Prodigal Lesson: Restored to Sanity
Reflecting on a meditation from four years ago….
I had heard James McDonald talking about families…specifically he was referencing Hannah, a grieving barren woman and how she took her pain and pleading to where it belonged….. to God….not to her husband. In talking about the issue of where we take our family problems, including rebellious or unsaved children, he said that without a doubt he believes that God’s will is for ALL children to be in heaven with their parents. He referenced several scriptures that assure us that God desires salvation for ALL people. He said he could find no scripture pattern or principle that suggested entire families, entire households, were not to be protected and provided for by God. As I was listening to him talk about parents’ anxiety for their children, it occurred to me that in many cases parents, no matter how well intended, are the obstacle to their children coming to salvation. Parents who provide everything a child needs, protecting and enabling their children (even in the child’s rebellion or addiction), leave no room for the child to even have a reason to seek and trust God.
I have dealt with many women whose lives came apart completely when a parent died. They had no foundation except their parent(s). The parents had inadvertently created a dependency on themselves that prohibited the child from coming to God. Sometimes, it seems, when parents will not turn loose of their children, entrusting them entirely to God, God cannot reach them until the parent(s) are deceased. Alternately, it is possible that when parents will not surrender their children to God’s care, believing that they alone can do it, God may take the child home first in order to liberate him from the clutching fists of untrusting parents and in doing so, create a scenario in which the parents have no choice but to trust God’s will for their child. Just thinking……..
Interestingly, this message related to a conversation I had with my daughter-in-law one day…….She was talking about some lessor known lessons in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) that she uses in counseling. She pointed out something I had not noticed before…..in a pivotal hinge verse,Luke 15:16 we read this: “He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, BUT NO ONE GAVE HIM ANYTHING.” The very next verse says, “And when he had come to his senses….” It is generally the case that one is only willing to accept responsibility, repent, accept that they must formulate their own solutions to their problems, humbly seek forgiveness, be obedient, and reconcile in relationships when they have spent all of their resources, have wound up in difficult and intolerable circumstances, and NO ONE GIVES THEM ANYTHING. 7/14/17
