Welcome back to the podcast.

We have a lot of questions from parents of prodigals.

And those parents want to walk wisely as you can imagine, Pastor John.

Dennis is a father.

He writes unto us to ask this, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast.

I have a 16 year old prodigal son who has left our home and walked away from Christ.

I struggle to know whether I should generously financially support him in the world like

the father and the prodigal son's story or, unlike what it seems, Eli should have done.

Should I take a more strict position in relating to my rebellious son?

The prodigal was given his inheritance.

He blew it on lewd living and returned home in repentance.

Eli's sons were wicked.

They lived in all sorts of sin that was unchecked and unrepentative and they died for it.

Abundant grace or strict restraint.

Which should the father of a prodigal do, especially in regards to finances?

Well I love the way he has already thought a lot about this and thought about it from

the scriptures and frankly, I don't wish I had precise and clear answers, but let me

say what I do have and maybe the Lord will use it in some way.

One of the things that makes a relationship with a prodigal so difficult and complex is

the interplay between passages of the Bible concerning church discipline and passages

concerning parenting.

One of the hard church discipline issues is that on one hand we have a call, for example,

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