So much of what is seen in prodigals’ lives needs to be gone!

How do we know what needs to be gone? We measure characteristics, activities, attitudes, and situations against the Word of God, which reveals His best for them! Those things against God’s Word need to be gone to make room for His best for them!

We know God has provided:

• Light instead of darkness.
• Good instead of evil.
• Truth instead of Satan’s lies.
• Love instead of hate and disdain.
• Joy instead of sadness.
• Peace instead of turmoil.
• Praise instead of blame.
• Purpose instead of wondering and wandering.

While not all prodigals are not described by these negative words, we would choose the good over the bad:

• Character instead of wickedness.
• Respectability instead of dishonor.
• Integrity instead of deception.
• High-mindedness instead of brutality.
• Purity instead of the obscene.
• Wholesome communication instead of vulgarity.
• Morality instead of degeneracy.
• Initiative instead of laziness.
• Thriving instead of surviving.

In the Prayer for Prodigals ministry, we’ve prayed several times recently about the settling for less in our prodigals’ lives. We pray they will no longer:

• Simply survive when Jesus provided for abundant life, a good life, a fulfilling life, a life full of His purpose (John 10:10).
• Expect less in life than God’s best for him/her. 
• Settle for the wrong spouse, career, home.
• Settle for sex outside of God-ordained marriage that may satisfy the flesh but can’t satisfy the soul and spirit. 
• Fill their time with things and relationships that don’t satisfy their God-given longings or fulfill their God-given purposes, wasting time on counterfeits to God’s best that leave little to no time for what is truly good.

We pray instead for:

• An abundant life, a purpose-filled life, a fulfilling life, a life that is not merely existing.
• A God-given dream job they love.
• A family who loves the Lord and is a mighty fighting unity for His kingdom.
• Their ministry.

We all have one life, and none of us live it to the absolute fullness and goodness, but we prayerfully strive to spend it wisely.

They, too, have one life, and we pray they spend it in God’s perfect will for them.

We pray they forget “those things which are behind, and [reach] forth unto those things which are before” and “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14 NKJV).

Our Father, we ask You to fill our prodigals’ lives with Your purpose and push out every counterfeit. Fill their time with Your best, and destroy the hold time-wasters have in their lives. Change their minds and hearts. Your will be done. In Jesus’ name we pray.