If you live with a prodigal, you know what it means to love someone.

 

Love is a means of survival. Love is what gets you up each morning and inspires you to serve someone who acts like they hate you. Loving this way means duty, sacrifice, responsibility, and resilience.

 

Many years back, an R&B icon famously crooned a pseudo-love anthem to the world asking this skeptical question, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?” If you live with a wayward person, the answer is a no-brainer: everything!

 

But there is a side of love that’s difficult to face. You’ve had a taste of it already if you are persisting in hope that this person you love might change.

 

This 4-day track comes from Harvey Gilbert’s new book, Letting Go.

 

Maybe you were a prodigal. Maybe you loved someone who was or is a prodigal. Maybe someone you lead is struggling to continue loving the prodigal in their life.

 

Regardless, this aspect of our broken world impacts everyone. Over the next four days, we will look at some very practical ways of approaching the prodigals in our lives as well as receive the necessary encouragement to keep pressing on!

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DAY 2: SUFFERING IN COMMUNITY

 

Loving the wayward is a form of suffering. Suffering tends to isolate us. This means that loving the wayward can be a lonely path.

 

Don’t let it be.

 

To be in a relationship with a prodigal is akin to living in captivity. Feelings of shame, anger, guilt, and fear scrape you raw and make it difficult for you to think clearly. You need to rely on the wisdom and counsel of pastors and church communities in moving forward.

 

This support becomes particularly needed as your prodigal walks toward the light of repentance. It’s very hard for a person who has been repeatedly sinned against to measure the sincerity of the sinner’s repentance. Without the help of wise friends or trusted leaders, we can define repentance arbitrarily through our feelings rather than through the prodigal’s words and actions.

 

These feelings are why we should never assign ourselves the “sinned against” status without the wisdom and perspective of outside help. We must avoid the “tyranny of the aggrieved,” when those sinned against withhold forgiveness and reconciliation until the sinner meets all of their expectations or demands.

 

Church leaders and pastors can help prodigal sufferers measure the sincerity and substance of repentance. God gives us leaders and a faith community in the church to help us navigate these gut-wrenching decisions so that our faucet of forgiveness can flow freely and wisely.

 

Challenge: As a leader, how do you support those you know who have a prodigal in their life? What support has been helpful to YOU in your experience?

Complete the challenges at the end of each day to help process your journey as well as be entered in to win a copy of Letting Go.