My daughter's church has been reading The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, so I decided to read it too, and God has been speaking to me through it. But before I get to that, maybe I should explain the title. The word prodigal means wasteful and extravagant. We think of the prodigal son wasting money, but God is also wasteful, with His love, because He loves people who haven't earned it and don't appreciate it.
This book talks a lot about the older brother in the parable of the prodigal (in Luke 15), and I find that I have been way too much like him. Keller points out that people who think like the elder brother see themselves as superior to others and are subconsciously insecure. I spent my whole childhood trying to find a way to be better than my sister Marilyn because I was jealous of her. I see now that my insecurity was from trying to make myself good. That is doomed to fail, and deep down I knew I could only get so far with this. The truth is that only God can make anyone good.
Keller also says that the elder brother was good for selfish reasons: he wanted to earn a reward; he wanted his father to owe him so that he could control his father. He wasn't motivated by love. I have done a lot of good for the sake of justifying my own existence, trying to earn a sense of worthiness, and trying to feel good about myself. This has born ugly fruit; I'm afraid I probably have passed this on to my children.
Keller says, "The last sign of the elder-brother spirit is a lack of assurance of the father's love. The older son says, 'You never threw me a party.' " Oh yes I have been there. It comes as a surprise to me that God considers me special, and that He's always thinking of me. Does He really want to bless me/us? Is Ephesians 1:3 really true? It says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ."
Wow.
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