Your Prodigal Is a Gift, episode 157

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal and also help and hope for your own life journey. So I have a question for you. Have you recognized the gift yet? That is the gift that your prodigal is? Because I have spent many years immersed in prodigalness, my sons, my friends, my audience, and even my own prodigalness. And because our former prodigal is experiencing a few challenges in his life, I have been back on my knees in a new way.

0:47 As I have listened to the stories of friends and prayed for my son and many others, God has taken me on a journey back into the wilderness to help me see what he has done. Gratefully, I was reminded over and over of the transforming truths that I have learned on this path, on this wilderness journey, and I am still learning from them. These truths are gifts. Let me remind us all of some of the gifts that we receive on a prodigal journey, therefore gifts from our prodigals.

1:28 What are these gifts? Well the first one I want to mention, we talked about two weeks ago, and that is grace, because it's kind of the foundational one. There are a couple others too, but it's a very important one. And if you listened two weeks ago, you heard me quote what God said to me one night about our prodigal. When you make mistakes with this boy, and you will, and I did, make them on the side of grace. I know that I have received from God over and over the gift of his amazing grace. Grace freely offered to me and to my loved one by God himself.

2:11 Grace that covers and fills me and flows through me to our son and to lots of others, to you and to your loved one. That grace is a gift, a mini-gift. So I want to look with you at some gifts that come from the grace that God has extended to us. The first one that I would mention is mercy. I love mercy, and I'm always reminded that our God loves mercy. He tells us in Ephesians 2, but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, isn't that a great concept?

2:55 Rich. He's just abundant in mercy, and he made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved, and it's by grace that that mercy comes to us. I have received mercy many times, and slowly I have learned to give mercy. I know you can find it challenging to give mercy to one or ones who have disappointed, disobeyed, opposed, lied, stolen, embarrassed, caused so much pain. It's hard to be merciful.

3:35 But we are supposed to forgive. Really forgive? Yes. That's the action point of mercy, is to forgive. Yes, because we have been given mercy. God desires and enables us to extend mercy. It is grace that gives the reason and makes the channel for mercy to flow. It purchased our forgiveness and made mercy for our loved ones, made it possible, because we have been given mercy. We have been forgiven, so God is going to flow through us with that mercy for our loved ones.

4:24 So the next time they really do something that angers you or scares you or hurts, ask God to let his mercy flow through you. Now going along with grace and mercy is love, and we know that is one of the basic realities of what God has given us. Perhaps you remember the Chris Tomlin song at the cross, Love Ran Red? I've listened to it a lot of times, and it's really a powerful thought that what God's love did for us, the blood of Christ was shed for us at the cross.

5:09 And I can barely grasp how much love God has for me and is willing to love my prodigal through me. Now that might be one of God's hardest jobs, is loving through me, because I'm not always real good at it, but it's an extraordinary gift to realize that unconditional love is just that. It's a gift that's been given to us, no conditions, unconditional, requiring nothing in return. I think in my long journey with our son, that was one of the most important things that I understood, that God's love for me was not conditional on my doing the right thing, obeying, acting right, treating even my son right.

6:04 No, he loved me no matter what. And again, just like grace and mercy, that love flows through us to our loved ones. Once we need to be reminded of what that love that God gives to us and wants us to give to our loved ones. He says, love is very patient and kind. Never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy.

6:46 It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. Let's pause there. Will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him or her. You will always expect the best of him or her. And you will always stand your ground in defending him or her.

7:29 That's what the love of God flowing through you will look like. So we've seen gifts of grace and mercy and love. Here's another gift that my prodigal has given me, and that is prayer. As I received and began to experience God's grace, mercy, and love flowing through me, I was ushered back to a depth of prayer that I hadn't experienced in a while, to crying out to God, to falling on my knees and on my face. This has been true before, but my need in the hard wilderness years with our prodigal had me on my knees, on my face, calling out to God.

8:20 It was there before, but now even more. I once again found myself praying without ceasing. I was in constant conversation with God. I love this invitation from God in Hebrews 4. I think I used it a couple of weeks ago too, but it's so good. Let us come boldly to the throne of God to ask of him what we need and desire, and to stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our time of need. We don't have to be ashamed to come to God in prayer.

9:01 He says, come, come, hang out with me, come talk to me, tell me what you need, pour out your heart, tell me how hard it is, tell me the pain that you're experiencing. Come and I'm listening, and there you're going to find mercy and grace and love for your time of need. Come and pray with me, he says. And here's another gift, not one of your favorites, perhaps. It is the gift of surrender. Okay, true confession, I am a stubborn, strong-willed person. My family would tell you that, but I recognized it eventually too.

9:45 But so is my wanderer, my son of many years of prodigalness, definitely stubborn and strong-willed. And perhaps you are, and most likely your loved one. And just as our son had to learn to surrender his way to God's will, his so much better way, so have I. I am eye-willing to fully entrust my life and my loved one to my Lord. Surrendering's not an easy thing, is it? We kind of keep our fists really tight a lot of times, holding on to what we want.

10:28 And we especially are holding on to our prayer, our desire that God would rescue this one we love and therefore rescue us from all the pain that's involved there. In our long wilderness journey, I think I begged, I cajoled, I demanded that God step in and change him. I still wanted my own way. But watching my prodigal, as he experienced God's grace, mercy, and prayer, as he slowly opened his tight-fisted hands, in tentative surrender to God, it opened my eyes to my own stubbornness.

11:12 And I have also chosen to surrender. I've chosen to put him on an altar to the Lord, saying, he's yours. I give him to you. You know what I want, you know what I've asked for, you know what I'm begging you for, to do in his life, in her life. But I give them to you, and I surrender my will to your perfect will. And then finally, not the last gift, but the last one I'm going to talk about today. But if we looked at, we've looked at grace and mercy and love and prayer and surrender.

11:56 And this last gift is blessing. Did you know that Ephesians tells us that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ? Is that amazing? Every, every. There are no more spiritual blessings that God has not made available to us. Now, maybe we don't always take hold of them and apply them in our lives. I'll have to think about that. But he has blessed us. And I'm sure that I could never come close to passing on that many blessings to my prodigal.

12:39 Yet I'm encouraged to do just that. What does it mean to bless someone? Here are some definitions to express good wishes or to offer prayer to God for someone's welfare and benefit. What a wonderful thing to ask for good to happen in another's life. Now blessing or prodigals can be challenging. You may have heard me tell this story before, but it's still a good story. Once again, our prodigal had aggravated me. My natural reaction was to raise my voice and assign a consequence.

13:20 Instead, as he stormed out of the house, I went to his room, gathered his scattered dirty clothes and headed to the laundry room. Doing his laundry was his job, not mine. And as a teenager, he somewhat cared what his clothes looked like. But today it was my job. And as I threw each shirt and shorts into the washer, I said, my son, I bless you. Josh, I bless you. Josh, this is a blessing to you. Now I don't know if he felt blessed or if he even noticed, but it did wonders for me to do something tangible to bless him.

14:08 Why did I do that? Because God has convinced me of the power of blessing and the challenge to live it out. He says, do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. He says, whatever they do, your return is to give blessing. So do you see it? Your prodigal and my prodigal are powerful gifts to us.

14:52 Let me name them one more time. Grace, mercy, love, prayer, surrender and blessing. Now does that mean that those prodigals have done that to us? No, it means that because they are in our lives and God is calling us to extend grace and mercy and love, to be on our knees, to surrender our wills and to pass on blessing. Because the prodigal in our life has enabled us to grab hold of these wonderful gifts from God and what does he do with them?

15:35 What amazing gifts he's given us and he has used the pain of our journey to enhance and expand these beautiful gifts in our lives, which of course enables us to give them to our loved ones more and better and again and when it hurts and when they don't deserve it. He says, I've given it to you. Now you give these gifts to your loved ones. So here's my question. Which gift or gifts have you experienced an abundant measure when I was naming them and describing them? Which one?

16:15 Okay, I've gotten that one. This one on not so much. Well, let's work on the ones you've gotten so far. Can you pass it on? Can you look for an opportunity to pass that on to this person that you love who's caused so much pain? Be sure to check out the links in the show notes. There'll be some more to help you on these gifts. And again, I'd love it if you liked and subscribed to this podcast and I want you to know that next week we are going to be having a conversation, a great conversation with Dennis and Barbara Rainey who are the founders of the Family Life Ministry, the authors of many books, and they're going to be talking about relating to your adult children.

17:08 Now it's been my observation that maybe we're having more problem with adult prodigals than with the younger ones who are still in our home. At least I seem to hear about it an awful lot now. And so they have some really good hints. They raised six children and had one who was a real prodigal. And so they have some wise words for us. So don't miss next week. And it's time to go vote if you haven't. God bless you.