When Prodigals Come to Their Senses

My boys, late 1980s

“After time had passed…sanity returned, and I praised and worshiped the Most High and honored the One who lives forever!”  (Dan. 4:34 NLT)

My two precious sons were prodigal teenagers. But praise the Lord Jesus Christ who granted them repentance leading to the knowledge of truth and escape from the devil’s snare.

Oh, parents of prodigals, storm-tossed and not comforted, be not quarrelsome, but kind…able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will (2 Tim. 2:24-26).

Pray to and trust in the Most High God, the One who is able to deliver and redeem the one you love! 

     His father watched from a distance as the young man hurriedly shoved the money beside his clothing and other supplies into animal-skin bags. A smirk of satisfaction played across the son's face as he tightly cinched the leather cords of the sacks. 

"Good-bye, Father," he casually called over his shoulder as his sandals hit the dusty road at a rapid pace, racing toward the sun just touching the horizon. The old man's eyes remained fixed on the robed figure trotting into the distance until his youngest completely disappeared from sight.

       In the story of the prodigal son as told by Jesus in Luke 15, having spent everything, that young man soon became poverty-stricken, destitute, a pauper without a penny to his name. So he went and hired himself out to a farmer who sent him into the fields to feed swine.

       Starving nigh to death, the boy would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything, causing him to come to his senses.

In the coolness of the early morn, his father slowly shuffled toward the family's stone well. Looking in the distance beyond the cistern, the old man suddenly dropped his water jar and started running with outstretched arms down the dusty road. His prodigal child had come home.

All your children will be taught of the Lord, and their well-being will be established (Isa. 54:13).