To reclaim the prodigal is well, but to save him from ever being a prodigal is better.
Interpretation
Preventing someone from making poor choices is more valuable than helping them recover from those choices.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the importance of guiding others away from destructive behaviors before they engage in them, rather than merely helping them after they have gone astray. It highlights a proactive approach to care and mentorship, suggesting that the ultimate goal is not just to assist in recovery but to prevent the need for recovery in the first place.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a mentorship workshop to emphasize the importance of guiding youth.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Typically, when you look for role models, you want someone who has your interests and came from the same background. Well, look how restricting that is. What people should do is take role models a la carte. If there's someone whose character you appreciated, you respect that trait.
But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.
The great apparent dichotomy is that the more we give, the more we get.
I think that in general it is a good plan occasionally to bear in mind the fact that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis.
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