How I Almost Missed the Answer to My Prodigal Prayers

2,340

That is an estimate of the prayers I’ve prayed for a prodigal to return. It represents 3 prayers per week x 52 weeks per year x 15 years of praying:

3 x 52 x 15 = 2,340 prayers. 

It is an underestimate. If I were to include his father and grandparents’ prayers, his aunts’ and uncles’ and all my friends’ prayers, the number would more than double. 

The number 2,340 is a measure of earnestness, and hope. “Never despair of a child,” the 19th-century pastor Theodore Cuyler wrote. “The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys.” 

So I do not despair and I cannot not pray. Specifically, I pray that sin will taste bitter. Because “Till sin is bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” 

That is to say, I’ve prayed more fervently that God will grant this son I love the gift of repentance than I’ve prayed for anything else—except, I think, to be a mom. 

But I dismissed desperation as one of God’s choice tools.

Which is strange, because how many times have I sung this line? 

“In Desperation, I Turned to Heaven“

In desperation I turned to heaven. How many times was I deaf as I sang this line?

As if God wouldn’t use something so base as desperation to turn prodigals back to him?

As if the Hound of Heaven wouldn’t char a wooden soul in order to make of him a masterpiece, or take our heart’s desire, not for our harm, but so that we would seek it in his arms?

Doesn’t God use desperation to lead us to repentance? 

• Wasn’t it from the belly of the whale that Jonah cried out to the God who saves (Jonah 2)?

• Wasn’t it when his young son’s life was in the balance that King David confessed (2 Samuel 12:13-14)? 

• Wasn’t it when King Manassah was bound in chains of bronze that he humbled himself and sought God’s favor (2 Chronicles 33:12-13)? 

Does not God himself command us to cry out to him “in the day of trouble,” for on the day he delivers us, he will be honored (Psalm 51:15)? 

To Take Hold of His Hand

“If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness, but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand.” 

t. d. Talmage

Why can I cling to this invisible string of grace in my own life, but blacklist it for others? As if hunger couldn’t be the way God would choose to quicken souls to life, and make us take hold of His hand.

Why do I assume that desperation is not the way God would answer a prayer—or 2,340 prayers—and bring a child to him? Wasn’t the prodigal perishing, longing to be fed with the pig scraps, when he humbled himself, and turned to go back home (Luke 15:16-20)? 

So why would I possibly presume to take desperation out of the cards in my Lord’s pierced hands? 

Kindness Feels Kinder When We’re Desperate

God intentionally led his people between the enemy and the Red Sea. He repeatedly took them to rock-and-hard places and up-against-the-wall-with-nothing-to-do-but-cry-out places. 

That could not be more plain than in Psalm 66:10-12: “You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”

I think he still does.

A couple at church recently told me about how they came to faith during a dark season living in their parents’ basement. 

Another friend shared that it was when anorexia was wreaking havoc in her 21 year-old body that she turned to Christ. 

So who am I to discount God’s “strange work” (Isaiah 28:21)? Who am I to think it is not genuine repentance if it was induced by desperation? Or that it can’t be true humility if it was borne of need?  

Isn’t it God’s kindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4)? And doesn’t kindness feel kinder when we are desperate? 

Isn’t it really my pride that second guesses God’s designs to bring his prodigal children home? 

Isn’t it really Pharisee eyes that don’t see a repentant son on my step, but only a desperate hungry boy? 

Coming Home

So where are we in my own little family at this moment? 

A few weeks ago there came this text, out of the blue: 

“Hey Mom, what would you and dad think if I asked to move back home?”

After years of wandering, and a heart-wrenching, far country spending spree, it looks like our son is coming back home. 

Since that text, we’ve had some hard talks and firm hugs and we set a move-in date next month. 

But I almost missed the knock. My son’s text was like Peter’s knock. Earnest prayers preceded both. And both answers to those prayers were missed. That is my last point, point three. 

Peter Kept On Knocking

Not all of you pray day after day for a prodigal. But all of you pray. 

And most of you pray and pray and pray. Earnestly, you pray.

This last word is for you.  

Because I don’t want you to do what I did for an hour or two. I don’t want you to miss God’s answer when it is at your doorstep. 

Like the church in Acts almost did. We find this astounding story in Acts 12:5-16, 

“So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. 

Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. . .

And he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”

“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”

But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.” 

Earnestly Prayed For, And Utterly Unexpected

We would think that these on-fire, great-faith believers would say, “Of course Peter’s here. We’ve been praying for his release.”

But they didn’t expect him. Rhoda believed, but the Church did not. 

In a way, their failure can encourage us. The early Church, so earnest in their prayer for Peter’s release, didn’t believe it when God released him. They thought it was his angel at the door, or that Rhoda was crazy. 

As Kevin DeYoung notes, “Even they struggled to believe that God was actually going to do the miraculous in prayer.”

But God did. And he still does. 

Unembarrassed (But Slightly Ashamed)

Theologian B. B. Warfield reportedly said, “Christianity is unembarrassed supernaturalism.” (Cited in Ian Hamilton, Ephesians, The Lectio Continua: Expository Commentary on the New Testament.)  

What happened to Peter was supernatural. As a Christian, I don’t shy away from it for a minute. But I also don’t fault the early, and earnestly praying, Church from doubting. 

Because I doubted when I first read my son’s text. I doubted again when, three days later, we sat across from each and talked at a picnic table in the park.

But I am not ashamed of the gospel, which is the power of God to save (Romans 1:16). 

And I am not embarrassed to praise God for his supernatural work in a prodigal child which is, at least to this mom, as incredible as Peter’s prison escape. 

Even if there is a tinge of shame that at first I disbelieved.