A prayer for a prodigal child — and how to keep praying when it's hard

Few prayers are prayed through more tears than this one. Your child — maybe grown now — has walked away. From the faith you raised them in, from wisdom, maybe from you. You've talked until talking made it worse, so now you mostly pray, and some days even that feels like shouting into a wall. If that's you, read this slowly. There's more hope here than you can feel right now.

Start with the picture Jesus painted

When Jesus told the story of the prodigal son, he handed every praying parent the most important image to hold — and it isn't the son. It's the father:

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

Luke 15:20

"When he was yet a great way off." The father was watching the road. He saw his son while he was still far away — still a mess, still walking back — and he ran. That's the God you're praying to. He is not reluctant about your child. He's watching the road.

What to actually pray

When grief makes your prayers go in circles, pray these specific things over your son or daughter:

• A soft heart. Only God can do this — ask him to trade the hard heart for a tender one.
• Honest consequences. Hard as it is, pray that running from God would feel emptier than coming home. Sometimes mercy looks like a dead end.
• The right people. That God would put someone in their path who knows him — a friend, a coworker, a stranger — for the times they won't hear it from you.
• Protection. That they'd be kept from anything that would do permanent harm while they're away.

That first one — a new heart — is something God actually promises to do:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

When it's been years

Here's the hardest part: this prayer often isn't answered fast. Parents pray it for years, sometimes decades. Don't read the silence as a no. God's timing runs longer than your patience, and his heart toward the lost is settled:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

"Not willing that any should perish." That includes your child. He wants them home more than you do — and that's saying something.

Don't give up, and don't carry it alone

The temptation is to go numb — to stop hoping so it stops hurting. Resist it. The God who started a work in your child is the same God who finishes what he starts:

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Philippians 1:6

And you were never meant to pray this one by yourself. Bring your child's name to a few people who will pray it with you and keep praying it on the days you can't. Some prayers are too heavy to carry alone — this is one of them.