The Father’s Hand and Heart

Jesus tells the story about the prodigal son, a father with two sons, and the younger son, who decided he wanted his inheritance immediately. The loving Father gave him his inheritance, and the young man financed his way with the father’s gift to the pigpen. An interesting principle here is that you can take God’s gifts and finance your journey away from God if you don’t use those gifts for him. But that’s another story. This young man found himself in the city and spent all his money on riotous living. As long as he had money, he had friends, but when the money ran out, he had no friends or job.

He finally took a job tending pigs, an unclean animal, to the Jewish people. Eventually, he became so desperate that he was willing to eat the pig slop. With the smell of pig manure in his nostrils and the feel of mud on his body, he remembered his father’s servants: My father’s servants fare much better than this, and I’m going to go back. I can only hope he will treat me as well as his servants, for I know I can’t return as a son. The young man started his shameful and agonizing journey toward home.

The son crested the horizon, and the father saw him coming. The father saw him coming because a father is always looking for a wayward child. The father ran to him, embraced him, and welcomed him as a son. He placed a new robe on him, put sandals on his feet, and called for a great celebration. His son, who was dead, is now alive. There was great rejoicing in the heart of this son who returned and also in the heart of the father and, I’m sure, the servants, but the older son was not happy. He had stayed around all of this time and done everything his father said, yet he never had this kind of celebration. When he complained to his father, his father said, Son, you already own everything that I have; you’re going to get everything that I have when I’m gone. I’m rejoicing because this son who was dead has now returned.

The difference between these two boys is that the young son first decided he would seek what was in the father’s hands. He took that, and he squandered it. When he returned, he was not seeking what was in the father’s hands but rather what was in the father’s heart. The elder son always had his eye on what was in the father’s hand but refused to see the father’s heart in his brother’s forgiveness.

Let me say this to you today. You will get what is in the Father’s hand if you seek the Father’s heart. Seek the Father’s heart, not the gifts in his hand. Jesus said it this way. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you.

Hope overflows from the Heavenly Father.

James D. Allen

Overflowinghope180.com