For Estranged Fathers and Sons – The Prodigal Son’s Dad Stayed Home – Purity 1377

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.com or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning! Today's photo of the right-of-way running parallel to Freedom Road as the darkness falls over the land with the skies lit up by the last glories of sunset comes to us from yours truly, as I was blessed with a spectacular light show during my early evening stroll to one of my favorite places on Friday evening. Well, it's Monday and Father's Day weekend is behind us, and I'm happy to report that my daughter Haley honored me with a Father's Day card that specifically expressed her appreciation for my life, my faith, and my example as someone who is committed to the Lord, is willing to serve him, and desires to honor him always. She had to work yesterday and I was in bed asleep before she returned home, but her simple gesture made my Father's Day. That's the good news. But unfortunately, my son Brennan and I seem to be on the outs in terms of our relationship, uh, since his abrupt decision to move out of my house when I demanded that he get a job and a haircut at the end of March. While he seemed agreeable to getting a job, the haircut request offended him, and he has been living at his sister Jeanette's place ever since. While I have reached out a couple of— on a couple occasions to check in and sent a message to Brennan yesterday, uh, he has refused to respond or communicate with me. According to what I can glean from social media and reports from others, Brennan has let his hair grow to its longest length ever but is still unemployed. As for his struggles with depression, which caused him to quit his back— his job back in January, the reports tell me that he is okay. Although I have difficult imagining how that could be. But he doesn't live with me anymore, and I've decided to let him live his life, even if that means we don't have any contact with one another. I love my son, and I forgive him for not contacting me on Father's Day, because that's what we do as Christians— we forgive— and because I can only suspect that his failure to communicate with me is a sign that he isn't right. I don't know whether he's bitter, angry, ashamed, apathetic, anxious, or depressed, but even in the secular world there is an expectation to participate in the Hallmark holiday of Father's Day by expressing your gratitude and love for one's father. And if you don't participate, there is something wrong in your relationship. When the son fails to reach out to the father after the father tries to communicate with the son, like I did, The responsibility for the rift in the relationship, regardless of justifications and rationalizations, falls on the son. He chooses to not be in a relationship with his father. So, my son didn't reach out to wish me a Happy Father's Day and chose to ignore the message that I sent to him and his sister on Facebook Messenger. And yes, the app indicates that he did see it, but rather than responding angrily or in despair, I choose to forgive my son, Brennan, for his rejection of me. Me and our relationship, and will pray that the Lord will help him to find it in himself to forgive me. I've asked for it and to be a responsible adult. Instead of dwelling on our estrangement, I'm letting it go. I'm releasing my son from any familial obligations to me and realize that this may mean the end of my— that my relationship with my son has ended. I've always— I'll always be his father and he will always be my son, of course, but as for our getting together, he's an adult and if he chooses not to associate or communicate with me any longer, I accept his decision. I hold no ill will towards him and pray for him to flourish in life. A man has to find his own way, and I'm entrusting my son in the Lord's care and releasing him to find it. That's where I am now, and I'm glad to be here, because when you have trouble in your relationships, it's not surprising to feel a measure of guilt for the things you've said and done that caused the division. Some of the things I said to motivate my son out of his depression and lethargy were selfish and unkind, but I did apologize and will stand by the basic principles of personal responsibility that I tried to instill in my son. The relational difficulties between us stem from his failure to be responsible. He stopped working, he stopped taking care of himself, he refused to do what was right, and he fell into a depression. And instead of taking corrective action, he has chosen to play the victim and be dependent on others for his personal needs. That's not who I raised him to be, and if that's the person he has chosen to be, he he can be that in someone else's home. His failure to get a job since leaving my house indicates that my living conditions weren't the problem. The problem stems from a rebellious and, and entitled attitude and the decision that he has made from them. In trying to find some comfort in the word of God, I examined many scriptures yesterday, and I was reminded that while parents are to love their children, they are supposed to teach them in the way they should go, to follow the Lord's wisdom, which repeatedly points to integrity, diligence, work, righteousness, and personal responsibility. That's not how my son chose to live, uh, and he suffered for it. As I prayed yesterday, I didn't get the impression that I was supposed to bend over backwards to try to restore a relationship. This morning, while I took the matter to the Lord in prayer, I was reminded of the parable of the prodigal son and how the father gave his son his inheritance before he died and let him go his own way. While the father loved the son, he didn't go chasing after him. He didn't drag him home against his will. And because of the times, you don't get the impression that the father was getting any communications from the son. The father stayed home and waited. And it was only because the son learned from the errors of his ways that the son made the decision to humble himself and restore the relationship. So I practiced a little benevolent detachment this morning. I surrendered everyone and everything to God, including my relationship with my son, trusting that whatever happens, I was faithful to the Lord and tried to show my son his ways for living. So, I am letting go and letting God with this, and I will go on in following what the Lord leads me to. So, I hope that helps anyone out there who may be estranged in their relationships. I pray that the Lord uses this to comfort you or to cause you to forgive and restore relationships that you have chosen to end, or not. Our relationship with God comes first, and we must follow Him. Knowing that family and friends may reject us. But our peace and joy have to come from the Lord and our relationship with him, and from our efforts to follow his ways for living. As always, I— well, though, uh, today's Bible verse comes to us from this Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Crews. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on divorce, and today's verses are Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Which says, when a man takes a wife and marries her, if then he finds no favor in his eyes— she finds no favor in his eyes because she has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for this is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. Wow. Today's— I don't know what to say about that. I'm sort of out of time. On the blog, I wrote that when you get a divorce, you know, it falls under the, the sixth point of our Counseling Reference Guide's resource section on divorce, which says Mosaic Law speaks of a bill of divorce. That's it. And I wrote, today's verses indicate that divorce should be done in an orderly and legal fashion. If you need to make the difficult decision to divorce, Try to do so in a manner that gives glory to God. Be righteous, forgive, and try to make peace. But there's a lot more going on in that, in those verses, and I apologize for my lack of commentary today. Ran out of time, basically. There's a lot there. But basically, you know, I stand by my basic thing to, if you need to divorce, do it orderly. But there's a lot, there's a lot going in there. A lot of commas, a lot of clauses. Yeah, I invite you to read Deuteronomy 24:1-4 and try to pull something out of there. He does, you know, it's a mess. Wow. You may not, I guess that there's something in there about, you know, you may not take her back after she's been defiled. So yeah, let's just stand on God hates divorce and there's only a few instances in which you should get divorced, you know, but you know, let's be real, you might divorce for all kinds of reasons and if so, you should do so in peace and if you can restore the relationship between your wife, you know, God will forgive it and bless it, you know, but generally Generally, people don't get back together, and we should try to follow the Lord with the life after divorce and live in peace rather than choose sin. So that's my advice. That's it. As for the rest, we do always invite people to go to emptyforchrist.com, where we always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist our brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. And today we continue sharing from According to Your Word Morning and Evening Through the New Testament by Stephen F. Alford. And today's message, uh, comments on 1 Corinthians 4, and from that chapter, uh, he shares a, a portion of verse 3 which says, but with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. He who judges me is the Lord. And Stephen Alford writes, the hallmark of true stewardship is Faithfulness. The words of my blessed Lord in that day will be, "Well done, good and faithful"— not successful— servant. True faithfulness is heart, is heart attitude before God. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. Hebrews 11:6. Whatever is not from faith is sin. Romans 14:23. Faithfulness then can be judged by my own heart attitude to God. Or fellowship with him. As long as that fellowship is maintained, I please him, and this is faithfulness. When that fellowship is broken through the intrusion of sin or straying out of the path of light, the fellowship is broken, and I can't— and I can know it. Therefore, the apostle could say, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know nothing against myself, yet I am justified by this. But he who judges me is the Lord. And then he ends by praying, when the time arrives, may you judge me to have, to have been good and faithful. Amen. And yeah, our attitude to the Lord is very important. We don't worry about what people or human courts you know, think about us. Wow, this guy's a jerk, you know, he threw his son out of the house when he was depressed and now he wants to be in a relationship with him. Well, you know, yeah, I guess I'm a jerk, that's what you think, but I was only trying to follow what the Lord would have him do, you know, which is just be responsible and work. As for the haircut, I thought it would help him get a job. And just sort of change his disposition as he was long-haired and downward-facing all the time, you know, some sort of, you know, attitude of depression. And, you know, not for nothing, it, you know, at times it appeared to be clinical depression, but other times he seemed absolutely fine, which led me to believe that the depression stemmed from the fact that you know, it's an existential crisis where he didn't want to work because he didn't know what to do. He didn't prepare himself for the future, and now he had the hard, hard business of working at, you know, a daily job. And in the winter, it became too much, and he chose to quit. And unfortunately, I've seen him stagnate in my home, you know, when he had money for years, and I couldn't, you know, push came to shove, and I had to you know, try to motivate him, and he chose to move out, so he's gone. So yeah, so I did— I guess I tried to justify myself there, but it is what it is, and I release him to God. And, uh, you know, and I— my heart is good because me and God, we're great. Me and my son, not so great. But my son and God, I don't think they don't get together very often. Um, he doesn't go to church, he doesn't read the Bible, he doesn't pray. I'm pretty sure about that because he's not following the Lord. When you follow the Lord, there'll be fruit in your life. You have joy, peace, a job, you know, these are the things you would do. Anyway, that's it for me. I'm totally out of time. I'll barely have time to get this loaded up, so it might be late. But I pray for all of us today, anyone listening and me, that the Lord would go before us, open our eyes to the things he wants He wants us to see and lead us in the way we should go. And, uh, Lord, we just pray for you to help us today. And, um, we need your help every day. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, and we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.