Hope for Prodigals

I remember when pot-bellied pigs were quite popular, and I knew someone who had one as a pet. He told me he would take his pig to the beach, but he had to put sunscreen on him because pigs can get sunburned.

You could take a pig and shower him, put some nice cologne on him, and even make a little outfit for him. You could sit him down at your table and have a meal together. But the first chance that pig gets, he will make a beeline from your dining room table back to the slop, because that is where he really wants to be. Why? Because he is a pig, and he wants to hang out with his pig friends and do pig things.

In the same way, a prodigal always will return home, because a prodigal is a child of God who has gone astray. But a pig always will go back to his element.

We all know people who have supposedly fallen away from the Lord. Maybe we have seen them make a decision for Christ and even noticed some immediate changes in their lives—or what appeared to be changes. Then a few weeks later they bailed. They threw in the towel and fell away. And we said, “That is so sad. They backslid.”

It just might be that many of these people never were true believers to begin with. A true believer always will come back home eventually. But a person who is not a true believer never will. If they never come back, they never were true believers. If they do, they probably were.

There is a difference between the person who stumbles spiritually and wants to get up again and the person who could really care less. Which one are you?