The
Prodigal and the Praying Mother
Who can put a price tag on a praying mother? There are probably millions of us that owe so much to a praying mother. My mom was one of those praying mothers and I owe her so much.
My Mother became a born again Christian and started going to church later in life. The whole family was set on a new and better course because of her. My father and I were the exceptions. My mom would make us kids come with her to church and I would usually slip out the back or meet in another room somewhere with my friends until the service was done. My father never came to church at all.
How I wish that my heart wasn’t so stubborn then and that I could have seen what all those misguided actions would lead to.
When I was young and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said “I want to be a drunk and live in a bad neighborhood and not have a future,” but…that’s what happened.
Of course that didn’t happen overnight; little by little, the wrong friends, trying to fit, all those things that the “wide road” is filled with.
I suppose my prodigal story started like many others, one wrong friend led to two wrong friends which led to the wrong crowd. Marijuana and drinking started at age 15. My senior year of high school I was always absent because we skipped school to go party. If I didn’t skip and stayed in school that day I was usually stoned. My mother was aware of my friends and the crowd I was running with and she found out about the drug use, which hurt her deeply.
I’m sure all parents are hurt and feel hopeless when they see their children going down this road; I know my mother felt this way and I’m ashamed to say that it didn’t bother me. My mom talked about God but I didn’t listen, I would just walk away. After all, I knew better than she did. My mother’s answer to all this was to pray more and to ask the church to pray for me.
By the time I was in my early twenties I had moved up from beer to liquor and I added PCP, LSD, cocaine and whatever pills were around to my marijuana use. I was a true mess. I became a selfish, uncaring, hard hearted, sad person. I hurt so many people during that time and I still feel the remorse for it years later.
When I was about 25 I met and moved in with an older woman. This was a terrible blow for my mother and she hurt inside even more. I am sure she was wondering about all her prayers for me and questioning if God had heard her, but of course He did and my mother never stopped praying. In fact, she started to fast for me too, at least one time she fasted 40 days for me.
Moving out of my parents’ house was very hard for my mother but easy for me, I wanted to be free. I wanted to do whatever I wanted. Why couldn’t I see where this path was leading that I was on, why didn’t I see the darkness and depression and spiritual prison cell that was waiting for me, but as it says the god of this age had blinded me.
The woman I moved in with was quite a bit older than me and experienced in all the wrong things. She had done prison time, was an alcoholic, and had worked in the seediest professions. She was the exact opposite of my mother’s prayers and wishes but my mother never stopped praying for her prodigal and she was still enlisting her friends to pray, too. My mother was even kind to my girlfriend and would sometimes send her gifts and, of course, pray for her.
My mom knew that her help was from heaven and that her Heavenly Father would answer her. No matter how bad things looked, as I slowly went from bad to worse my mother shrugged it off because she walked by faith. She was able to look past what was happening to me and the bad choices I was making.
When I first moved out I would go by my parents’ house every few weeks to visit but it didn’t take my mother long to bring up Jesus, Jesus this and Jesus that. I would always get up and leave. Of course hearing about Jesus was exactly what I needed, I needed Him, but I wasn’t ready, I wanted to go back to my prison cell to drink, that’s where I was “free”… in my mind anyway.
The visits to my parents’ house stopped and were limited to phone calls on holidays and birthdays. Even though I lived a few miles away from my parents I never came by, not even for the holidays. I was so self-centered that I guess it didn’t even occur to me to visit my family on holidays or even just to check in.
Not only was I self-centered but my drinking was so bad I couldn’t function without being half drunk so there was no way that I could visit my family in that condition . My girlfriend and I were drinking over a fifth of liquor a night and more on the weekends. For those last few years I drank so heavily that I was in a blackout every night. If I didn’t have liquor I would need some Nyquil to be able to sleep. My cell door had finally been slammed shut and locked and it was all of my making; I wasn’t able to get out. It appeared satan’s plan had worked and he had gotten his way to destroy me.
The oppression and anxiety that was over me was awful and the constant drunkenness had muddled my mind so badly that I could barely function. By the time I was 29 years old the only job that I could hold down was at a fast food restaurant. I’m not sure if my mother knew the extent of my alcoholism or the mental shape I was in but she knew that the only job I could keep was a minimum paying job. I’m sure she was hurt and embarrassed when people asked about me and what I was doing.
My mother’s prayers were answered one summer day in 1990. On a Saturday evening, my father, called me at the fast food restaurant and told me he didn’t want me to think he was crazy but the Lord had spoken to his heart and he was to tell me that, “Time is short; it’s time to come back to Christ.” My Father was a quiet man but he knew the Lord. This was the same father that would not go to church when I was younger but my mother’s prayers and influence had led him to Christ.
I don’t know how, but somehow I knew in my heart that what my father said was true and as soon as I hung the phone up, I got on my knees in that back of that fast food restaurant and asked Jesus to save me. When I stood back up I was a changed man, a new creation. The next morning I went to church with my parents. The next few months were months of change for me. I was baptized and moved back in with my parents where I was nurtured back to spiritual health. As they say, I was “on fire for the Lord”. The verse in Luke was so true of me and still is, “he who is forgiven much loves much.”
It has been 31 years since my mother’s prayers were answered. The Lord has done so much, I think that the Lord answered my mother’s prayers more than she could have imagined. My born again experience was very deep: the alcoholism and drugs stopped immediately and my whole character changed, I was “born from above”. God didn’t stop there; He has given me an amazing wife and a beautiful life that we share together.
My mother’s prayers were truly “powerful and effective.”
To the prodigals like me, the addicts, the hopeless and depressed ones… Jesus Christ will give you a brand new life. Where ever you are in your life, or what you are doing, just ask Him right now, you’ll receive a brand new person inside. You will never believe or understand the life that He will give you but He promises, whoever asks Him receives life. A brand new heavenly life.
For all the mothers that are praying for their prodigals, or their spouses, or their loved ones, don’t give up! The sorrow and disappointment now will be forgotten in the joy of your answered prayer. We sow in sorrow but will reap in joy.
Below is the video version of this testimony