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In the story of the Prodigal son, somebody know that story in the Bible, the father watched and waited for that rebellious son of his to come home.

And the scripture tells us when the son was still a long way off the father spotted him in the distance and ran out to meet him and filled with compassion

He threw his arms around his son and kissed the back of his neck and honored his son.

I'm John Fuller along with Danny Werther.

He's the Vice President of Parenting and Youth here at Focus on the Family and

Danny you can't change a prodigal child's heart but you can pray for them and kind of do what that dad did.

Look for that day when that heart softens. If you had a prodigal child, what would you do to be ready to respond in an appropriate

way when they come back?

Mm.

That's a tough one because trust is going to have to be rebuilt and so that will take a lot of patience

But one of the traits of effective parenting of the seven traits of effective parenting is grace and forgiveness.

They can't be separated from one another.

And the first one is grace, emotionally having your mind prepared

to allow for that to be real and then forgiving what truly

happened there to reset your mind and to rebuild it's a rebuilding process and that takes time and patience and a lot of times we want

rebuilding to just take place right there and we're good and everything's all right. Allow

it to take shape and be built over time. It's interesting throughout

interesting throughout scripture how God's people it says in their

distress or in their brokenness they sought God and so we need to be prepared for that.

That's our nature to do that.

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