Are we hurting our prodigals by trying to help them?

Here's the Precious Prodigal post for July 29, 2014: Are we hurting our prodigals by trying to help them? #letgoandletGod #notmyjob Please "Share" using this "ShortLink" = http://bit.ly/XawRFf

Jonah 2:1 "Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly…"

I was having lunch with someone who is living in a halfway house. He introduced me to a young friend from the same halfway house and then gestured to the window as that friend walked up to a group of people. He said the woman in the group was his friend’s mother, and she was helping him stay sick. Say what?

You probably know what that means as do I. However, I was interested in hearing it from his perspective. He told me that boy’s Mom meets with him at his work (a violation) and gives him things without going through the office screening (a violation). She even picks him up in her car without permission when he calls her on a phone he isn’t supposed to have (two serious violations).

It would be wonderful if we could “fix” our prodigals, but it doesn’t work that way. I learned two difficult lessons on my journey with prodigals. The first is they were going to face some hard consequences because of their choices. The second was even harder…I wasn’t helping them by shielding them from those consequences; I was hurting them.

God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh, but that’s the last thing Jonah wanted to do. So he ran the other direction, got on a ship to “flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” (Jonah 1:3) When God sent a great storm, that didn’t get make Jonah repent or submit to God’s will. Instead, he told the sailors to throw him into the sea, and, although reluctant, that’s what they did.

It can be terrifying to see our prodigals begin to reap the storms of natural consequences. There’s the storm of the arrest, the car accident, the jail sentence, fines, probation. There’s the storm of the broken home, losing their kids, losing their job, and a list of other things I haven’t named. You probably have your own list.

Like us, those sailors tried everything before they threw Jonah overboard and took their hands off. But you see, God’s plan was never that the sailors would save Jonah or protect him from the very storm God had sent to get his attention. And their interference was blocking what God was trying to do in Jonah’s life.

Jonah told the sailors to throw him in the sea because he wanted to die...or thought he did.   God’s word didn’t matter to Jonah’s. Neither did the storm or the sailors trying to help him. None of those things got his attention. But God “had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah,” and three days in the belly of that fish did what nothing else had done: it got Jonah’s complete attention.

No doubt that Mom is sincere in trying to help her son. Who among us wouldn’t be? But is she really helping him? Probably not. Reaping the natural consequences of our choices is how we learn, and it’s how our prodigals learn as well. Taking our hands off what’s happening in our prodigal’s life may be the hardest thing we are ever going to do.

But if we want that prodigal to hear God’s voice, we need to do it anyway. Jonah “cried by reason of [his] affliction unto the Lord.” (Jonah 2:2) Had his mother been waiting there with a boat, a rescue ring, and her certificate as a lifeguard, Jonah never would have cried out to God. We aren’t abandoning our prodigals when we stop bailing water for them. God has a fish and a plan...and He doesn’t need our help.

Challenge for Today: Can you, just for today, stop bailing your prodigal out of his latest predicament?