I Have Decided to Get Up

I Have Decided to Get Up

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,  And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. – Luke 15: 17-20 (KJV)

The parable of the prodigal son is one of the most famous and touching passages in scripture. It tells of a young and restless man who demanded his inheritance and left his father’s home. In due time, he squandered that inheritance with riotous living and ended up feeding another man’s pigs.

This story of a young man who had it all, took it all and, then, lost it all makes a major turn with the words highlighted in our text: “I will arise!” These three words are by no means the whole soliloquy which he uttered in the pig pen that day. Nevertheless, they are the core and cause of his great comeback. With mud on his face, stink on his clothes and pork chops on his breath, he decided to get up.

He did so because:

1). He realized that he had not been born to live and associate with pigs. Yes, it was his fault that he landed there. And yes, at least, he had a job. Yet, he knew that he had been used to better and made for better. That’s why he decided to get up.

2). He replaced his former thinking with a different attitude. Had he kept the same mindset that brought him to the pigs, his getting up would have only been temporary. Instead, he changed the way he looked at himself, the way he looked at his father and the way he looked at God. With that new attitude, he could no longer stay with the pigs and would never again leave the ways of his father and his God.

3). He regarded the pig pen as a pit stop. The place where he happened to be was an intermediate destination on the way to his ultimate destiny. It was a necessary place for him because otherwise, he may have never come to himself. However, while it was a necessary stop, it was not his last stop.

4). He remembered he had a father. When he remembered he had a father, he knew that he was not alone. He was not out of options. He was not desperate. He was not hopeless. He was not doomed or done. He had a father. He believed that he would be far better off as a servant in his father’s house than as a supervisor over some farmer’s pig pen. When he arrived back home, to his surprise, he found a forgiving and loving father who then treated him like a king. He never would have known such generosity had he not decided to get up.

When you are down and hit rock bottom, just remember, it ain’t over because no matter what, you still have a Father.

Leave a comment