Hope for Parents of Prodigals

Dannah Gresh: Today on Revive Our Hearts, Barbara Rainey offers hope to parents of prodigals.

Barbara Rainey: God knows what you’re going through better than any human. He knows how you feel. He knows what the stakes are, and He wants to be your friend to walk through this with you. 

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for June 2, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but June 2 is the Worldwide Day of Prayer for the Prodigal. I’m sure you can think of someone who—right now—is far from the Lord. Someone who’s gone his or her own way. It may be your son or daughter or a grandchild or maybe just a friend. They’re on a path toward destruction, and it feels like there’s nothing you can do about it. 

Well, there is something you can do, friend. We’re going to consider that today as we hear from a variety of voices, including Barbara Rainey later in this program.

Let me take you back. Some months ago Nancy was recording a series, teaching her way through Psalm 136. As a refresher, here are the opening verses.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Give thanks to the God of gods,

Audience: . . . . for his steadfast love endures forever. 

Nancy: Give thanks to the Lord of lords,

Audience: . . . for his steadfast love endures forever.

Dannah: It’s a wonderful psalm with that repeated refrain about how the steadfast love of God is forever. 

Nancy: To him who by understanding made the heavens,

Audience: . . . for his steadfast love endures forever (vv. 2–3, 5) 

Dannah: Incidentally, you can listen to the whole series on Psalm 136. It’s called “His Love Is Forever,” and we’ve linked to it in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

It just so happened that in our studio audience for that series there were some women who understand the pain of either having or being a prodigal. They found comfort in being reminded of the steadfast love of the Lord. At the end of the recording session, women in attendance were passing the microphone around and sharing things they had learned, ways that God had spoken to them through His Word. We’ll hear from them in a moment. But I think you’ll see why we wanted to play this for you today, on the Day of Prayer for the Prodigal. 

Here’s Nancy to start us off.

Nancy: In recent days I’ve spent quite a bit of time, some on the phone and a lot in texting, with a friend, a close friend, who has a prodigal child. The child is making—and it’s years leading up to this—a lot of really bad choices and totally oblivious and unaware, still manipulating, playing the family. I have a lot of friends who’ve been through this, many still going through it. This one’s been very fresh to me. 

While I’ve been having that ongoing exchange with this mom who will get a text from her child and will text copy it to me and say, “What do I say now?” Well, I’m not a mother. I've not been there, but this friend knows I care. But I’ve had that going on on my phone on my lap, while I’ve got my Bible and laptop open to Psalm 136. This truth from God’s Word that I’m counseling my own heart with has given a resource to inform the way that I encourage this friend. 

Now, the first thing out of my mouth isn’t, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good.” That wouldn’t be compassionate. I listen. I care. Just like Jesus does. Well, I don't do it just like He does, but that’s the model for us, right? I ask questions. I listen some more and pray with and for my friend. But when it comes down to it, the most helpful thing I can do for that precious friend . . . I can’t change their child. They can’t change their child. I can’t change their child’s heart; only God can do that. But I can reassure this mom and the dad and the siblings in this family that God is worthy of our praise and that He is good all the time, and all the time He is good. His steadfast love endures forever. 

I can assure those parents that God knows where that child is; God knows what that child is doing right now. The decisions that are going to have lifelong, potentially bad implications– self-destructing, damaging, dangerous. But I can say to those parents, “God loves your child more than you could even love this child, which is a whole lot! God is good, and God is doing good. And God is doing good in this situation. God is at work in ways that you may have no idea of, to show this child His power, His greatness, His goodness, His steadfast love, His judgment, His discipline.” 

God may take that child through thirty-eight years of a wilderness. You say as a parent, “I couldn’t bear that!” That child’s wilderness becomes a wilderness for you, right? What does God do in the wilderness? He leads His people. He loves them. He cares for them. He protects them. He meets their needs. 

God doesn’t forsake them even though they’re in the wilderness because of their own stupidity and rebellion in sin. God still loves them. God still loves these parents. God still loves this child, wandering as they are in this vast, hallowing wasteland of a wilderness. In the midst of that desert, that wilderness, God is good. His steadfast love endures forever. And we can give thanks.

Before we see the outcome, I’ve had to say to these parents, “You have to be in this for the long haul. And you have to make some tough decisions.” Loving this child as God loves this child doesn’t mean that you enable him to keep committing things that are dangerous and illegal. It doesn’t mean that you provide for them in a way that they don’t feel the consequences of their own choices. They need to feel those consequences. Those parents are having to make some very hard decisions. It’s breaking their hearts—the whole family’s. But they’re trusting in the steadfast love of the Lord and in the goodness of the Lord. 

God is giving them, one day at a time, the ability to pray good for their child, to pray for the love of God to reach that child’s heart. I say that because maybe you’re facing a situation that seems so impossible. It’s not you, it’s somebody that you love. You can trust God not only to write your story—to borrow from the title of a book that Robert and I wrote, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story—you can also trust God to write the story of those you love. That’s what these parents are doing right now. That’s what some of you are doing right now. 

In the midst of it all, sometimes, when you’re crying your eyes out, you can’t sleep at night. Some of you younger kids, I love you, young women, but I’m telling you, until you have kids of your own and watch them go through it, we don’t get it. I’ve never had children of my own, and I watch these friends go on through this. But I’m telling you, what a parent goes through with a child . . .

But we all go through things with people we love, with people we know. The temptation is to worry, to stress, to become anxious, to manipulate, to try and fix it, to try and solve it. That doesn't mean there aren’t things we need to do. There are steps we need to take. But the heart has to be what Jesus said, “Why are you anxious? Why are you worried? If I care for those birds, if I feed those birds and clothe those flowers that are out in the field and then the wind blows and they’re gone but I gave them clothing, do you not think I will care for you and for the ones that you love?”

Dannah: That’s our host, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. What followed was a time of sharing. We’ll start with Mary Ellen, who had been impressed by a video Nancy showed about the planets, our sun, and other stars. The video points out how small earth is compared to the sun and much larger stars. 

Mary Ellen: The planets and how tiny earth was with that red star . . . Very often I look out into outer space and try to picture how magnificent our Creator is and how little I am. But I have to confess, to Him who alone does great wonders, I have spent way too much time trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do to fix my prodigal. Knowing that He loves her . . . I love that you added that, because I have told myself He loves her, and my grandchildren, more than I do. And He’s with them even though I can’t be. It’s Him alone. I guess I just want to thank you. I’ve had so many things go through my mind today and so many examples of His love. You’ve helped me remember all the times and the hard things he’s walked me through. He is faithful; His love does endure. I especially want to thank you for the planet video, because I am so small. It keeps reminding me of that, so thank you.

Nancy: So small, and yet he cares for us. He loves us. He knows where we are.

Mary Ellen: Recently, I gave Him four suggestions.

Nancy: To God?

Mary Ellen: Yes, what would be a really good way to redeem the situation. And by the fourth one I was driving my car. I sat there thinking, You probably won’t use any of them, but just in case you’re wondering . . . So to Him alone, He’s the one who does great wonders. I do believe He is doing exceedingly abundantly more than I can even imagine, so I’m trying to stop the suggestions.

Nancy: Courtney, you’re one of the moms.

Courtney: Yes. My name is Courtney Ward. I was listening to you speak, and it is always hard to hear about prodigals because I was one. It’s hard to be on that side of it, because I was so hard-hearted, breaking my parents’ hearts. Today, when you’re talking about remembrance, I was thinking that remembrance doesn’t have to be for guilt and shame, but it’s really to recall to mind what God has done. 

My heart was hard and sinful, and yet His steadfast love endures forever. Through that, when I do look back on that time of rebellion, I see very specific things where He protected me and He guided me. We don’t think about that. We think, Okay, we’re against God. We are running in the opposite direction. But we can’t, we can’t run. Yet, I look back and I see that it wasn’t until He took the blinders off—He took them off—and I was standing there. I remember the day, and I thought, I can’t believe where I am. I cannot believe I’m in this. But He’s also been faithful in guiding me back. So be encouraged that He does a wonderful work.

Nancy: How old were you when that moment came?

Courtney: I was nineteen.

Nancy: And you had been running for . . .

Courtney: Four years. I left home when I was fifteen.

Nancy: Were your parents believers?

Courtney: They were.

Nancy: Were they praying?

Courtney: Yes.

Nancy: Did they have to make some tough choices?

Courtney: They did, very tough choices. Some of it still continued a little bit. The process was long coming out of that because your mind is full of lies. He takes the blinders off. 

My husband bought a place once that needed a lot of work, a house that was in foreclosure. It was just terrible inside. Actually, he didn’t bring me to it. My kids were working on it; we have six kids. He was working on it, and one of my older boys came back and said, “You know, Mom, when God deals with us and He’s working in our hearts, it’s kind of like that. It takes a long time!” All the repainting and redoing carpets, and we want an instantaneous fix. It takes a long time to go through and redo that. That really spoke to my heart too. That process can be a while.

Nancy: The thought that God opened your eyes and renewed your mind and gave you a new heart . . . and then I see your precious Rachel sitting next to you.

Courtney: Yeah! He does a wonderful work.

Nancy: Rachel is a whole new generation and a whole new family line. How amazing is the goodness of God and the steadfast love of the Lord! I hope this gives some of you mamas some hope. It should. Grandmoms too. You hear from the parents, but you don’t often hear from the one who was the prodigal. I want my friend that I’ve been walking through with to hear your story and to be encouraged. God’s at work. 

Courtney: Because when you come back, there’s that shame. One thing I learned, because I wasn’t sure how to go about it . . . You hear the story of the prodigal. He comes home and gets hugged and that’s the end of it. But it wasn’t until . . .

Nancy: It probably wasn’t the end.

Courtney: It wasn’t, absolutely. Somebody pointed out Matthew. He was a tax collector. He was a covenant child. He grew up knowing his faith, and yet he became a tax collector. That was not what people who were Jewish did. That was turning his eyes away from God, from his faith. And yet after that, look at what he did. He became a follower of Christ! That was very hopeful to me to see his life after that, that there is this godly man.

Nancy: He’s a redeeming God who’s making all things new, right?

Courtney: He is a redeeming God, yes.

Nancy: We think of the goodness of God, giving thanks, the goodness of God, the steadfast love of the Lord, in situations that are clean and neat and put together. But there’s so much messiness in this world. That’s what sin has done to our world. It makes all our lives messed up, whether it’s visible in external ways or just heart issues. 

Sitting here is Melissa who’s in a home that’s dealing with helping with substance abuse and addictions and whatever. Those kinds of things are obvious when God rescues you from that or from the life of a prodigal, but there’s not a woman here in this room who hasn’t experienced the messiness of their own heart. 

It may be the older brother of the prodigal story, the self-righteous, pharisaical brother who needed as much redemption and being made new as did that prodigal, right? His heart was away from home, away from the father. He was stuck on himself. We don’t know where he ended up, but we know the grace of God is available to every person who sees their messiness, their need, and says, “Lord, I need your goodness. I need your steadfast love in my life.” There’s nobody who doesn’t need it. Thank you, Courtney. 

Dannah: It’s so good to remember not only that God is in charge, but that He has a plan for the prodigal you love and something for you to learn in the process! 

We’ve been listening to a sharing time from women who attended a recording session tied to Nancy’s series titled, “His Love Is Forever,” based on Psalm 136.

We’re talking about how parents of prodigals can have hope. Barbara Rainey explains one way she found hope in God’s Word at a difficult time when one of her children was making poor choices. This is an excerpt from a question-and-answer episode of “The Barbara Rainey Podcast, from Ever Thine Home.” Barbara’s husband, Dennis, joined her.

Dennis Rainey: Rebecca’s got a thorny question. She has a twenty-eight-year-old daughter who is living with a thirty-one-year-old man who’s not a believer. She knows where this is headed. It looks like it’s headed toward marriage, and that can be a lifetime of hurt and sorrow and anguish for her daughter. What would you say to her?

Barbara: First of all, I would say I really understand how you feel. I know it’s scary. It’s frightening. It’s sobering. It’s hard to watch because we as moms invest our lives in our kids. We pray for them. We ask God all the time that He would provide a godly husband or a godly wife. We pray that God would order their steps. When we see something like this happening, it’s hard not to feel like a failure. It’s just hard to know how to process it, and it’s hard to know what to do. 

Usually, in these situations a daughter like this is probably not going to be very teachable. She’s probably not going to respond well to comments that you might have or thoughts that you might have. She’s pretty much already made up her mind or she wouldn’t be living with him as it is.

Again, I wish we could sit down and have coffee, because I’m sure there’s more to the story that would help me give you, maybe, more specific, more detailed advice. 

One thing that I do want to encourage you to do. There have been a couple of seasons in my life and in our marriage that have been really challenging and difficult. One of those seasons was not too long ago, in the last five years. One of the things that I did that made all the difference in the world for me as I went through that hard season (and you’re in the middle of a really hard season right now), is that I read through the Psalms. I read every day, sometimes two or three psalms a day, from a particular version of the Psalms called The Psalter. It’s published by Crossway Publishers. 

What made this version so helpful to me was that at the end of every psalm was a devotional commentary written by Dane Ortlund. His words were so good for my soul. I worked my way through that book two or three times in that season. 

What it did every day for me is it helped me not only identify my feelings, it helped me pour out my soul and my heartache to the Lord. But it also helped right my thinking. It helped turn me back to, “God knows what He’s doing. God’s in control. God can work all things together for good,” and it was just a way of reorienting my thinking, my prayers, and the way I looked at what was going on.

So I want to really encourage you and anyone else who’s listening, who’s walking through a really hard season, to read through the Psalms. I think you need a companion who understands rejection, someone who understands the heartache of a prodigal child. And Jesus understands that. 

God is the perfect parent. He doesn’t have a single child who wasn’t a prodigal. He doesn’t have a single child who hasn’t made some really life-altering mistakes. So He knows what it feels like. God knows what you’re going through better than any human. He knows how you feel. He knows what the stakes are, and He wants to be your friend to walk through this with you. 

So I want to encourage you to do that— to read through the Psalms and find Him as your best companion in going through this journey.

Dennis: When you talk about soul care, there was one other thing that you did that I thought was really wise. Just comment on the “Parents of Prodigals” group that you formed.

Barbara: When one of ours was going through a really hard season that affected us, much as I know this is affecting you. The circumstances were different from this. But I decided that I needed to surround myself with other parents, other moms in particular, who knew what this felt like. A lot of the parents of the other kids in school just didn’t have any way of relating to that. 

There’s something about going through a really hard time with a child that makes you feel so isolated and so alone. When we don’t know someone else, it really can be an isolating experience. 

I knew of a couple of other families in our church who also had kids who were struggling. So I called those moms and said, “Hey, could we get together? Can we talk about our kids together? Let’s pray for our kids. Let’s form a little prayer group.”

So I did that. There were three or four of us. There weren’t many. It was so good for me to talk to other moms who were experiencing the same thing. I didn’t feel crazy. I didn’t feel as alone. I didn’t feel as abandoned. We supported each other. We prayed for each other. We encouraged one another. It was of great help.

So I would ask God to help you find someone else— at least one other mom who can identify with where you are and can understand where you are. The two of you can begin praying for your kids together and see what God does. 

Dennis: I think there’s a lot of parents who suffer quietly, who are alone.

Barbara: A lot of parents!

Dennis: What you did was you didn’t withdraw. You sought out some other women, other moms, who would provide godly counsel for you and some that you could also give godly counsel back to them.

Barbara: Yes.

Dennis: So it’s very important. 

Barbara: Yes.

Dannah: That’s a short segment from The Barbara Rainey Podcast from Ever Thine Home. Thank you, Dennis and Barbara, for sharing that with us here on Revive Our Hearts. 

God’s Word is powerful, isn’t it? It always brings perspective and comfort in times of difficulty. That’s something parents of prodigals need to remember.

Even though the ESV devotional psalter that Barbara mentioned is out of print now, the same content is still available from Crossway digitally. We’ve linked to that in the transcript of this program, at ReviveOurHearts.com. Once you’re in the transcript, look where you see “Additional Resources.” That’s where you’ll find the link. 

And of course what you need is your own copy of the Bible, so don’t forget that. You can find comfort as you read through the Psalms and pour out your heart to God by just reading your own Bible. 

There’s one more resource I want to mention. It’s the 90-day devotional by Judy Douglass, When You Love a Prodigal. Judy is the original organizer of the Worldwide Day of Prayer for the Prodigal, going on today. She understands the difficulties parents of prodigals experience; she was the parent of a prodigal for many years. 

We’ll send you a copy of Judy’s book as our way to say “thank you” for your donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts.

You can contact us with your gift at our website, ReviveOurHearts.com. When you make a donation, you’ll be able to indicate you’d like the book by Judy Douglass, or you can simply request it when you call with your donation. Our number is 1-800-569-5959. 

Can I ask you to do me a favor? Can you spend some time today praying for the prodigal or prodigals you love? And maybe for prodigals you don’t even know?

Nancy: Yes, there’s no greater gift we can give prodigals, whether they’re our own prodigals or those of people we know and love, than to pray for them, to lift them up to God's throne of grace. 

Dannah, I want to take a quick moment to thank our listeners who gave toward our fiscal year-end goal during the month of May. It was a big goal, but we serve a big God. I’m so thrilled to report that by His grace and because of the generosity of many, many people, we were able to meet and exceed the goal for the month. Thank you so much for giving to help make this possible! Your support is helping set us up for our new ministry year, which just started yesterday. 

Dannah: Thanks for that update, Nancy. Coming up on the next Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we’ll hear from Judy Douglass and Jim Cymbala who are going to coach us on how to pray for that prodigal we love. 

Then, next week and the rest of this month, we’ll take a closer look at God’s definition of gender and sexuality. Dr. Juli Slattery joins us in the studio on Monday to help us “rethink sexuality.” Please be back for Revive Our Hearts

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to sense the hope there is for your prodigal to find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

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