I have been pondering the old hymn Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. There’s a line that has always struck me with unusual force:
“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.”
That lyric describes something sobering about our fallenness. There is an instinct embedded so deeply in the human heart that it touches everything—even those who walk with God. We are wander-prone. Even redeemed people feel the pull to drift.
Most of our wandering is routine, even predictable. We envy. We lust. We overeat. We nurse resentment. We grow impatient when life doesn’t unfold according to our plans. Then we confess, receive forgiveness, recalibrate, and move forward. This is ordinary sanctification.
But there are times when “prone to wander” takes a particularly obstinate and destructive turn.
A saint goes AWOL. A child goes sideways. A spouse cheats and shows no remorse. A friend rebels and runs hard in the opposite direction. A once-zealous believer deconstructs his faith.
Someone we love goes rogue—and seems not to care.
What is happening in those moments? Especially in recent years, when cultural instability and isolation have amplified such drift, how do we understand this biblically?
When Wandering Hardens
Scripture gives us categories. One way to think about the wayward is through the biblical idea of the fool. Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The fool is not merely intellectually confused; he is repetitively resistant. His heart bends toward dismissing God and replacing divine authority with his own.
If unrepentance continues, “wayward” becomes not just a direction but a destination. The drift becomes a settled pattern. The prodigal path often bears two marks:
1. Renouncing True Roles. The wayward often deny the responsibilities and accountability of the roles they occupy. Christian. Husband. Daughter. Employee. Friend.
Some roles are fluid—student, director, employee. Others are covenantal or creational—husband, wife, parent, child. You can ignore those roles, but you cannot escape them. Renouncing them does not erase their obligations.
Prodigality often begins with the quiet rewriting of responsibility.
2. Rejecting Right Voices. The prodigal not only resists God’s voice but also silences the voices of those who love them. Proverbs repeatedly warns against refusing correction. Hebrews 3:15 urges, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Prodigality carries a quality of isolation—at least isolation from accountability. A shrinking circle of influence. A narrowing of input.
“Deconstruction” can sound noble or intellectual—especially in a social media age that rewards public doubt—but often it is simply a modern iteration of ancient rebellion. There is nothing new about organized resistance to authority.
What the Wayward Want
Another way to understand prodigality is by examining what the wayward desire.
1. Choices Without Consequences. They want freedom without the burden of responsibility. They want affirmation—not merely tolerance—of their decisions. In a therapeutic age, as Carl Trueman has noted, external affirmation becomes essential to personal well-being. Even irrationality must be celebrated if the self is sovereign.
But Scripture insists that actions carry consequences (Galatians 6:7). The wayward seek to dodge not only external repercussions but internal ones—the sting of disappointment, the weight of conviction.
2. Autonomy Without Accountability. They want freedom on their own terms.Yet biblical freedom is never autonomy; it is joyful submission to God. The fool rejects that structure. The prodigal reframes accountability as oppression.
3. Loving Without Loss. They want indulgence without losing safety, comfort, or relationship. Often, those who love the wayward are over-invested and underpowered. One person compensates for the irresponsibility of the other. A destructive imbalance of power develops.
Those who love will do almost anything. Those who flee often care little and do nothing.
When fear and appeasement take over, the imbalance worsens. As Churchill once said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” The appetite of rebellion is never satisfied by accommodation.
Love must eventually name danger and call for help.
A Rugged Gospel for Wayward Hearts
How, then, do we love the wayward? The gospel does not call us to sentimental weakness. It reveals a rugged love. Love is rugged when it can face and disrupt the wayward’s delusions. Specifically, this means we become:
1. Strong Enough to Face Evil. Love that refuses to name evil is not biblical love. At the cross, the perfect love of God met the full wickedness of evil. Love and abhorrence converged.
The cross was not God’s workaround. It was not a wink at sin. The satanic scope of evil was fully exposed as God unleashed holy wrath upon his Son. The inestimable cost of evil is seen in the only payment accepted: blood. And yet “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).
The worst lies are not always the ones the prodigal tells us. Sometimes they are the ones we tell ourselves to avoid confrontation.
Rugged love faces reality. It does not look away from adultery, addiction, abuse, or rebellion. It does not excuse what God condemns.
2. Tenacious Enough to Do Good. Naming evil is essential—but it is only the first step. Romans 12:21 commands, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
As prodigals drift, their world shrinks to the size of self. Affection erodes. Relationships become transactional. Loving them can feel like a bank account that receives no deposits—only withdrawals.
The temptation is anger. Or shame. Or withdrawal. But the gospel tenderizes our hearts. Jesus says in Luke 6:35, “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return… for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” Though we were once ungrateful and evil, we became objects of kindness. But God’s kindness was never intended to terminate upon us. Kindness is given to be shared.
Only a rugged love can be kind to the ungrateful. Only grace can sustain that kind of endurance.
3. Courageous Enough to Enforce Consequences. Love has teeth. Love draws lines.
Because the prodigal often lives blinded to consequences, those who love must allow them to experience the weight of their choices. “In order to repent, prodigals must feel pain,” one counselor wisely observed. Not the pain of vindictive people making them pay, but the pain that collapses illusion. But to set the charges for that collapse, we must stare unblinkingly at a risky reality: Sometimes God pursues by releasing.
In Luke 15, the father did not enable his son to live as an entitled man-child on the estate. The son demanded his inheritance—and he was allowed to go. He did not cash out and linger comfortably at home. He left the family. He suffered financial loss; experienced famine and felt the pangs of hunger. Shame became his companion. The result? “He came to himself” (Luke 15:17).
God sometimes shows his mercy by releasing us to pursue what we want until we discover what we truly need. Sometimes true love looks like allowing someone to exhaust the folly behind their choices.
Hope for Wander-Prone Hearts
The hymn is right. We are prone to wander. But the story does not end there. The same gospel that exposes wandering also rescues wanderers. The Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one (Luke 15:4). The Father watches the road. We display a love so rugged that it is
– Strong enough to face evil.
– Tenacious enough to do good.
– Courageous enough to enforce consequences.
And stands confident enough to trust that the God who pursues wanderers knows how to bring them home. Until then, we pray.
And we love.
For additional study, check out Letting Go: Rugged Love for Wayward Souls
Photo by Mike Bravo on Unsplash
