Stories Jesus Told: A 6-Day Reading Plan Sample

The Parable of the Prodigal Son

The story of the prodigal son is perhaps Jesus’s most well-known parable.

The younger son had done a terrible thing by asking for an early inheritance from his father. It was the equivalent of saying, “I want the things you can give me, but I don’t want you.” And still, the father granted the foolish young man’s request. Soon, the prodigal was out of money. To complicate matters, a famine struck the land. Sin never satisfies the way we think it will and the inconveniences of life seldom let up. Before long, the prodigal had sunk so low he wished he were eating pig pods and wished for the status of one of his father’s hired servants.

The future looked bleak for the prodigal, but from a spiritual standpoint, things were looking up. Oftentimes, desperation causes us to come to our senses. This young man’s story shows what happens when we stray from God and squander what He’s given us.

In the depths of his misery, the young man came to his senses and made a plan to return home to his father. It’s the first wise choice we’ve seen him make, and it’s exactly what he needed to get himself headed in the right direction.

Here’s the thing. Your return is embraced and celebrated. The father had been waiting and watching for his son to come home. That’s why he spotted him while he was still a long way off. And the father ran to him which wasn’t something a distinguished man did in that culture. When the son begins to speak, this young man does not even get his whole speech out. In verse 21, he confessed his sins, and after he’d done that, his father took over the conversation.

To the father, the son’s return called for a big party.

The father did all of this because the prodigal son had come home. And this is the heart of God because notice what he says, “For this, my son was dead and is alive again.” “He was lost and is found.” The prodigal never stopped being the father’s son, even though he messed up, squandered a fortune, and even though he didn’t want to be in the father’s house. And that’s the heart of God, my friends.