The Prodigal and the Performer

Deanna Hurley, with closing by Jake Wetherbee  |  September 27, 2026  |  Luke 15:11–32

THIS MOMENT HAS BEEN SET UP

Hi, guys. It’s really funny, because I just mentioned in the serve team huddle what I was teaching on, and the worship just went in the way to support it. I don’t think Joel and Linda and Joshua were like, “Okay, that’s where we’re going.” I think the Lord said, “This moment has been set up, and this is where we’re going as a family.” So today we’re going to talk about the prodigal and the performer.

What’s interesting is I told Caleb when I started this, “Oh, prodigal son. God took me there, but we’ve all heard it so much.” And Caleb said, “Maybe there’s something more for you in this that the Lord wants to show you.” Because that’s normally what happens to teachers as we’re creating with the Lord: He’s healing and bringing things up. Even sitting here, I had to grab my phone because the Lord gave me a memory to put back in there.

But first, we’re going to start with a reminder of our 90-Day Word Challenge. Who’s still doing our 90-Day Word Challenge? You can still get caught up. You can still take that link you get every morning, and it’ll show you all the days you’ve missed. You can read those. It’s totally fine to get caught up. I’m still getting caught up on a couple of days. I promise it’s okay.

For teaching today, I got this past week’s readings, and Caleb said, “You and the Lord figure out which one of these readings we’re going to talk about.” So we went through them, and they’re all parables.

Oh, wait. Before we do that, we are supposed to be memorizing a Bible verse, and we haven’t done it in a couple of weeks. Can anybody remember what we’re supposed to be remembering? Oh, Victoria got it. Colossians 2:3. We’ll put it on the screen because it’s been a while.

In Him, Jesus, lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The goal is that by the end of these 90 days, we will remember that, and we will look for answers of wisdom and knowledge in Him. I forgot that part.

Okay, so we’re in parables. This whole week has been parables. And I was like, “Okay, God, what’s the theme? What’s the linear progression? I’m looking for trends in all the parables.” And when I got to the parable of the prodigal son, He was like, “That. Just that.” And I was like, “Yes, sir.” I say “Yes, sir” to the Lord a lot.

The other thing I feel, after hearing Pastor Chuck last week, is that we are in a theme where I think the Lord wants to bring us into a deeper understanding of who the Father is, how much He loves us, how we can approach Him, and also our understanding of our earthly father and how that impacts how we understand the heavenly Father. Because even with excellent parents, you can still have places where the enemy can twist, where he can dig and put things that take you one degree off. Then over time it becomes a very weird understanding of the Father. We’re going to get into that a little bit today.

WHO GETS TO TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE?

But before we get there, I want to set the scene. So we’re in Luke 15. Jesus is talking about the prodigal son, but first we have to talk about who He’s talking to. In Luke 15:1–2, the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to Him.

And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

I wonder if Jesus heard them, or if He just knew they were saying that across the room. Either way, it’s the same. He knows their heart, right? And so He responds with parables. He tells the story of a lost sheep that was found, and we celebrate. Yay. Then He tells about a lost coin, and it was found. Yay. And then He tells another one, except this time there are two lost things in the story. There’s a lost son, and then there’s that performing son. So we’re going to see where we see ourselves in these sons.

The question I want you to hold through all of this is: who gets to tell you who you are? Because everyone in this story had an opinion about who these sons were. The older son had an opinion about his younger brother. The younger son certainly had an opinion about himself. But the father had the truth.

So let’s start in Luke 15. We’re going to read the whole thing. Verse 11:

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”‘ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.”

So up to this point, it sounds like the other parables they’ve heard, right? But wait, there’s more.

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'”

HE WANTS THE BENEFIT OF BEING THE SON WITHOUT THE RELATIONSHIP

So we have a couple of different parts we’re going to look at. In part one, we’re going to start with the younger son. The younger son asks for his inheritance, and he leaves for a distant country. He wants the benefit of being the son without the relationship of being the son. That inheritance is his benefit. He doesn’t get it just because he’s Joe Schmo. He gets it because he’s the son.

Verse 13: he gathered all he had, took a journey into a far country, and squandered it in reckless living. And then, when he had spent everything, a famine came, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him into the field to feed the pigs. Now, you guys, Jesus is talking to Jewish people. Pigs are unclean. So what we’re literally talking about is that he hit rock bottom. They would understand: if you’re out there feeding the pigs, this is rock bottom.

There’s an interesting word here in verse 15. “He went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country.” I’m a Bible nerd. I have Strong’s Concordance on my phone, and I’m going to look at all the root words of a Bible verse. The word for “hired himself out” is kollaō: to join, to cleave, to unite, to adhere like glue. It’s the idea of joining yourself, clinging to something. That’s what he did to the citizen of a far-off country. The people Jesus is talking to would know He’s talking about Gentiles. He went into Gentile land and attached himself to a Gentile. So he left his dad, who gave him his identity, and he went and attached himself to a Gentile who did not give him his identity. And now he’s walking in a false identity.

So where do we do that? Where do we attach ourselves to false identities?

I’ll tell you, for me, this is the memory God brought up when I was sitting down there. My whole life, I wanted to be a doctor. From fourth grade to freshman year of college, and Mr. Schism remembers this, I was going to be a doctor. I was going to the honors program at the University of Florida, and I was going to be a neonatologist. I had shadowed doctors in the hospital. All of that, because it fed the overachiever part of me. That identity of overachiever got fed by being a doctor.

So then what happens is I go to the University of Florida, and I fail science, because I am not a science kid. I am language arts, reading, writing all the way. For those who don’t know, Mr. Schism was my ninth-grade English teacher. I went back to Miss Rice, one of the other ones, and I told her, and she started laughing. She said, “You’re not a STEM kid. You can do it, but you don’t enjoy it.”

Anyway, I go to college, I fail science, and I lose my scholarship. My mom says, “I’m not paying for tuition and room and board. You’ve got to come home.” So I come home, and I’m a failure, because my whole life has been an identity of overachiever: straight A’s, extra credit, top of the class, all of that. Then I lose my scholarship. Now what am I? I don’t know. I had a false identity, and, people, it took decades to unravel where that was still finding itself in my life.

So thank God for a praying mom who said, “She’s not walking in her identity. I’m going to stay on my knees until she finds it. And then I’m going to stay on my knees some more.”

So here are some identities that maybe we’ve attached ourselves to. I am what I accomplish. So if I don’t accomplish, who am I? I am what people think about me. So if they change their thoughts about me, I guess my identity changes too. I am my Enneagram type, or my personality type, or my Myers-Briggs type, or my Working Genius type, or my StrengthsFinder type. All these assessments can become our identity, and then we can say, “Yeah, I don’t do that well, and I don’t need God to help me with it, because it’s just my Enneagram type. So it’s fine.” I am the person everyone needs. I am my sexual identity. I am my gender identity. I am my political identity. I am my success. I am my failure. I am my trauma. I am my past.

None of those answer the question, “Who am I?” Because when something other than the Father gives me my identity, I’ve done that kollaō thing. I’ve attached myself to a Gentile, to a false identity, and that’s going to keep me in the pigpen. Because people’s opinions change, success disappears, scholarships go away, relationships change. And then failure becomes how we see ourselves, because success made our identity, so now our failure becomes our identity.

But sonship is rooted in relationship, not circumstance. And so if you’re walking in your identity as a son, it’s never going to change.

The far country gives him a new name. At home, he’s son. But in the far country, he’s broke, hungry, desperate pig feeder. And then he begins to believe that the circumstances have changed his identity. He forgets that he’s a son. He just sees himself as his circumstances. There are people walking around with decades of trauma that hasn’t been brought to the Lord, and they’ve become their trauma. It’s become their identity, and they can’t even separate from it, instead of taking it to the Lord and letting Him restore the truth of who they are.

So he doesn’t say, “I’m going home because I’m my father’s son.” He still hasn’t gotten it yet. He goes home because he remembers who his father is.

The far country can change your circumstance. It can change your reputation. It can change what people call you. But it can’t change who the Father says you are. So again, I ask you: who gets to tell you who you are?

HE CAME TO HIMSELF

There’s this phrase in Luke 15:17: “He came to himself.” He doesn’t just realize, “This place is terrible. There’s a famine. It’s not good food. I really want a Sabbath. I really want to rest. In the Jewish culture, I got to rest. In the Gentile world, I get to feed pigs seven days a week.” He doesn’t realize any of that. He comes back to himself because he remembers who the father is. He says, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread?” My father treats the servants better than I’m getting. He remembers the goodness of God.

When I was in that crisis of identity, asking, “Who am I?”, I had a mother and father who kept reminding me who I am. They didn’t say, “How dare you lose your scholarship?” They said, “Okay, come home. We’ll figure out what God wants next.”

So I had that moment. And what happened in that moment? I very clearly remember there were two choices in my life, because also in that crisis of identity, there was a boy. Do you remember the boy? There was a boy, and the boy was just not good choices. Not good choices, folks. And I remember exactly the moment when I saw my best friend getting married to a man who was a godly man, and I saw what was in front of them. And then I saw this other option. This other option was a man who thought it was fine to have pornography, and that it would be okay for him to tell his kids it’s okay, that that’s what men do. And I was like, “No, that’s not what I want.”

I’m so glad that the goodness of God met me in that moment and I could say, “I could have a godly life with a godly husband, or I could settle.” And the goodness of God brought me back to my identity, and I went back to what He said. And thank God I have a godly husband. Thank God I have a godly husband. So don’t settle, guys.

You discover who you are by remembering whose you are. By remembering that the God who carries all the goodness of everything had a good life for me. That’s what helped me walk away from that settling.

Romans 2:4 says:

God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.

God’s kindness. Not His shame, not His condemnation. His kindness leads us to repentance. So the son doesn’t suddenly believe he’s good. The son remembers the kindness of God, and it wakes him up, and he says, “I will arise and go to my father.”

So he went back. But here’s the fun part. Have you ever prepared a speech in the car? You’re going to a meeting and you’re thinking, “Okay, this is the speech I’m going to say. This is what I need to say. This is how I’m going to get what I want.” We heard his prepared speech. He’s planning on asking the father to let him be a hired servant. But did you notice that the father cuts him off before he even gets to the ask to be a hired servant? He left as a son. He says he can only return as a servant.

A PARABLE WITHIN A PARABLE

Now I’ve got a parable within a parable. So don’t tell Caleb I have a Bible that has a section you don’t have. This is a parable within a parable. We’re using our imaginations.

Freeze the story. The brother’s walking home. He smells like the far country. He has no shoes. He’s barefoot. He’s dirty. He’s gross. He’s practicing this sermon. What if the older brother had seen him first on the road? Because we know the father saw him way off and went running. But we know later what was in the older brother’s heart: “You didn’t even give me a goat to celebrate with my friends. How dare you celebrate this son of yours?” We know that’s in his heart.

So what if he says, “That darn younger brother is coming back. He already took from Dad, and now he wants to come have more”? What if he had walked down the road: “What are you doing here? You embarrassed our family. You wasted everything. How dare you come? I know what you did in the far country. They write stories. They write letters. How dare you come back?”

What that would look like today is a teen pregnancy: a girl who made a mistake comes back to church, and she’s pregnant, and she’s told, “How dare you?” Or someone confessing an addiction and being met with shame instead of being met with the recovery church movement. It looks like making someone prove that they’ve really changed before we believe that they’ve really changed. It looks like someone coming in dressed maybe not modestly, but dressed in what they have in their closet, and us not being able to see past their clothing to see the daughter within. That’s older brother Christianity.

And see, here’s the thing. The younger brother already believes it. If the older brother had gone and seen him and said, “How dare you? You wasted money. You ruined it,” the younger brother is literally already saying, “I am not worthy to be called a son.” So he’s just going to get lower and lower and lower, and he’s going to say, “Yeah, you’re right.” And he’s going to go back to the far country, and he’s never even going to interact with the father.

And so that’s where this parable within a parable becomes about us. Because how often do we see the homeless man and infer a backstory about how he deserves what he got, instead of saying, “The Father loves you. Let me help you to the Father. Let me be the father for you today”?

So if they encounter us on the road, will we sound like their shame, or will we sound like their Father? That doesn’t mean pretending sin isn’t sin. Because he didn’t say, “I haven’t sinned. I’m going to pretend all this stuff is actually fine.” He doesn’t reason it away at all. He says, “I have sinned.” Conviction says, “What you did was wrong. Come home.” Shame says, “What you did was wrong. You cannot come home.”

HIS FATHER SAW HIM AND FELT COMPASSION AND RAN

All right, unfreeze the story. Thank Jesus, the father got there first. So we’re going to keep going there. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran.”

There are lots of things in here that are interesting to me. They’re wearing robes, right? So the father has to pick up his robe and run, which was incredibly embarrassing for a man of a Jewish community, to show his ankles and run like that. They would have talked about him in the tabernacle. “Did you see his ankles?” “I saw his ankles.”

But he runs to him, because the verse says he felt compassion. Now, that Greek word there, hold on. My cursor decided I needed to go back and repeat part two. Hold on a second, guys. The Greek word there for compassion is splanchnizomai. It means yearning and movement in your bowels. It means a compassion so deep inside that all you can feel is this movement toward your son. The father runs because he’s moved toward his son.

And the other thing is, when he kisses him, it’s like he is smothering his son with love, because the love is just pouring out of that compassion in his bowels. He just can’t help it. He’s just so excited. His son is back.

He gets there, and the son starts rehearsing his speech. He says, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” And the father just interrupts him and says, “Bring the best robe. Bring the ring. Put the shoes on his feet. Get the fattened calf. Celebration, because my son is back.”

The father responds by publicly treating him as a son. If they’re near a village, the villagers are watching, because they just watched this elder run. They saw his ankles, and now they’re like, “What is he running to?” And they see him with the son, right? And he doesn’t even care. He’s like, “Celebrate my son.” So it’s a very public recognition of his son’s identity. How dare someone talk about what the son did once the father has proclaimed that he is still his son?

And the image I love here, with the garment and the ring and all that, is Isaiah 61:10:

He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

So it’s like his salvation is right there when he gets the robe and the ring and the sandals.

So the father says, “This my son was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.” The son’s response: “I’m not worthy to be called your son.” And the father’s response: “This is my son.” Because grace is not disagreement about what happened. Grace says your past doesn’t get the final word. Grace says the past doesn’t get to call you who you are. The Father can tell the truth about what you’ve done without changing what He calls you.

THE OLDER SON, THE OTHER LOST SON

All right, so now we’re going to go to part three: the older son, aka the performer, aka the other lost son.

Remember, in verse 1, the Pharisees are complaining about Jesus: “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” And then He tells the story about the sheep, and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then He tells the story about the coin, and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then He tells the story about the prodigal son, because He’s bringing them into the story. There’s another son. He’s been working in the field. He’s been working for his dad. And then he hears the music, and he hears the party, and he’s like, “What’s that?” “Your brother came home.” And instead of rejoicing, he was angry and refused to go in. “I’m not going to that party. Try and make me.” You can hear the voice inside him.

So the rebellious son is inside with the father, because the father has clothed him in robes of righteousness. He has made him holy and restored his son, and he’s inside with the father. And the obedient son is outside, refusing to come in. Which one’s lost? Both.

The older brother says, “These many years I have served you.” All right, my Jesus lovers, here’s the word. The Greek word is douleuō, which is from doulos: to be a slave to. There’s a whole lesson about being a doulos. So he’s saying, “I’ve worked for you. I deserve to be your son.”

And here’s another part of my healing journey this year. Over the summer, Victoria said some really hard things to me. Side note: make sure you have someone in your life who’s allowed to tell you really hard things and allowed to point out blind spots to you. Give them unfettered access, because you know they hear the Lord. Trust what they tell you, because they are often the voice of God. Even though it’s really hard to hear, really, really hard to hear, it has always proved to be the voice of the Lord.

So Victoria tells me these really hard things, and I did not say, “No, you’re wrong. Let me tell you all the reasons why you’re wrong.” I said, “Okay, I’m going to take this to the Lord, and we’re going to figure out what the root of the fruit is that you’re seeing.” Because what she said was, “Here’s what I see that’s not you. You need to go to the Lord and find out what the root is.”

The way I did that is I went to Cheryl Downing, who does inner healing. We have lots of inner healing folks here. I will also tell you: take your trauma and your pain to someone who is trained in how to hear the Lord for where that root is. You’ve got Cheryl Downing, you’ve got John Brown, you’ve got Jake Wetherbee, you’ve got LL Ministries. I don’t know that I would be anywhere near where I am without that. Okay, there’s my commercial for inner healing.

In my inner healing session with Cheryl, we found a moment the Lord brought back from when I was 12. My amazing, excellent father made a joke. My dad is a jokester. Dad joke supreme. But he made a joke, and the enemy’s only tool is a lie. So he came right into little 12-year-old, prepubescent Deanna and twisted that joke. I didn’t even realize it had taken root inside of me until I was 41 years old, at an inner healing session. We realized I had this deep root that believed the Lord only wanted me when I was perfect and when I was doing things for Him.

So she asked me a question: “Do you believe that of your children? Do you only love your children if they’re perfect?” And I was like, “No, I don’t.” But for some reason, I had believed that about the Lord, because of that little twist, that one little thing the devil said.

So part of coming out of that is that I now saw myself in this performer, where you’ve got to work for your relationship with God. You’ve got to work to earn your place as a son of God. But do we have to do that? No. He desires relationship with me because He loves me. Because I’m His child. Because when He looks at me, He can see what He crafted into existence when He made me. When I look at my kids, I don’t say, “Let me think about all the things you’ve done wrong and all the things you’ve done right and decide if you’ve earned my love.” No, I’m just like, “Come here. I haven’t seen you in 20 minutes. Let me hug you again.”

So both of these brothers are thinking like servants. One says, “I’m too bad to be a son. Just make me a servant.” And the other one says, “I’ve been good. I’ve served you all these years. I’m your son. You owe me.” So one finds life through rebellion, and one finds life through performing, but neither understands the father.

This is the contrast between the prodigal son and the performing son. The younger brother looks at his past and says, “Look at everything I’ve done wrong. I don’t deserve to be your son.” But the older brother looks at his record and says, “Look at everything I’ve done right. I deserve more from you. I deserve a goat to celebrate with my friends.” One is ashamed of his past, and one sees his works as access to his sonship. But they’re both measuring sonship by behavior.

So then here’s some language. Thanks, Joel. “Give me” and “You never gave me.” In the beginning, the son says, “Give me the share of property that is coming to me.” It’s really fun to read the Bible with different tones. Is it “Give me,” or is it “Give me”? You can infer all kinds of things when you hear it with different tones. It’s fun to play with it. And then the older brother says, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.”

They see the father transactionally: what I can do for you and what you can give me, what I can get from you and what you can give me. But the father’s response is, “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” They’re looking at what he can give them, and his response is, “Be with me. I just want to be where you are.” That’s the father’s response to them.

The younger son went looking for the father’s stuff without the father. The older son stayed with the father but missed the gift of being with him.

We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion, how can God’s love be in that person?

I would say that would be the performing son. I would say he doesn’t understand the love of the father, because he is not moved with compassion when he sees his brother. He’s not moved with the father’s love. So I would say that performer hasn’t yet understood God’s love.

THE FATHER GOES OUT AGAIN

All right, here we go. Part four: the father goes out again. The younger son’s outside, and the father runs to him. The older son’s outside, and the father goes to him. The father keeps pursuing his sons, to rescue them from rebellion and to rescue them from self-righteousness.

And then he calls him “child.” My child. But you know what his brother calls him? He says, “That son of yours.” That son of yours. And the father’s response is “son.”

The last time I taught, we looked at teknon. That’s the word he uses there. Teknon means a child. It means you are mine because you are mine, and it has nothing to do with what you did. It has nothing to do with what you’ve accomplished. You are my child because you belong to me.

So the older brother says, “I’ve been slaving for you.” And the father responds with, “Child, you are mine.” He corrects his mentality to tell him, “You are my child. You are with me, and all that is mine is yours.” The younger son forgot who he was, and the father reminds him, “You are my son.” The older son forgot who he was, and he says, “You are my son.”

But the other thing the older brother forgot is this. He says, “This son of yours.” But what else is he? He’s his brother. He forgot that it was his brother. And the father answers and says, “This brother of yours has come home.” He’s trying to restore the older brother’s understanding of the younger son. You don’t get to receive your identity as a son of God and then cut off other people from their identity. He’s my son, which means he’s your brother.

So then He ends with a question. He stops the story. He does not tell us if the older brother goes inside, or if the older brother takes his inheritance and leaves. He doesn’t tell us what he does. But I imagine that after He finishes the story, He gives a very pointed look to the Pharisees. In my head, that’s what He does, because He wants to see how they’re responding, if they’re picking up what He’s putting down.

So He’s put them in the story. Jesus is receiving them. Heaven is celebrating over these tax collectors and these Gentiles and these sinners that are coming home. And the religious people are standing outside saying, “How? I didn’t even get a goat, and they get a fatted calf.” That’s basically what the Pharisees are doing, right? So it ends there because they have to decide how it feels.

REMIND US WHO WE ARE

And so I have some questions for us today. My first question is about the prodigal. We have prodigals who are out, and like we were doing today, we’re calling the prodigals in. We’re saying, “Come back to the Lord. Remember who He is. Remember the goodness of God.” But I believe that even in each of us, we can have places in our lives where we are a prodigal, because we still have places that need to be healed.

So I want us to close our eyes. Who’s on keys? Amy, can you come up? There she is. Hi, Amy. I want us to spend a little bit of time here asking the Lord some of these questions. So would you close your eyes with me?

Jesus, I thank You for Your words that speak life. I thank You that in You are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and the wonder of knowledge. And I pray that You would speak to us today. That You would show us places where we have yet to receive the Father’s love.

So when I’m the prodigal, in that place where I might still be operating in that prodigal mindset: do I believe that anything I have done changes what You call me? Have I attached myself to a false identity anywhere?

Jesus, help us not to negotiate for servanthood when You’ve called us Your child. Help us to leave the far country and to return to You. Help us to receive the kindness of God and let it lead us to repentance, which means we turn.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

And Lord, we want to ask You: when we’re living as the older son, as the performer, is there any place in our lives where we’re performing to receive Your love? Where we’re looking at what we do for You and expecting You to bless us in return because of what we did? Where we’re looking at You like a transactional God?

Today the Father says, “Child, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”

And Lord, we want to ask You about when we meet our brothers on the road. Do we respond with shame, or with the love of a father? Do we slow down and pay attention to the son of God who’s right in front of us? What does our voice sound like?

We thank You, God, that even when we forget our right to be Your son, even when we forget what You call us, even when we get so caught up in our work that we think that’s what’s qualifying us to be Your son, You come out and You remind us every time. I thank You that You are moved with compassion and You pursue us. I thank You that You get to tell us who we are. And we lay all the false identities and the trauma and the pain, we lay it all at Your feet, and we say, “Lord, remind us who we are.” Let it ever deepen inside of us.

Thank You that You loved us so much that You called us sons and daughters, and that You wanted us to live in eternity with You, that You didn’t want to be separated. We thank You, Lord.

We’re going to stay in a heart posture like that as Jake comes to close.

THERE’S A THIRD BROTHER

It’s a great word, Deanna. You know, you could pull back even further in the context of that parable. The father is the Father of all mankind, and the sons represent humanity. The son that squandered his inheritance and walked away represents the Gentiles, and the one that stayed in the field is the Jewish people.

Why I’m taking a moment to elaborate on that and add to what Deanna is saying is to put an emphasis on this: when we become born again, now we’re a part of being aware of who Father is. And you hear this language come up: “Well, I’m born again. Those are non-believers. They’re not blah, blah, blah.” And here’s the reality. Although we were all created to be sons and daughters, it’s only those who call upon the name of Jesus and claim that right who will forever walk in it. So there is a distinction. I understand that.

But when I approach someone with a separation mentality and put a divide between me and them, the language I use is unintentionally derogatory. But if I come and say, “Wow, that person who doesn’t yet know Father is actually a child designed by Father,” then I get to play a role. There’s a third brother. It’s Jesus. I get to play the role of Jesus in this moment and actually bring awareness to a son who didn’t know who his father was, and just speak those words of love. It’s an entirely different interaction. It’s an entirely different way to bring someone into the kingdom, if you will.

And why I’m saying this is that I believe the Lord is inviting us as a congregation into another level of maturity and understanding of who we are as sons. He’s actually wanting to sanctify us. And here’s why. “Love the Lord your God with” what? All your being. I’m summarizing. “And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

See, if you don’t see yourself as a son or a daughter, how can you actually go to your neighbor and point the way to the Father? You become one of the brothers. Either you think you’re unworthy and you won’t proclaim His glory, or you become self-righteous and you’ll separate yourself from them.

So just as we’re leaving, I actually want to leave you with an odd benediction that might feel out of place, but I think it’s actually very appropriate. The Lord is inviting each one of us in this room into knowing Him deeper as Father, and out of that place, beginning to operate in all the spheres where He’s planted us. So if you could stand with me and really take this word to heart, take it before the Lord. Like Deanna was saying: “Lord, is there an area where I don’t see myself as Your child? Where I’m operating in an orphan mentality?”

Can we have our prayer team come up? Our benediction today is out of 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

So yes and amen, Lord. If you need prayer, please come up here. We’ve got some great brothers and sisters who’d love to pray with you. If you’ve got kids in TRP Kids, please go grab them. Otherwise, we love y’all, and we will see you next week.

Transcript of a message delivered at The Resting Place Apostolic Family | Tampa Bay, FL | trpfamily.org

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