Prodigal Living...

Who knows that the term "prodigal" is actually another term for "wasteful"? The story that Jesus relates in Luke chapter 15 is about the "prodigal son". We often hear this as being about someone who is separated from his father who eventually finds their way home after realizing what they had and lost. I have even read of this being understood in terms of a Christian being represented by the older brother with a jealous attitude towards those who are newly come into the kingdom, and feeling the father's extravagant love.

Truly the context is more to do with the understanding of God's desire for all of those separate from Him to find their way home, and that He will be looking for them as they come over the hill and he rushes out to welcome them home showering them lavishly with His boundless love, no matter that it is not deserved.

Yet, here is another look at the passage. If you get the chance read Luke 15:11-19. It tells of two sons; the one who appears as you read all the way through to be one who is faithful to his father, though somewhat ungrateful as to what he has always had though he didn't apparently realize it; and the son who was given his share of the riches and took them and squandered them living carelessly in a foreign (strange) land. Only after his riches were all spent did he realize what it was he had had and had wasted. This "wasted" living or "prodigal" living caused him to want to return home and live as one of his father's servants since he knew that while he nothing to eat where he was feeding the pigs for someone else, at least at home his father's servants lived better than he was living.

Stop for a moment and think of how this sounds if you rearrange the application. This is not meant to take away the context of the passage, but rather how you take the principle of Christ's teachings, and see how this same message can be applied in your life (or the corporate life of a church, community, nation). I want to have you close your eyes and think with me as I lay out the story in another way that will hopefully cause you to shudder and cry out to the Lord for revival and repentance.

The wasteful son - could there be a better metaphorical illustration of the church in America today? We have been blessed by God with so many riches (spiritually, materially, physically) and yet the evangelical church over the past generation has squandered (i.e., wasted, lived prodigally) our spiritual wealth through "riotous living". We have gone along to get along with the culture, abandoning the culture to the world, to the pagans, to those of other religions (to include the secular humanists, though they will not admit to being a "religion") when we have been given the command to "take every thought captive". In our quest for relevance, of our desire to be considered "hip and cool", we have let our Father's riches slip through our hands as we busy ourselves playing "church" on Sunday morning, and never give it another thought until the next Sunday morning. Our anemic prayer lives, spiritual power (real spiritual power, not these carnival freak shows that pass as some kind of "Jesus is my cosmic genie" kind of spiritual power); all are due to the lifestyle that we as Christians in this generation in America have come to expect as the "normal way to do church".

We are like the prodigal son who after squandering his father's riches (notice they are not his by having earned them, but rather they are given to him as his inheritance, as ours is as Christians, we can't earn our heavenly riches, but are given access to them by our Heavenly Father through Christ Jesus) finds employment feeding pigs. My friends we are like this in our culture, we are feeding the pigs! We are with the pigs down in the slop and we wallow in our misery, moaning about how things aren't like they used to be in the "good old days" when church was really church. Instead, as we have now begun to (hopefully) realize that we are truly hungry for spiritual food, all that we find that we have left now is the slop that the pigs eat, and our spiritual bodies can't or won't digest it, leaving us even hungrier than before.

What happens next is where I hope that our prayers will lead us - the desire to return home. Home to our Father's house; where there his "servants have food to spare" (Luke 15:17a). And yet here we are starving to death, and yet we have lost our moral bearings as we compromise the truth, and accept the garbage that we are fed by the culture, government, and those spiritually opposed to our Lord's message. I pray that you will stop this madness in this generation, and cry out to God for a return to "the old ways", the preaching of the gospel, not just to the healthy, but to the truly sick in a way that is bold and fearless of men, knowing that they can only kill the body, but cannot touch the soul!

We must become like the prodigal son who upon realizing his spiritual poverty and the famine that he found himself in desired to go to his Father's house and beg forgiveness, and just live as a servant in His house. We know that our Father in heaven would not take us as a servant but will be waiting on the hill from afar looking for us to come home; and will run out to meet us as we turn to home! He will tell the servants to kill the fatted calf, and to clothe us in Christ's righteous garments, and to throw away our garments of self-righteousness. We will be loved and we will love! But we must shred and shed this image of who the church has become in America, and return the our Father's house in His power, and in His Name!

For tonight, I close with this thought from Acts 13:36 - "For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed." Ask yourself if you have served God's purpose for your generation. You have not fallen asleep yet; and there is still time to turn to God and seek His face with all your heart, and in that day He will be found.

Soli Deo Gloria!