When Someone You Love Turns Away from God

Standard

As I write this, we’re entering another holiday season. No time of the year is more intimidating for people who must deal with difficult family members. And no family member is more difficult than the one who once had a vibrant faith but has since turned away from God. For some, it’s even harder because it’s not the uncle they see once a year but a child, a spouse, or a parent. The holidays only deepen the sadness over that person’s ever-present lack of faith.

The Bible gives us a well-known story of a loved one who turned away from God:

And [Jesus] said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”‘ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'”
—Luke 15:11-32 ESV

What can you as a believer in Jesus do? I don’t claim to be an expert on this issue, but I will offer the following.

1. Understand that turning away from God is turning to self

The “oldest lie in the book”:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
—Genesis 3:1-5 ESV

Back in my youth, people who turned away from a Christian view of God often turned to other faiths. Today, in contrast, my experience is that most people who reject Jesus don’t go elsewhere. They instead reject all belief.

Or this is what they claim. Fact is, though, the “reject all belief” option doesn’t reject all belief. It instead accepts a belief that I can be my own god. Sound familiar? If anything, it’s the ultimate in self-centered thinking. When someone we love turns away from God, it is an act of extreme selfishness, and we must understand it as such.

2. Understand that turning away from God is a sin

Black sheep with white sheepRomans 14:23 makes it clear: “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” Don’t candy-coat another’s walking away or call  it by some romanticized nomenclature such as “going on a quest” or “finding herself.” This is a genuine battle, and it should never be excused or downplayed. Faithlessness is a sin.

3. Understand that you are likely NOT the one who will restore that lost person

As Americans, we want to fix problems. Something in our national psyche makes it impossible to sit still while a problem exists. We demand change. And if someone else won’t make change happen, then you and I will.

Don’t go there. In the story of the prodigal son, the father understood that whatever change would come over his lost child, he would not be the one responsible for it. Let God work in His timing in the life of a prodigal. Most likely, God will bring awareness, as was the case in the prodigal son.

4. Pray for that lost person

My advice for prayer is to pray that God would…

…break the power of sin in the prodigal’s life.

…run that prodigal to the end of his or her means.

…show the prodigal that he or she is incapable of assuming the role of God.

…show that prodigal that God alone fulfills.

…bring that prodigal back “home.”

5. Never stop praying for that lost person

Pray always. Never give up. Never, ever give up. The Bible does not say explicitly, but I believe that the father of the prodigal son never stopped praying for him. The father’s response to the son is exactly the kind one would expect from someone who never gave up on prayer.

6. Never stop showing lovingkindness to that lost person

Obviously, we love this person if we care enough to worry about his condition. But too often we resort to “tough love” when we should instead display lovingkindness. Always respond to the lost person with lovingkindness. You will be tested in this perpetually. Be kind, and never think that harshness will triumph. Sometimes, you may have to speak a difficult truth. Do so only when guided by God and not by your own desire to change the person. Again, you are likely NOT the change agent in that prodigal’s life. Instead of trying to be the hammer, be the place of safety.

7. Never stop trusting God

I cannot add to this:

This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
—Psalms 18:30 ESV

I don’t believe there is a believer in Jesus in this big country who lacks for a family prodigal. We are all in this together. If you know someone who is distraught from watching a loved one go astray, be there for that fellow believer. Perhaps you can pray for each other’s prodigals.

Never stop praying. And never, ever give up hope.

A Love That Will Not Let You Go

Standard

I am saddened by the amount of troubling news lately. I don’t understand what is going on out there, but I am receiving more and more news of the following:

Men over 35 losing their jobs suddenly

Formerly healthy people now struggling with chronic health issues

Suicides

 Maybe those are connected. I don’t know. All I know is there’s a lot of hurt happening.

George Matheson was a brilliant theology student and a man engaged to be married. When it became clear he was going blind, his fiancée abandoned him. If blindness were not enough, Matheson’s first book of theology elicited so much harsh criticism for what were deemed small deviations that he was forced to change his career direction. Matheson’s sister took care of him afterward. On the evening before his sister’s wedding, knowing that he was losing his only caretaker, Matheson, at one of the lowest points in his life, wrote these words:

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths
its flow may richer, fuller be.

O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
my heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine’s blaze
its day may brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
that morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red
life that shall endless be.

I don’t know what you may be facing, or how much pain you may be in, but there is a Love that will not let you go, Jesus.

I will be 51 soon, and if I have learned one thing in that time, it’s that answers are not always easy to come by. George Matheson went on to do pastoral care ministry in a small church, and I’m sure that was not as he had planned, but it seems he had a knack for it. Because he was bruised himself by the vicissitudes of life, he could help those who suffered their own bruising.

It may be that you are being broken to help those who are broken. Your pain is never wasted. And never forget that Love Himself loves you enough to have taken all your brokenness and failure upon Himself. He was broken to identify with your pain, and He does this more completely than anyone.

The Westminster Chorus singing the David Phelps arrangement of O Love That Will Not Let Me Go in the Petrikirche cathedral in Dortmund, Germany:

Easy Accountability, Hard Accountability

Standard

Iron sharpens ironIn my 35+ years as a Christian, I’ve heard a lot about accountability. In Evangelical ranks, the most common term of use is accountability partner.

An accountability partner is an individual who works with you to keep you on the straight and narrow. Iron sharpens iron and all that. In concept, it’s a nice idea.

It’s an easy one too. Maybe too easy.

The kind of accountability that an accountability partner provides, though, is that same kind of individualistic thinking about the Faith that seems ingrained in the American Church (see “The Church, Corporate Sin, and Christ as Community Savior“).

But there’s a harder accountability. Way hard. And perhaps because it’s hard, I hear about it as often as I hear about adding a Swahili-language service on Tuesday nights.

I’d like to see some accountability for all the prophecies and words of knowledge/wisdom some dole out that never come to pass. And I’d like to see the people who receive those words stop making excuses for their failures or for the people who pronounced them.

I’d like to see some accountability for all the times we go on and on about how radically “touched” our youth were at the retreat/conference/lock-in/whatever only to have those example youth walk away from the Church the second they graduate high school.

I’d like to see some accountability for the fact that so few of our church discipleship programs are effective enough to raise a church’s leadership from within so a church doesn’t have to scout the country for someone to lead it.

I’d like to see some accountability for the fact that we have thousands of Christian conferences around the country each year, and yet for all that wisdom being trotted out before thousands and millions, the trajectory of the general spiritual status of the populace of the United States continues sharply downward.

I’d like to see some accountability for the reality that most people who are on that downward slope only think about Jesus in negative terms because the people who represent Him are doing such a lackluster job of being excited about what they believe and sharing it in a positive way.

Getting an accountability partner for oneself is cake. Finding an accountability partner for the big “C” Church in America? Seemingly impossible.

I say seemingly because I don’t believe for a second that it really is as impossible as we make it.

As a whole, we Christians CAN do a better job. We CAN stop making excuses for the lacks. We CAN get serious about what we believe.

But we have to WANT to. And wanting to means dealing with the mess of the cleanup. We can’t kid ourselves about the job.

Do we want to improve? Or is taking the easy way all we want to be held accountable for?