What is a Prodigal? (episode 4)

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. Welcome back again to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. This is Judy Douglass and I am so glad that you are here for the first time if that is the truth or as you are coming back to join us again.

0:40 What we have covered so far is a little backstory about the son that God sent to us as a foster child and then we adopted him and God said he is a gift. We began to experience a lot of challenges because Josh had had so many challenges in his life. If you want to hear the earlier episodes so that you can know that story, please go back and listen. What I would like to do today is kind of a pause between the backstory and getting into what I hope will be a lot of help and hope for you if you love a prodigal. First I want to define some terms because a lot of people aren't sure what a prodigal is and some have very firm definitions. I am a journalist and so I am going to use who what why kind of questions that journalists use to take us through some definitions and understandings that I think will be helpful to you as you think about the person that you love.

1:56 First question is who? Well a prodigal can be anyone. It can be a child or a grandchild. It's often a teen or a young adult. It can be your sibling. It could be your spouse. It could even be your parent and assuredly it is you and I. We are all prodigals in some way or other and so the person that you love could be at any place in your life and you love them and you're hurt and sad for the decisions and the choices that they're making. A definition. Well often people from Christian backgrounds will think of a prodigal as anyone who has left the faith and is not letting the principles of their faith guide their choices. They could be making really bad choices or they could just have turned their back on their relationship with God. But we're dealing with a broader look at that. That's true for many but there's more. Here's a surprise I bet. The original meaning of the word prodigal is that it's an adjective and it means extravagant, lavish, abundant and bountiful. That isn't what we think of when we think of a prodigal because the word is morphed

3:33 into a noun and it is a person who is extravagantly wasteful, lavishly reckless and abundantly profligate. Somebody who is making destructive choices in their life. Now in my book, When You Love a Prodigal, I talk about those who are lovers of prodigals and who is that? Without a doubt, it's one who extravagantly and lavishly with perseverance loves a prodigal. So when do people become a prodigal? Well, it can happen pretty near at any time in their lifetime, even very young, but most often it begins in their teens because at that time lots of children who are in their teens now are trying to figure out who they are. They're trying to get a sense of identity. They're working on separation from their parents and their control in their lives. And so they do things that they're pretty sure their parents don't like, partly because they're trying to say, I am my own person now. It can last a long time or it may not start till later. It could be a brief time. It really varies. There's no total pattern. Increasingly, there's lots of people in their 20s who are in that category of being a prodigal who is making choices for their life that,

5:11 at least in the minds of those who love them, are not going to be good for them. And many people in their 20s now aren't even showing much maturity until they're in their late 20s, which is a change from the past. So how does it happen? If we knew how they became a prodigal, we might be able to step in and keep that from happening. Possible. But it's not too hard to figure out some of the house. First of all, they can have trouble at school. They make bad grades or they struggle with the way school works and it doesn't fit their learning style. And they're in trouble because of acting out. Maybe it's because of their ADD. Lots of reasons that would cause them to do the things that are not acceptable at school. And so then they become used to being in trouble and that can go on in life. A lot of times it's who you hang out with. Friends are so important. And the Bible says when you hang out with the wrong people, you make the wrong decisions.

6:23 And so that can be a very strong reason. Here's another one. Smartphones. Now, I know we didn't have them until recently. But even so, they have given kids access to so much that is detrimental and can lead them to some poor decisions. One of my grandsons came home and told his parents he had to sit with some different people at lunch because the boys he knew were spending their lunch hour at school watching pornography on their phones. And he at that time did not want to do that. I don't know that he ever has. But pornography has been a real avenue into a product of life because it grabs hold of the middle young age or an older age and really holds onto them and causes them to lower their values and the things that are important. And then they are tempted to or choose to begin to experiment. They experiment with alcohol often first or drugs or both experiment with sex. They get addicted. And addiction almost always will lead to crime because they'll do anything to get their next fix. And so that will often lead to stealing.

7:49 And it will often cause them to go beyond just petty stealing where they can get into some real criminal mischief or serious crime. And so those are all things that would be the avenues that took them into their prodigal choices. But then you need to go back a little further and say, well, why? Why would they do that? Why do they want to rebel? Well, for a lot of them, it's the reason that I've struggled with in my life and that's one in my own way. And I talked about that in episode one. And so sometimes it's just they don't like that school requires certain things and church requires and their family requires and work requires everything. They're being told what to do and they resist that. And so they want their own way. Sometimes that just leads to attitude. But sometimes it leads to choices that are really negative and even destructive. Sometimes so it really is just fun with friends and they want to try something or do something a little risky and then the novelty and the excitement of that's not enough. So they up it a little and try something else that would cause them because of doing fun things with their friends to keep moving beyond

9:20 boundaries that would protect them into situations that could be harmful for them. But now I want to take you to another why that most of us probably don't think about. And that is trauma. Now when you look at our son who came out of a family where his dad never showed up and his mother chose her addictions and exposed him to abuse and to lots of alcohol and drugs even as a young child and some abuse and those kind of things you think, yes, he has experienced a lot of trauma. And so that would be easy to see why he might make the choices that he did later in life. But there's so much more to trauma. Adoption especially can be a cause of trauma.

10:18 Even if you get a child as a baby and people say, oh no, that can't be because they instead of being abandoned, they're coming into a loving home with a family who's going to care for them. And you've had them from the beginning and they know that they're yours. From the experts that I've talked to, they know that there is this hole in their heart. Where is that mother that they lived in for those nine months? She was real. She was their home. And then she's gone. So there's and they don't understand it. And it might be several years at least before they understand that they were adopted.

11:06 But there are a lot of other causes of adoption. Certainly if there's abuse in a home, I don't mean of trauma in their lives. If there's abuse in their home, that's a certain source of trauma for them. If there are parents who are not focused on meeting their needs and helping them make wise decisions and make poor decisions, that can cause that to happen in their lives. But sometimes it's other things that aren't so negative. Say another child comes a year later and all of a sudden this one-year-old is pushed aside in a sense because mother is focusing on the newborn.

11:50 And that isn't a terrible thing. It happens to many. And yet it is a source of loss, which is a trauma to that baby. If a person has a serious illness or experiences an injury or has some disability, all of those are traumas as they grow older especially because there's something that has been negative in their life that they can't control or overcome. Sometimes it's as they get into school and they experience rejection. It could be a teacher who doesn't like them. Or it can be the kids who won't sit with them at the lunch table. And you think everyone experiences that. How can that be trauma? Well, the more people understand what trauma is in a life and how it affects the brain and the will and everything about a person, the more they realize it can be even seemingly normal things of growing up but still are hurtful and painful to the person who experiences them. And so often, prodigal choices come out of some kind of trauma in their life. Some of it was never intentional. It just happened. But there are those who just want their own way and they'll do anything to get it and they will make those negative choices.

13:17 So I want to mention a little bit of where we're going in the future with this podcast. We talked about how they get involved and we're going to look at some of those in more detail, especially from maybe some school people, some psychologists, some counselors. We're going to look at some information on drugs and alcohol and addictions and those kinds of things. But we're also going to look at the spiritual side because you see God loves prodigals. He rescues us and we are all prodigals. And he has said over and over, it's hard of compassion. It's throughout scripture.

14:02 It says he had compassion on them. He looked at them with compassion because he loves us and our prodigals so very much. And so his word is full of the promises that he makes to us, the provisions that he gives us, the way that he meets us, the way that he will provide for us. And we'll talk about some things like time. The most common question that people with a prodigal probably ask of God is how long, oh Lord, we're in good company there because that's what David says a number of times in the Psalms. How long, Lord? And so we'll talk about God's perspective on time. Loving a prodigal can be absolutely exhausting because you've run out of options. You don't know what to do. You're exhausted. And so we're going to spend some time on talking about rest. The thing that we would probably most do is go to prayer and we don't even know how to pray and we're going to talk about how to pray for those prodigals you love. But we're going to also talk about how prayer becomes the means for growing our own relationship with God and a lot of different approaches to prayer that I hope will be helpful to you. We're going to talk about how you learn to trust God and, oh, we're going to talk about how to have hope when you can't see a way

15:34 forward and you can't see that there's hope. Many times we would watch our son and the choices he would make and we would find our self-thinking. What is his future? It's either to die or to be in jail. We didn't see how the choices he would make was making would go anywhere else for him. And we're going to talk about how we can have hope when that's all we can see. But we're also going to talk about some words that have been the most important for me in our relationship with our son. One is love, love of the quality and passion of God's love. We're going to learn more about it.

16:23 We're going to talk about the importance of not losing relationship. If even in the hardest time when they reject us, we can in any way possible hold on to some relationship, then they know that they are able to come back. We're going to talk about mercy because God has given us mercy. We haven't deserved it. We didn't earn it and he has done that. He's given us mercy and he's going to ask us to learn to forgive those who hurt us so much. And we're going to learn about grace because God gives us grace beyond what we can imagine or ever think that we should have.

17:10 And he wants us again to be the conduit of his grace to those that we love who have rejected. Next week we will be hearing from a man named Dan Wolgemuth, good friend of mine. He's the president of Youth for Christ and he has begun with Youth for Christ. They are working more and more with at-risk kids. Dan was kind enough to write a forward for my book and because he knows a lot about at-risk kids. And so I'm just going to read these sweet words that Dan wrote for my book. And so when it comes to, he says something about Judy, he's because he wrote this for the book, and then know that you will hear much more from him next week as I interview him. So here is the forward to my book, When You Love a Prodigal. Quoting from Luke 1520. And he, the prodigal, arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. While he was still a long way off, a long way off, a chasm of shame and guilt and regret and anger and bitterness and despair, a chasm that only love and grace can navigate. Jesus, the teacher of all teachers,

18:42 teaches us to love prodigals, to love in a way that crosses the chasm. While the prodigal is still a very, very long way off, Jesus doesn't minimize the distance. He resources fuel for the journey, fire for the soul, traversing the pain-filled, doubt-lettered, fear-exploding route of redemption. A son, two sons, one consumed with pleasure, the other consumed by the pursuit of power and control. Both prodigals, both lost and demanding, both a burden.

19:26 1. Enter the love of a father. Enter the love of the Father. Yes, God loves us first, and his love isn't restricted to saints. No, it focuses precisely on sinners with sacrifice, humility, and passion. God's love for sinners is why he loves me, a prodigal. Sure, more politely, a prodigal than some, but a prodigal nonetheless. The prodigal journey is all of our journey.

20:09 The message of hope and life comes from the love of Jesus, God's messenger and message to prodigals. Our reaction to the message, we dismissed and despised him, we mocked and rejected him. This is often what happens to those who love a prodigal. Yet our pain has a companion in Jesus. We're never alone in the journey across the chasm. Through the vast and tiring journey, in the midst of hopelessness and pain, Jesus is our guide and our friend. He is our breath and our advocate. In the journey, tears water the dust of a discouragement. When our resolve is extinguished and our courage depleted, God, through Jesus, shows us the way while he is still a long way off. Jesus doesn't simply join us in the journey. No, this is his journey that he invites us to be part of. This is his burden to carry, to wound his wound to sav, his tear to wipe.

21:27 Indeed, he knows the wilderness well. And that is why Judy wrote this devotional as a cup of cold water in the wilderness, from here to there, across the lonely and difficult chasm. Her story is raw and personal, authentic and tender. Her wilderness journey has a name, a face, and aching heart. And as Judy penned the words that follow, she attacks the lie that those who cross the chasm go alone. No, you're never alone, because Jesus, our King and Redeemer, saw, felt compassion, ran, embraced, and kissed a desperately lost son, our son, our daughter, us.

22:20 When You Love a Prodigal is a book that Jesus wrote long ago, and I'm so grateful that Judy has powerfully and compassionately highlighted the immensity and persistence of God's amazing love and grace. Thank you for those wonderful words, Dan Wolgemuth, and thank you for listening today. And I look forward to you being with us next week as we hear more from Dan about loving a prodigal. Thanks so much.