.

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And so sometimes we let our son create tension between us.

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We had to learn how to work through that.

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But I want to make sure you understand,

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though there were lots of lessons for us

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and we did some things well and not everything well,

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but here's the best part.

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We discovered that our son was an incredible gift

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in our lives.

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Some of the ways that he was a gift.

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I learned about mercy and grace in unconditional love

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at a far deeper level than I had ever experienced before.

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I learned how to pray, that is really pray.

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I'm in a ministry and we pray a lot.

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And so I thought, I know how to pray.

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And then I was desperate and I went into a much deeper level

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of beseeching the Lord and praying for our son.

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I was thrown into the arms of the Lord

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and discovered a wonderful dependence on him

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beyond anything I'd ever known before.

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I thought I trusted and depended on God.

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But when it came to something I could do nothing about

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and it was scary, I could only really lean on him.

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Despite all the conflict, pain, disappointment, fear,

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heartache, and my relationship with our son,

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I still have a treasured relationship with him.

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We talk often.

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He shares the things that are hard for him.

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He calls and says, please pray for me today.

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God has done a work, but it took a long time.

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So I wanna encourage you, don't give up.

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God's gonna answer your prayers.

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It may not look like what you were hoping, but he will.

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And he will bring about change,

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but he will bring about change in your life as well.

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And that is a wonderful gift.

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Now these are not comprehensive thoughts.

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They're just some of the things that God showed me.

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I have only recently really been able to breathe

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freely enough concerning our son

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that he's on a good path,

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that I can step back and reflect about it.

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With any prodigal, they come and they do well.

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They go to rehab and they're clean.

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Things look good, and then it's not.

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And so there's this lurking sense,

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well, it's good now, but will it last?

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And God just says, hold on, we're doing this together.

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And I wanna close this time with just this beautiful thought.

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I wanna give you a picture

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that'll help you stay on your knees.

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We learn in scripture that your prayers

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are a sweet aroma to the Lord now and in eternity.

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Listen to these words from Revelation.

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Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain,

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standing at the center of the throne.

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He went and took the scroll from the right hand

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of he who was sitting on the throne.

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And when he had taken it, the four living creatures

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and 24 elders fell down before the lamb.

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Each one had a harp, and they were all holding golden bowls

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full of incense, which are the prayers of God's people.

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So at the throne, at the time when Jesus does away

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with Satan, and we're coming to the end of the world

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as we know it, and a new heaven and a new earth,

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and the lamb will reign, and he is being lifted up

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by the sweet aroma of our prayers coming up before him.

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So even if you've been praying and praying,

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and God calls you home, and you still haven't seen

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the answer that you were looking for,

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your prayers are still working.

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God is still loving that you have brought them to him.

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And you may not see the answer, but you can know

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that it's still before the Lord, and it's a sweet aroma

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of fragrance that comes to God and reminds him of you

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and your loved one.

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Do you see what it's saying?

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Your prayers and my prayers are incense offered

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to our savior.

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The lamb receives them as a fragrant gift.

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All that you have begged of God for your wonder

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is still working into eternity.

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Don't despair.

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Keep our king awash in the perfume of your worship

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and surrender and trust in him.

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Let the sweet aroma of your entreaties delight him.

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And may you be assured that he hears.

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He is responding, and someday you will see

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how he has answered.

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I encourage you to take a few minutes and think,

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all right, what am I taking away from this?

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I've given you actually a lot of content today.

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What can you take from this and apply?

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Especially as we have finished this day of prayer,

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that you'll just have eyes and ears and heart and mind open

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to see what God is doing and to trust him

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and be able to say thank you, Lord.

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Be sure to join us next week as I chat with Dana Russo,

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who is a grief counselor who has the nickname,

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the slogan of a companion in grief.

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And when you love a prodigal, you know what grief is.

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And she's gonna come alongside us.

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God bless you.