Some parents pour years into raising their children in faith and still are forced to watch them walk away. And as a homeschool mother of seven is watching her youngest become a prodigal, she reaches out to BlazeTV host Steve Deace to ask whether she had failed.
And his answer was unequivocal: The story isn’t over.
“None of the stories of your children are finished yet,” he responds. “And for those of you that have prodigal kids, you’re maybe in the most trying time of that story. But the story isn’t written yet.”
Deace uses St. Augustine and his mother, Monica, as an example, explaining that she prayed for her son for “17 years.”
“And he would go on to eventually become arguably the most formidable mind the church has produced in the post-canon era, even to this very day, nearly 2,000 years later,” he explains.
“So that’s I think the most important thing that I could say,” he continues. “Do not quit. Do not give up. Their stories aren’t written yet. They’re not finished yet. So keep that perspective for as long as you can. The story is not over yet.”
“Many of the social pathologies and contagions that are acute in this era have their mustard seeds in the era that you and I grew up in. But even despite that, you and I both agreed emphatically it was still … simpler,” he adds.
Deace explains that it was “simpler” because there “was not an expectation when you sent your kids off to school on the first day of school that you were going to have to deprogram them every single night when they got home.”
“Going to college was considered a rarity and a reward as opposed to smart kids that now are like, ‘I’m never going there because I don’t want to become a gay race communist,’” he says.
“So it’s never easy to raise kids. But it was certainly simpler in the era that you and I grew up in compared to the era we’ve been raising our own kids in,” he continues.
“Their stories aren’t finished yet, either … so if you’re in that prodigal era, do not give up on the Lord. Do not give up on prayer, even till your dying day,” he adds.
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