This past week has been a journey of “coming to myself”, just as the Prodigal Son did in Luke 15.
Over the past years, I have been mourning the loss of a relationship. Let me clarify that there was not a physical death, but the rejection makes me feel as if I am dead to that person, who I love with all my heart.
I was filled with so much guilt and shame, it was consuming all my joy. You may ask, “What does this have to do with the story of the “Prodigal Son?” Let me explain.
For the past week, the Lord has been speaking to me through messages I’m listening to. I had been writing, or rather whining, to the Lord in a journal. One night I wrote how my father used to say of me, “When Suzie comes in the room, she brings the sunshine with her”. I wondered what happened to that happy little girl. I lost her somewhere along the way. I felt like I walked around with clouds over my head, not sunshine.
Let me illustrate just how “cloudy” I was. At a business meeting, we went around the room and were asked to check in with one word . I listened as people would say, “energized”, “expectant”, and other positive words. The word that came out of my mouth was “insignificant”. It was gut wrenching, raw, and it shook me that I just blurted that out to a bunch of total strangers.
I was in a deep hole, emotionally, and struggling to stay afloat. In fact, I got to the point where I was not sure I could, or even wanted, to try to fight off the despair.
The strange thing is that for the past months, I would find myself singing these words from the song, “My Girl”: “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day”. No idea why, but day after day, I would find myself singing it.
In one of the messages, I “accidentally” listened to, a prophetic word was given to a woman. She was told that the Lord sees her as sunshine. (Turns out her name was Sunny.) That word may have been meant for her, but it was also for me. I then found myself singing some of the other words to that song, “My Girl”.
I heard the Lord saying to me, “My girl, talkin’ ‘bout my girl”. I have no idea what the other words to that song are, but the God of the Universe was calling me His girl! He was talking about me!
What does this have to do with the Prodigal? I never saw myself as a prodigal until I realized that I was squandering my inheritance. No, not with riotous living, but with shame, blame & unbelief. And I, like the Prodigal, had to “come to myself”. I needed to grasp the fact that I was eating the pig slop that the enemy was feeding me, yet I have a Father who has all I need and more! What was I doing?! What was I thinking?! What was I BELIEVING?!
When the Prodigal came to himself, he came to the realization of who he was as a child of his father. The enemy’s greatest assignment against us it to keep us from “coming to ourselves”, from understanding who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us. He knows far better than we do, what an unlimited source of spiritual power we have available to us to bring in the Kingdom of God and destroy his.
If you are a child of God, be encouraged! Take great joy in who you are. Take great care over the inheritance that is yours in this life, at this time. “This is eternal life.”
~ Susan Kewin
Christ Fellowship member
