Embracing God's Prodigal Love in Our Lives

"I pray for the moment that only you create in the power of your Holy Spirit when you speak to all of us generally, but you also have this ability, Lord, to whisper upon the ear of each person who's here and all those who are online and to speak to them in a way that they receive a message they needed to hear." [00:04:31]

"So because of that, we're going to talk about love and grace. Because we were talking about Methodism and our, and by the way, all churches talk about love and grace like that. We don't have a proprietary, you know, over love and grace. That's not just ours. That's everybody's. Amen? We talk about it more than most people. And that's what makes us unique." [00:06:55]

"And so I just began to think about love and I saw it in the group and then I began to see it around. I was in the British Museum. I was in the section on Egypt. All these amazing things. I mean, just amazing. And as I'm standing there looking around, I see this woman and what I'm guessing is her daughter. I don't know." [00:08:41]

"He's saying he hit rock bottom But he's doing it in a way that everybody is like No seriously he has hit rock bottom Now when he hits the bottom The Bible says He came to his senses And he recalls his father's love He considers the way that his father treats Even the most distant servant on the estate And he remembered My dad Is decent to everybody He treats everybody well All the people that work on the estate Are well paid All of them are treated with respect I mean I'd be better off being a servant In my father's estate Than being almost anywhere Given my current situation And so he comes to his senses And he returns to his father's love I mean this thing That once felt like a prison Holding me back Not letting me have the good life He suddenly realizes That the father's love is the actual treasure Of his life Of his life And so he begins To go home The long walk we sometimes have to take When prodigals return By contrast there's an elder son Who never left home Voted most dependable in his high school class He worked on the family estate He is dutiful and he is responsible And I once heard Reverend Tim Keller say That they're both of these sons Tim Keller is an author and a pastor He's deceased now But I heard him do a lecture on this one time And he said Both of these sons suffer the problem of alienation The problem of alienation From their father The younger brother does a terrible thing Asking for the inheritance And then squandering it The older brother The older brother however Also wants the money from the estate He's just willing to wait for it The older brother Doesn't have much more of a relationship With his father than the younger son" [00:17:43]

"it's a failure of love when we're like this the younger brother does not love his father at the beginning of the parable and the elder brother doesn't love his father at the end isn't that amazing and this is the problem that we have the problem of alienation we know that we are in a failure of love when we find out that someone has returned or when someone's sort of made a change and and rather than experiencing empathy and compassion we experience anger and fear that's a failure of love love is by its very nature vulnerable there's just it doesn't come in any other form so let's go back in the story for a minute the younger brother is coming up and and he's he's on the road and the father sees him at a great distance. And when the father sees him, what does the father do? What's he do? He runs. He literally runs. Now, again, in Judaism, the first century, a man who runs an estate, who is the father, who's the male figure, would never ever run. Some of you, most of you know that, but some of you may be, oh, that's new. When I learned that, I didn't know that. Would never ever run. It was seen as lacking dignity." [00:21:45]

"But the father begins to run. Now, picture it in your mind. How does he run? Does he run like this? No, no, no. As he gets close, he's here. He embraces his son. Notice this posture, this wide embrace, this posture of the wide embrace. Think of the older son when he hears about the party. Are you with me? This wide embrace." [00:23:07]

"There is the prodigal son who wasted his fortune. And there's a prodigal father who is lavish and extravagant in love. The father's love is prodigal. And I tell you that because we're not talking about a family here. Jesus is describing the nature and character of God." [00:24:31]

"Jesus is saying, you want to know what God's like. God is like a father who throws aside all of what society has done. And he says, society requires and runs and embraces the child who left and burned him. That's who God is." [00:24:52]

"This prodigal love of God assures us that we are loved and that the nature of God is a recklessly extravagant love that runs to meet us on the roads that we take that sometimes we don't even know how to get out of it and sometimes we don't even know how to get out seeks us out that reminds us that we are children of God no matter what that we are draped in a robe of mercy that we wear the seal of God's love and compassion upon our hand all God asks all God asks in return is that we celebrate the love the Lord holds to other people as much as ourselves I mean that's really all we're being asked we're only being asked to come to a party that we're not throwing amen and yet the elder and yet the elder brother we're and yet the elder brother we're" [00:25:37]

"I'm a United Methodist because of this focus on love and grace that is foundational to our theology. Because I have found that if I can understand the gracious love of God as the character of God, it has a real impact on how I live and the words I say and the things I do. And my very best moments are always, always arising." [00:28:05]

"And so when you go there, you can see it's kind of fancy. Well, that's Oxford. And Charles started this thing called the Holy Club. Didn't have many people that wanted to show up at the Holy Club. There was, I mean, it wouldn't like being a, you know, fraternity or anything, but it was, there were just a few of them and they got together. And what they did is they read scripture together in the original languages. They talked about what it meant to live the Christian life. They studied theology. They prayed together. They had silence together. And then they had practices because what they were trying to figure out is how do we actually live out the Christian faith? So they had practices of compassion, mercy, and justice." [00:30:12]

"The quality of our lives is based on one question and one question only. And I say that as the person who's done hundreds of funerals. In the end of the whole deal, there is only one question that matters and it's this one. Do we love others as God has loved us?" [00:36:54]