One of the most beautiful reasons why you are in this situation with a loved one who is a prodigal or lost in addiction is because He is choosing to make His infinite love known to them through you. His love is unconditional and quick to forgive, but we as humans are not. You are being asked to love them in such an unlovable condition so that one day it will hit them: this is how God loves them. During this season you will not only be elevated in your love for God and for them, but also in the way that you perceive those around you. When you begin to understand why people do what they do, it is much more difficult to judge them. You cannot perceive a person to be lost and beyond hope, and then expect them to act like a saint. Love in an action, and your actions are a result of your perception of that person.

When Jesus went through Samaria and visited the woman at the well in John 4, she treated Him suspiciously and impatiently because she saw Him as a strange man who should not have been talking to her in the first place. She had a bad attitude towards Him because she did not see Him for who He really was. So He began to prophesy to her, giving her a revelation of who He was. (Interestingly, this is the first time in scripture that Jesus reveals Himself as the Messiah). Her response was that she now perceived Him as a prophet. And I have done the same thing with the addict that God called me to love with His love. I perceived her as a complete mess and it eventually came out in my words and actions.

Jesus said that the Kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field, and that men will sell everything they own to go and buy the whole field, not just the treasure. Imagine a field that contained an enormous gold deposit underneath, but nobody knows about it. It is easy to look at a field or a hill and see only dirt. But when you know there is a treasure somewhere in there, your focus becomes the treasure, not the dirt. And any gold miner knows that you have to get past one hundred tons of dirt to get one ounce of gold. But that’s okay because his focus is on the gold hidden in the dirt. What if we looked at people that way?

There are mountains of gold hidden in the prodigal or addict that you are praying for, but it is easy to focus only on the mountains of dirt on the surface. To bring this to your attention, God might bring another person into your life during a time of separation. This “practice dummy” will exhibit every irritating and negative characteristic you can imagine, and you will not be able to get rid of them. But this is the thing: your perception of others is under construction right now. You are being shaken until all the bad fruit comes out of your soul so that you can perceive other people as the sons and daughters that they truly are. You are learning how to look past the dirt and focus on the gold within them. This is the definition of honor, and honor is a key of the Kingdom that we don’t talk about anymore. I might talk about that ina later chapter, but all you need to know right now is that the bible says that God places your inheritance under guardians and stewards until an appointed time. (Galatians 4:2) God is a hider. And He will hide what belongs to you inside other people, and the only way to access it is the key of honor.

This thing called honor will bring the deepest treasures out of the person you are praying for, and everyone around you for that matter, and it will shift your perception of others radically. Honor should be your new standard. You must move past treating others how they deserve based on their actions and treat them with honor because that’s your standard.

When you have become familiar with the key of honor and have shifted your focus off of other peoples dirt and onto the gold hidden with them, you will be prepared to receive your loved one back into your life. You are His child too, and this adventure is as much about you as it is about them. He has good plans for you both and honor is critical for you both to receive all that He has for you.