And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. (Luke 15: 31, 32)
I do not know whether you have realized that
the church is more celebrative over the prodigal than it is for the one who has
been in the fold their whole life.
Do you realize that it is easier to get a
spiritual position if you are from a spiritual sewer than if you have had no
drama in your spiritual experience?
Getting saved as a child and walking in
faithfulness your whole life has over the years been treated as a liability in
the church, especially in leadership circles.
Sadly, it did not start yesterday.
I remember when children would create sins
Christ had saved them from to make their testimonies more interesting.
You would hear a six-year-old talking about
being saved from smoking when they did not even know what a cigarette was.
Another would talk about being saved from drunkenness when the closest they
came to alcohol was hearing drunks singing as they went home at night.
The church then gradually started looking for
drama instead of spiritual substance in everything from testimonies to giving
spiritual positions.
This made spiritual potency of very little
effect. It made faithfulness close to worthless unless one is just a sheep.
We value the obedient and faithful as useful
only in giving and filling the pews and being there when the drama fails to
deliver.
We value drama over substance. We would rather
someone lies to make their testimony more flowery and dramatic than hear a
‘dull’ testimony of someone who has seen God in action in the mundane, run of
the mill times.
But is that the way God looks at the Christian
life? Does He not reward faithfulness above other things?
It is in the mundane that God extracts the best
of His servants, not the dramatic.
Even His Son was entrusted with the mundane for
His preparation as He was placed in a carpentry workshop instead of the palace,
war front or market.
You realize that He also picked from the
mundane when He chose the apostles.
Looking at His methods of selection, you will
realize that the dramatic never featured anywhere when He was choosing and
using His servants.
But faithfulness was a non-negotiable whoever
He chose.
Yet we find the prodigal being defined by drama
wherever you look. This is because their definition is one of breaking rules,
eliminating bounds.
There is drama in sin and sinful and rebellious
living. There is none in obeying the rules and keeping to the straight and
narrow.
That does not make breaking the rules more fun
than obeying. It only gives a perception of fun because of all that drama.
Imagine the prodigal son when he was flowing
with cash? Imagine him when he was rolling with all the gals and fine things
money could buy?
That explains the bitterness his brother was
feeling.
He enjoyed wasting his inheritance and I have
been here slaving for you.
But it was an illusion, short lived at its
best.
You can never maintain an inheritance by fun.
And we have enough examples wherever we look.
Inheritance is kept and increased by the
mundane.
I doubt the elder brother had ever seen the
need for fun. He just noticed the lack of that fun because the prodigal was
received with pomp when he came back.
What he also did not seem to notice was that everything
that was left belonged to him and so he really did not need any permission to
slaughter anything. You see, when his brother took his inheritance, everything
that remained belonged to him.
Yet it appeared like a slap on his face when
the wasteful had a party in his honor!
But was that the reality?
The father put things in their right perspective
when he faced his mundanely obedient son.
Your brother has zero inheritance and you have
everything.
We are just celebrating his coming back to life
and not the life he lived.
It is similar to the way we celebrate someone
who has been in a coma reawakening. He could still be sick but that flicker of
hope he introduces is enough cause for celebration.
It is like we celebrate a child taking their
first step or uttering their first word.
We know there will be many falls but are happy
enough for that pivotal step.
But we will not dwell there.
Just as a person from a coma is not completely
healed; Just like that first step or word is not indicative of a completion of
the process; we will need to acknowledge that the elder brother held the keys
to the prodigal’s complete restoration.
The prodigal coming back was the first step. His
father opening the eyes of the obedient son was the next.
But that was hopelessly inadequate if the
obedient son did not extend grace to him since the only thing he could have
begged for was a job or even selling himself into slavery to his obedient brother.
The prodigal can never be self sufficient since
he had already wasted his inheritance.
That is why it is very sad when churches
overlook the faithful and pick the prodigal for whatever reason.
This is because the prodigal will always ride
on the backs of the faithful. He will run with the resources of the faithful. He
will swim on the favor gained by those boring elder brothers.
You see, the world was still moving the twenty
years the prodigal was in drugs and immorality just as the farm was maintained
when the prodigal was enjoying his wildest life.
Assuming that life just started when the
prodigal came back is therefore a very destructive lie.
The fact that a few people joined the church
due to that testimony of wastefulness does not invalidate the continuous trickle
of members over the years before the prodigal joined the church.
The fact that a few moneyed members started
giving large cheques after the testimony does no nullify the entirety of
decades of backbreaking work that went on even without the money.
The fact that more people fill the prayer
meeting does not mean that there was no prior investment in prayer before they
came.
What am I saying?
It would have been folly had the father decided
to make the prodigal the manager of the inheritance just because he knew what
wastefulness was.
Yet we are doing that as God’s people again and
again and do not even realize how foolish we look to the world we are seeking
to reach.
I am not trashing the prodigal or his
conversion.
I am simply saying that we should give him time
to recover. We need to detox his prodigal nature from him before thinking of
taking him closer to any inheritance.
Does the Bible say that?
Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride
he fall into the condemnation of the devil. (1Timothy 3:6)
This is talking about leadership
Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be
partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure. (1Timothy 5:22)
And with the prodigal this is even more
dangerous as a relapse is a looming threat, that is made worse when they are
elevated in leadership or responsibility as it exposes them to unprepared
attacks from the enemy of souls who has over the eons perfected the art of
felling even the most prepared by taking advantage of the smallest lapse.
Yes, we need to receive the prodigal with open
arms.
Yet it is important that we take enough time to
allow him time to heal from his prodigalness before giving him the inheritance
the elder brother had been building the time the prodigal was in those parties.
Otherwise we could be launching him right back
to where he came from.
The other reason is that his wild friends will
take time, and a lot of it to be convinced that it was not just hunger and
desperation that led him back to the father, something putting him in the
limelight will more or less confirm – that he just knew how to play his cards.
I hope my point has come across.
