by Jen | Aug 19, 2025 | 11-32, DISO studies, Luke 15
NEW TO THIS STUDY? START HERE.
Welcome back! Here’s how I felt the Holy Spirit leading me in Steps 1 and 2 this past week:
Last Week’s Work
MY PRAYER
Keeping in mind the model we learned about in our last study, I crafted this:
Father God, You are the highest and best Father of all, and I believe the father in this passage from Luke is patterned after You. Thank You for welcoming us into Your Word. Open our eyes, minds, and hearts to Your Holy Spirit’s leadership, and bless our efforts to see, understand, and apply this text in our lives. I ask this in Jesus’s mighty name. Amen!
HUH? and WOW! MOMENTS
These are my questions and discoveries from surveying the passage:
HUH?s
- Who is the he who tells this story (v11)? To whom? I’m pretty sure Jesus is the storyteller, but I want to remember to verify that and learn about his audience in Step 4.
- The footnote to v15 says, hired himself out to could also mean joined himself to. What are the implications of a Jewish man joining himself to someone from another country?
- How could the father recognize the prodigal son while he was still a long way off (v20)? Maybe because he (the father) was looking hard for him (the son), thinking (hoping?) he’d come back?
- The father describes the son as dead and lost but then that he lives and was found twice (vv24, 32). What might he mean?
WOW!s
- This time, the Holy Spirit directly pointed out it was the man’s younger son (v12) who wanted his inheritance early. I never really noticed that before.
- I think pigs were considered unclean by first century Jews— this son must have been desperately hungry to work with them (vv15-16)!
- At least the son was humbled enough that he didn’t expect his dad to welcome him back as a son (v19).
- And to his credit, he didn’t take advantage of his dad’s joy; he stuck to the terms he’d decided for himself before going home (v21).
- Related to my first wow! above: the father’s reaction is a surprise to me. Didn’t he realize his reaction might (and, in fact, did) alienate the older, loyal son (vv22-24)?
Dig-In Challenges
If you’re studying this passage with me, listen to the Spirit’s guidance this week and choose one of your (or my) Huh? or Wow! topics to dig into more deeply. Going forward, I’ll refer to this as your personal treasure. It can be something you noticed in your study, one of the items I’ve listed above, or anything else the Holy Spirit laid upon your heart about this passage. As the study progresses, we’ll consider everything in the study text but gradually narrow our focus to the verse(s) that prompted that Huh? or Wow! reaction you’ve decided to study.
- PRAY for the Spirit to direct your focus for the remainder of this study. In your journal, record the personal treasure He identifies, along with any verse(s) relating to it from the study text.
- MINE: Read Luke 15:11-32, focusing on the three factors setting the stage for this story. Note anything the Spirit emphasizes about the characters involved, any locations mentioned, and any timeframes discussed.
I hope you’ll check in with me next week!
GO TO WEEK 3 >
by Jen | Aug 12, 2025 | 11-32, DISO studies, Introduction, Luke 15
Thank you for joining me in this eight-week study of the prodigal parable!
This is another of the Restoration studies I’ve previously done online. I’m repeating them because the original studies were lost when a previous website host took down my site a few years ago. I could just repost those earlier versions, but most of them were completed as the Spirit worked with me to fine-tune the DISO study method, so the framework I used then doesn’t match the current five-step approach. We’re not missing anything (in fact, it’s more robust now than it ever was!), but based on feedback I’ve received, it’s easier to work through now—and that’s a good thing, right?!
Let’s Study Luke 15:11-32!
This week, I’ll begin by praying and surveying Luke 15:11-32. If you want to study on your own with me, here’s what I recommend you have ready:
- A copy of Luke 15:11-32, plus access to the entire Gospel of Luke.
I like to refer often to the text I’m studying and sometimes make notes on it, so I copy the passage from blueletterbible.org, paste it into a word processing program like Google docs or MS Word, change the formatting to suit my preferences, and print it out. If you want to use the ESV translation, here’s a pdf of my Scripture study sheet with lots of room for doodles and notes.
- A study journal.
We’ll spend the next seven weeks immersed in and learning about Luke 15:11-32. And the work we’ll do each week builds on what came before, so plan to record at least some highlights from your work over the coming weeks. I’m old-school and like the pen-and-paper method for journaling my studies, but it’s okay if that doesn’t work for you. If you don’t have time to write out or type your notes, consider dictating them into a notes app, or recording audio files, instead.
Or, you may decide to just read the posts I publish here. That’s good, too, because you’ll become familiar with the process and see how the Spirit speaks to my situation. You may find that’s enough to make it worth your while to keep checking in with me, even if you can’t dig into Luke 15:11-32 yourself this time.
Dig-In Challenges
So, here’s how I’ll be studying this week:
- PRAY: I’ll be creating a prayer with which I’ll start each of my weekly study sessions. If you’ve studied with me before, you know I usually just adapt a previous prayer. Though I’ve almost memorized the bones of my prayer, I still write it in my study journal to remind me to pray it each time I open the notebook.
- SURVEY: Then I’ll read Luke 15:11-32, noting anything that makes me say, “huh?” (as in, “I wonder what that means?”) or “wow” (as in, “that is so awesome!”). I’ll record these and later ask the Spirit to direct me to the one I should dig deepest into right now.
If you’d like more information about these steps, check out this printable summary of the process I’ll be using over the next eight weeks. Or, you can always reach out to me with your questions through my contact page or at [email protected].
I’m looking forward to sharing what I discover in this process with you, along with relevant snippets of my previous Lord’s Prayer study from 2020, so I hope you’ll keep checking in with me each week!
GO TO WEEK 2 >
