Mission trip article #1 – The Prodigal Son

Are you familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son? This is one of Jesus’s parables. Luke 15: 11-32. I’ve copied it below as I’m sure that not everyone is aware of this passage of scripture.

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The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

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Perhaps this is the most well known of Jesus’s parables. It’s a great parable that both illustrates why Christians so want to bring people to know Christ, and why when they are faithful, they need to remain humble. It doesn’t matter your “years of service” for the Lord, what matters is that you come home, humble yourself before your father (God) and put yourself under His guidance.

I just returned from a mission trip to the Czech Republic. It was the first time that I had ever served the Lord on a multi-day outing – an 11 day trip. The purposes of the trip were to teach English and to build relationships. I built relationships with a number of people, both from the US team and with the Czechs. One of these relationships was with Honza (Jan). Coming into the week, the best way to describe Honza would be agnostic – he might be able to see some “evidence” of God’s existence, but nothing that was proof, and thus, God’s existence was an open ended question for him.

We were building relationships with many of the folks at the camp. There was a large American/Czech group casually tossing a Frisbee around on Monday. Jared Ackles had this bike ride odyssey with him that seemed to allow him to see the Americans through fresh eyes, and then talked to him about spiritual matters until 2 in the morning that night. He, like many of the Czechs, was concerned with what can best be described as “attempts at manipulation”. Born out of the roots of Communism and their high value placed on intelligence and education, Czechs by nature tend to be suspicious of large institutions, of which the Church qualifies.

Many folks spoke with Honza during the week, and he and I sat down after lunch on Thursday. We were going back and forth a lot, and were finding significant commonality in our spiritual thoughts. Part of our discussion went back to manipulation. He had previously read Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ”, which I’ve also read. He didn’t like the presentation style of the book, as Lee Strobel (a former atheist and editor of the Chicago Tribune who set out to disprove Jesus’s ascension from the grave and instead quit his job and became a pastor due to what he discovered from that journey) makes a case for why we can believe Jesus rose after death and as such, why we should believe what he and the bible say. Honza stated that he would have preferred an approach where half the book would be arguments for Jesus, half the book arguments against Jesus, and then let the reader decide. Not presenting this information in this fashion was a blatant attempt at manipulation in his opinion. After already connecting with him on some things, I was able to allow him to see it differently. When I read a book that has a thesis like this, I’m going to follow along with the arguments. However, if an argument doesn’t hold water (the author states something but then draws a conclusion that isn’t fully supported by the arguments), it will jump out at me when I’m reading it, and as such, it will call the entire overall conclusion into question. For me, “The Case for Christ” is a book that was powerful and there were no holes in the arguments. Honza hadn’t thought of it in that respect before – that if the arguments weren’t solid it would be apparent when reading it. Because of this point, I could feel walls coming down.

In another part of our conversation, he was talking about seeing “evidence” of God, but failing to see proof of God. I found myself taking a very analytical approach to this with him. I asked him to envision himself on a jury, asked to make a decision on the evidence in front of him. Juries (at least in the United States) are asked to render a verdict, not based on absolute proof, rather “beyond a reasonable doubt”. This was what seemed to strike a chord with him, and he was able to concede that his belief in God fit this mold – beyond a reasonable doubt even though he didn’t have absolute proof. I invited him to continue revisiting this every 6 months or so, in the event that the evidence he sees changes. However, if he was able to conclude that he believed in God beyond a reasonable doubt, this would have implications for his life. At the end of a couple of hours of talking, he and I had agreement that our beliefs were very similar. I told him I thought he was now a Christian, and he agreed. He stated to me that this was the first time that Christianity made sense to him. With that said, I didn’t think it was the time to push the conversation any more. He needed time to “incubate” on it (time for his brain to start thinking about this new way of seeing things and start forming additional questions, etc.).

We spoke again for about 20 or 30 minutes that night, before the evening program. I do recall that one question he had for me was if I get any of my wisdom from sources outside of Christianity. I believe that he was wrestling with not wanting to shut himself off from all other things if he was going to become a Christian. I was able to answer this very truthfully by stating that, yes; I get some of my wisdom from outside of Christianity. I specifically have gained wisdom from folks I know in the Jewish faith. We both believe in the same God, but those who are practicing Jews don’t recognize the same forms of God that I do. As such, much of our moral code is shared, even though there is a major difference in Theology. I think this had a big impact as well. Become a Christian doesn’t mean having to cut yourself off from all other sources; rather it’s the beginning of a refinement process.

On Friday, right after breakfast, we started talking some more. A passage of scripture was coming up in many of my conversations with Czechs, and I looked it up that morning. It was Mark 12: 28-34, and I’ve listed it below:

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The Greatest Commandment

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

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This is the entire essence of the Christian gospel, and it comes right from a Q & A with Jesus. If you only know two things about Christianity, it’s to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. As a Christian, this passage guides everything that I do. It’s noteworthy that these are sequential as well – loving God is more important than loving your neighbor (because you can’t love your enemies unless you have the Holy Spirit working inside of you from loving God). If you, even only intellectually, believe this passage of scripture, you are “not far from the kingdom of God”. However, I think the key here is Jesus’s description of how to love God. Yes, you should love God with all your mind, but you can’t JUST love God with all your mind – it takes all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength as well. This goes to why some people look for God for so long and can’t find him – because they are JUST trying to love God with their mind (or heart, etc.) and aren’t engaging their full being (mind – logic & intelligence / heart – emotions / strength – physical body). People outside of the Christian circle will sometimes point to how we will at times act in ways that are not based on logic. This is a correct assessment, but frequently it’s confused with thinking that we take actions in the absence of logic, which is not correct. Logic is surely a part of the equation, and a part that I always consider carefully, but it’s not ALL of the equation, and thus sometimes my actions as a Christian will seem confusing to those who are ONLY engaging in logic.

This assessment hit home with Honza. He was trying to reason through how to love God. He was able to reason through this, and concluded that he was ready to love God with all his mind, but that he hadn’t connected yet because he was just involving his mind. This begged the question, how do you love God with all your heart, soul, and strength as well? I had given my testimony the previous night, and included in that was how I came as a non-believer to turn things over to God two years ago. There are really only two things that have to be done. The first is repenting of your sins. If you truly love God with everything you have, you have to repent of sins and wrongness in your life. It’s silly that we don’t do this. God knows of our sins, but we have to acknowledge them before God. If we can’t do this, we’re holding something back in our relationship with God, and will end up continuing the search. The second thing we have to do is to turn our lives over to God and be willing to follow God’s plan for our life, even if it’s significantly different than our own plan. This is how I ended up in the Czech Republic on this trip in the first place. This doesn’t make sense logically, it doesn’t make sense emotionally, and it doesn’t make sense physically. Yet, this is what we need to do; turn over our whole being to God, as that fulfills needing to love Him with ALL our heart, ALL our soul, ALL our mind, and ALL our strength. Only by taking this leap will God truly enter our lives.

Honza and I spoke Friday morning after breakfast and before class began. Honza was ready to turn his live over to God and Jesus Christ. We made an appointment to talk again after English class was over and before lunch on Friday, then went to class. It’s funny, because sometimes God lines everything up perfectly so that people can move forward. So many people had a hand in getting Honza to this point, but for some reason God wanted me there as he made this decision to follow Jesus.

We met at 12:30 and went to an outside area. I went over with him what he needed to do, repent of his sins and turn his life over to God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, and all his strength. He wanted to do this prayer silently, and I agreed that this would be fine, but asked him to finish his prayer vocally, so that I’d know when it was done. While he was doing this, I was praying for him. After a few minutes, he concluded. We started talking, and he vocalized something that surprised me. He stated that as he was doing this, he felt a “darkness in his heart”. Certainly, these aren’t the words that I was expecting to hear from someone when they had just turned their life over to Christ. I immediately said that I’m not sure what this meant, and prayed for discernment. After talking for about 2 minutes, the answer came to me. The darkness that he felt was as he was turning his life over, and this was the remnants of sin that he was casting aside. He was feeling this as it was flowing out of him and he was turning a new page. He truly was committing to love God with all his heart, and as such, his heart was emptying the sin from his previous life. I believe this whole heartedly. We spoke for about five minutes then, and Honza agreed that this sounded accurate as to what had just happened. He did a “temperature check” after that five minutes, and he stated “I don’t know what I feel”. Now this is what I expected to hear initially. He didn’t know what he felt, because he’s never felt that way before in his life. He was now connected to God with the Holy Spirit flowing inside of him, and as such he had no ability to relate this to any past experience or any way he felt previously. Praise God!

Then, we split off and went to lunch. Again, I thought he needed some processing time. Joel, a teacher and bible scholar was on the trip, and I suggested that if he had some additional questions, Joel would be a great person to ask them to. I was excited that one of God’s own had been able to come home, and told a couple of folks, including Jared who had this powerful experience with him earlier in the week.

After lunch, Radka came up to me. Jared had sent her over. Radka is a Christian who has been dating Honza for about 3 years. She had been praying before and during camp that this camp experience would move Honza along the path toward Christianity. She had (happy) tears in her eyes, and was asking if it was true that Honza had just turned his life over to God. Now, you may wonder why I hadn’t mentioned Radka previously. The reason is that we hadn’t spoken more than casually until now. There’s this phrase in English to describe superficial friends as having a relationship “an inch deep and a mile wide”, meaning that they talk about a wide range of things but never go below what’s right on the surface. In that moment, Radka and I had the exact opposite of binds to each other – an inch wide and a mile deep, with the intersecting point where God shows up in people’s lives. Radka was overcome with pure joy, and this is the moment from the trip that I will most treasure for the rest of my days. I now have a human face to put to the story of the Prodigal Son with how much joy God has when one of his own comes home. We spent 30 to 45 minutes together, and we now have this deep unbreakable bond between us. We prayed for what had just happened (I prayed in English while Radka prayed in Czech). I just can’t describe the overwhelming joy that I felt here.

Honza had been around Christians for about 3 years, as he’d been with Radka for that long. He came into the week with questions about if there was a God. He left the week not only knowing who God was, but making a decision to follow him for the rest of his days, and his questions were now about how to follow God. Obviously, making a decision to follow God, and actually following God are two very different things, but you can’t follow God unless you make a decision to follow him. The week wound down and we exchanged gifts. I gave Honza the shirt that I was baptized in from November of 2009. I thought it was wholly appropriate, as his next step (when he’s ready) is to make a public declaration of his faith. This trip and this experience will leave me forever changed. I’m still humbled that God set all of this up so that I was chosen to be with him as Honza made the decision to change the path of his life, after an entire team of people helped get him to that point. The great thing about following God is that you don’t have to ask questions about why you’re chosen to do something; you just have to listen to God and act on the direction. His plan is so much better than any plan I could come up with on my own.