So we all have books that were massively influential in our lives.

For me, one of those books was St. Augustine's Confessions.

I read it for the first time when I was a freshman in college taking a Christian classics course.

And it just blew my mind.

And one of the things that I loved about St. Augustine's Confessions

was the way he talked about his mom. Just so much affection for his mother who basically

prayed him into the church. He was a wayward son, a prodigal child. And so we're going to

talk about the power of praying for prodigal child. And so we're going to talk about the power of praying for

prodigal children. If you have children, especially children who aren't walking with the Lord,

listen to this.

So one thing I love about the confessions is just how honest St. Augustine is. He basically

starts the story at his birth. I mean, even as a baby, he talks about what his nurses would

say about him. And he says, you know, even then at that time, I was a sinner. Basically, I wanted

everybody to serve me.

And as he got older, his mom, who was a Christian, his dad was not a follower of Christ at the time,

she was wanting to raise him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord teaching him about Jesus.

But from a young age, he started to go astray. He tells the

story of when he was a teenager, on one occasion stealing from a pear tree. And he makes a big deal

of this. It's sort of famous in the book now. But he makes a big deal of it because he says,

you know, I didn't steal from the pear tree

because I needed pairs.

I had better pairs, you know, back at home.

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