In Part 2 of The Prodigal Son (Luke 15), we focus on the son's repentance and the father's self-control.

"Repentance is so different from our modern way of thinking of the self. 'I need to be in touch with my inner self' and so on. No, the problem is your inner self is out of touch with God. Repentance is a kind of restoring back to the original sanity."

"We are only ourselves when we're in a life of thankful obedience with our Heavenly Father."

"One of the things I love about the way Jesus tells the story is the implication of the text that the father has been constantly looking. Jesus doesn't tell us how long this is. It's a parable. But the implication is that he has to look up from his work every five to ten minutes, because the father picks him up on the horizon when he sees him a long way off. The father has incredible self-control not to have rushed out and tried to fix things from a distance."