Prodigals: Come Home!

Prodigal: The term has a decidedly negative religious connotation, doesn't it? I mean, when you hear about the Prodigal Son, you automatically think about the ungrateful child in the pigpen (Luke 15:11-32), having wasted his inheritance and ruined his life. Especially if you identify with the older brother, the one who "lived right" from the beginning, not requiring a walk on the wild side to help him realize the error of his ways. 

I looked up the meaning of the word prodigal, and I was surprised by what I found. (Definition of prodigal on Dictionary.com)

One definition: giving or yielding profusely; lavish
Another: lavishly abundant; profuse

Couldn't these very definitions define the heart of God? Doesn't He give mercy profusely? Aren't His blessings lavishly abundant? 

It was the other connotation of the word that rounded out the term prodigal: wastefully or recklessly extravagant. 

I remember two women in scripture who were accused of wasteful extravagance, when they poured perfume on the feet of Jesus, anointing Him with their love and tears. (Luke 7:36-50; John 12:1-11)

We might not all have a financial inheritance to go and waste on crazy living, as the young man did who was described in Luke 15. But every single living person in the world has a Father in heaven who loves him or her, who holds out the gift of eternal life to him or her. This free gift of eternity with our Creator is beyond any amount of money we could ever possess, and it comes to us at no cost ... FREE ... bought and paid for on our behalf by the life of Jesus Christ, who died in our place. (John 3:16)

Yet most of us have to figure it out the hard way. We go on living as if we have all the answers. We go on living as if we have forever. Wasting the precious time that God has given us here on this earth, to know and share His heart with a lost and dying world. We go on running from the loving arms of our Father, because we have bought the lie: the lie that there are many ways to God ... the lie that it doesn't matter ... the lie that we are guaranteed another tomorrow ... the lie that we know better than the One who created us.   

In truth, everyone is a prodigal before our Lord gets hold of his or her heart; at least I know I was. And now many of us who are parents know the unending heartache of watching our children run from God. And it doesn’t stop there. Many of us have family members … fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers … aunts, uncles, cousins … the list is unending … who are not in right relationship with the Father. It hurts to see them struggle. It is hard to keep praying and seemingly see no results. It isn’t about how hard or how well we pray; it’s not a thing we can control, because the answer involves those we are praying for baring and bowing their hearts to an unseen God, and many of these hearts are buried in heavy layers of self-protective armor. These people who we love so much and who seem so difficult at times are really wounded and hurting souls who just don’t want to be hurt yet again; their “truster” is broken. Too many times, they’ve risked vulnerability and been kicked in the teeth for their efforts. 

It is tempting to want to give up, to see all that prayer as a waste of time. And that is exactly what the enemy would like for us to do. But recently, God has encouraged me in so many ways as I pray. 

What does scripture say?

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people (Acts 2:17, NIV). The NKJV translation says on all flesh. In a recent message given at our church, the speaker made this observation: the text doesn't say that the Spirit will be poured only on those who know God; it says the Spirit will be poured on all people. This includes those prodigals we are praying for! We can pray that the armor that surrounds their hearts ... the lies that have gripped their thoughts ... will crack, and we can pray that the Spirit will seep into those cracks and begin to heal their wounds and woo them to the Father's heart. 

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded (James 4:8). Notice the order in this verse. Does it say that God will draw near after you purify yourself? Or does it say to draw near to Him, and He will come near to you ... purification to follow? Yes, all He needs is for you to turn your head in His direction. 

And let's go back to the original passage we were discussing in Luke 15. Verse 20 reads like this: And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. The father was watching for the lost son, just as God the Father watches for us to make a move to come in His direction. When we do, He runs to us. 

Don't stop praying, people!!!! Nothing is impossible with God!

I want to close with this video clip our pastor played in church this past Sunday. It has some amazing spiritual applications. But for now, it is a depiction of a bear cub who has strayed from safety and is being stalked by a cougar; he runs to safety, and he finds it. 



Be blessed this day!

My Prodigal Years...

I'm in the process of applying to be an on-line counselor/spiritual coach for Goundwire, and the application asks us to share our testimony. I've been a Christian for twenty-nine years, and that question always stumps me. Why, I wonder?

When I was first saved, I'd hear people give their testimonies ... dramatic kinds of things.

"When I got saved, God delivered me from a heroin addiction. I've been clean and sober ever since." 

"When I got saved, I was on the verge of a divorce, and God healed my marriage." 

"When I got saved, I was instantly healed of my cancer and transformed into the picture of health." 

Of course there were more sedate kinds of stories, but I seemed to zero in on the amazing, miraculous ones, and I immediately felt my own story could never measure up.

I've learned over the years that God doesn't use a yardstick. There's no measuring tool for testimonies. Every single one of them is an amazing miracle, given mankind's wayward nature and natural affinity to do things our own way; we all have a natural inclination to run from God, to resist anything that is actually good for us! Some of us just tend to get into bigger messes. 

But back then, I just felt like my testimony wasn't exciting, and that no one would care to hear it. I mean, after all, hubby and I read a Four Spiritual Laws tract, published by Campus Crusade for Christ. 

B-O-R-I-N-G!  Right?

As the years passed, I realized that the fact that hubby and I read the same tract, a week apart, and both got saved, was in and of itself something of a miraculous occurrence. I'd read the tract, prayed the prayer, and left the tract on the counter in the kitchen, not realizing exactly what I'd done in the spiritual sense (but it was enough for our great God!). A week later, hubby ~ he actually does have a name, Wayne ~ came to me with tract in hand ...

"Did you leave this in the kitchen?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I just read it and prayed the prayer."

"Oh, I did too."

A few days passed, and I couldn't get the tract out of my head. I read it again; it was then that I spied the phone number on the back. 

I dialed the number, and the woman who answered (she'd given us the tract at a Bible study we'd attended. Long story, but let's just say that we were at the study, not due to a hunger for God, but to please Wayne's boss) chatted with me for a few minutes, giving me a chance to let her know that I got her number off the tract. Then she said something that blew my mind.

"We've been waiting for you to call. We've been praying for you and your husband since we left the tract with you." 

WHAT?!

So, okay. I know what you are thinking. That is pretty awesome. (Like I said earlier, we serve a great big God!) But you have to remember where I was coming from back then.  

That was then; this is now. My spiritual journey over the past year, which I talk about in my first post to this blog: Bare Naked Lady, really opened my eyes to God's providential hand in my life since the day I was born. I decided that's what I want to share with the folks at Groundwire. It goes like this:

I lived my teen and young adult years making one poor decision after another; choices rooted in a poor self-image that led to promiscuity, alcohol and drug use, self-sufficiency, and rebellious pride. There's no glory intended in the admission of the truth here; it's just who I was then. There was alcoholism in my family, and a molestation that occurred in my very early years, which I had never shared with my parents; these factors had convinced me that I could trust no one but myself. Sadly, my track record gave evidence to the truth that I was not trustworthy, either. 

When I experienced my first true love, at the tender age of seventeen, I was sure he was the answer to all my woes in life, that he would take care of me. I gave him everything; you can fill in the blanks, but I do mean everything. When I later found myself tossed to the curb, I spiraled into a string of empty one-night stands, stubbornly holding out hope that I would eventually stumble upon the magic Mr. Right, who would really care, who would unwittingly save me from myself and give my life real purpose because he wanted me. (Please understand, I do not harbor bitterness against my first love; we were two young kids who thought we were so grown-up and in-the-know, but in reality both very mixed up and confused; our end was inevitable.)

And I was blind to the love my parents had for me, at the time standing in judgment of them, because of their own struggles and confusion in life.

I did believe in God, even way back then, but there was no personal relationship. And I couldn't understand why, if He was so wonderful, He would let me hurt so much. 

After a few years of this crazy kind of living, I was battling depression and flirting with the idea of suicide, because I felt worthless and unwanted. But I was a coward, too, so all I did was flirt with the idea; it was easier to see myself as a victim and feel sorry for poor little old me. That's where God found me when He mercifully chose to intervene in my life, at the bottom of a spiritual pigpen. Luke 15:11-32

Even before I knew Him personally, I believe it was Providence that He separated me from my first love. He was not a bad person; he went on to become an upstanding citizen and a fine individual. But God had already hand-picked the one I was supposed to be with, the one who would be able to truly love me. My pigpen was the stage God set; it was there that He tapped me on the shoulder, got my attention, and began to woo me to Himself. A few years later, when a friend hounded me to go on a blind date, it was then that I met my real true love. A year later, on our first anniversary, Wayne and I celebrated not only our marriage, but our new birth together in Christ. And we've been walking with Him ever since.

In my Lord, I've finally found the answer to all of life's woes. The One who really cares. The One who saved me from myself. The One who gives my life true purpose. My True Love. 

God never ceases to amaze me. Wayne and I have walked with Him for twenty-nine years, and I am still just beginning to truly understand how much God loves me and who I am in Him. His gift to me, in the form of my dear husband, has been a picture of the love of God ~ unconditional, sacrificial, ever-growing, ever-changing for the better, for the good. 

That's the kind of love I want other women to embrace, for it is with that kind of love that God loves them too. That's the purpose of this Dare to Share blog, to unite us as women with our Creator, our Savior, our Father, our Friend; that we would all come to understand the incredible depth of His love for us! Ephesians 3:14-21