Parable of the Prodical Son

Hello, my friends! I had a very interesting experience on Friday night. I got the opportunity to join our church's youth group in attending Aquire the Fire, a conference designed to reach out to our teenagers. So Friday night the speaker was teaching on the parable of the Prodical Son. The speaker went through the story step by step. The son decides that he wants his inheritance before his father dies; the father gives him his inheritance. The son leaves the country and foolishly wastes all of his money on partying. Finding himself out of money and with no friends to help him, he gets a job feeding pigs. He is so hungry he wants to eat what is left over from the pigs. (ewww...)

NOW, this is where it gets interesting! I'm assuming that you all know what happens next. He realizes that even his father's servants are better off than he is; he is not worthy to be his father's son, but maybe his father will take him back as a servant. When his father sees him coming down the road, the father runs to greet his son, and throws a celebration to honor his son coming back.

This parable is typically told as an analogy to God's forgiveness and love for us. But the speaker Friday night shared a completely different point. The son, after realizing that he was starving and would be better off as his father's servant had to DO SOMETHING! He couldn't just stand there in the pig sty and cry out, "Help me, Father! I'm cold and hungry. Help me! Come and save me!" He had to STEP OUT of the pig sty, and GO TO his Father.

How often to we as people stand in our sin and misery and ask God to help us, then wonder why things don't get better? How often do we ask God to help us with something and then get frustrated when we keep having to deal with the same issues? We have to step away from our behaviors and choices! We have to stop following what "the world" tells us and start following what God has told us to do!

Jesus didn't say to his disciples, "Come on, let me take you by the hand and drag you out of your life." He said "Follow me." And they FOLLOWED Him. It takes action! You have to choose to walk away from your current life, the things that you are comfortable with and all of the habits that you have. We have to be ready to make a commitment to doing what God wants you to do. And then God is faithful to forgive us our sin and to provide for us.

Also, something else that he said that I found really interesting was that no where in the Bible does it say "accept Jesus." In America we have a very passive Christianity. In fact only once does it use the phrase "receive Jesus" in the Bible, and there the Greek word that is used means "to grab a hold of". We seem to have come to the conclusion that God is standing in front of us, holding out his hand saying, "Please accept this gift that I have for you." When Biblically, God says "Follow me." It isn't a question, "Please, will you?"

Wow... How does that effect my current relationship with God? There are so many things to contemplate.