The PRODIGAL SON breaks his father’s heart

The PRODIGAL SON does not break the rules as much as he breaks his father’s heart. Do you know when you have broken your Heavenly Father’s heart? You do it every time you resist his control, refuse his guidance and renounce his goodness as the source of your life. You have packed up your share of the inheritance and have left the Father as if never to come back. The PRODIGAL son goes off to the “far Country” which in life means the realm of rebellion. It is a deliberate act of departure. He renounced his dependent son ship. Each has DRIFTED into a similar condition.  First it is little things. Then you’re plans, your money, your deepest relationships, finally your heart. And too proud to admit your lost condition to others or even yourself. Prayer becomes difficult or hardly exists at all. God’s guidance for your life seems irrelevant. He seems too far away.

The PRODIGAL son’s money runs out. His hunger along with famine drives him to become a day laborer, essentially a slave without rights. He had left his home because he wanted to be free to be himself, but attached to his new master, he found out how shallow that was.

And at the bottom he saw himself as he truly was. It isn’t easy to take an honest look at yourself. You resist it as long as you can. To face your complicated personality traits which are the real you it’s hard and frightening to see the destructiveness of your behavior and the selfishness of your actions. When you see the independence of your ways and you call it all by its right name: SIN. And that leads to the realization “Why am I living this way? Just get up and go to the Father and say to him, ‘Father I have sinned against heaven and in your sight!’”Notice that the PRODIGAL son’s father did not step in to save his son from life’s reality in the far country. There were no guardians to soften the blows he felt. The father loved him so much that he allowed him to experience the shame and come to himself. That’s prodigal love. Ever asked why God do you send trials and difficulties. He doesn’t have to. Life offers and sends enough of its own. God waits until you ask, “What is the meaning in this?” “What am I to learn?”

If you come a little way to God, when you are "yet a great way off" He will run to meet you. God has a way of seeing you the way you cannot understand. He sees right through you at a glance, as if you were made of glass; He sees all your past, present and future. The grace of God does not operate as you think All God wants is for you to come home and receive forgiveness. (Luke 15:11-32)