Praying for Your Father? Don’t Stop!

On his annual visit from England, my father would quickly ask, “Poppy, What can I do for you? Do you have any ironing? Can I peel the vegetables for dinner? Would you like me to water your plants?” Once, he was so eager to help that he even watered my life-like artificial palm tree by mistake!Unlike many, I was blessed with a loving, kind, and very supportive father—but he was also an atheist.Being British, my Dad was very uncomfortable when the topic of personal faith came up. You just didn’t talk about religion! Yet he spoke highly of the Salvation Army “girls” who visited his local pub every few weeks to collect for the homeless.When I became a committed Christian in my late teens, he never questioned my faith but he didn’t want to discuss what I believed or what had changed my life. However, he willingly went with us to our small,  informal, church and seemed to enjoy it.

The years went by and I wondered how God would, or even could, become real to my Dad.

And then things changed.

God gave me an overwhelming burden to pray for my father. I pled with Him to stir my father to ask what life is about and what happens after death.  I’d walk in the Oregon rain day after day, crying out  with tears for God to save him from an eternity without Christ.  It lasted for a few months.Shortly after this I received a phone call. “Poppy, Can you come right away,” said my father in a trembling voice. “Mum has had a heart attack and they don’’t think she’ll make it. Your sisters will pick you up at the railway station.”Trembling myself, I said I’d be on the first plane I could get to London.I made it to my mother’s bedside. She passed away a few hours later. At her funeral, I felt God wanted me to speak briefly and I expressed my confidence that she was with the Lord. A few days later, as I was getting ready to leave,  my father asked me what I believed about life and death and God.Pulling out a big envelope, Dad handed it to me and said, “Six months ago I was stirred to respond to an advertisement in the newspaper about Christianity.  Poppy, is this what you believe?”Stunned, I looked through the contents. There was a letter explaining what salvation and faith in Christ meant, a Gospel of John and other several other helpful resources.

God’s presence in my father’s small living room was palpable.

God had answered my prayers to stir my father to seek Him.

The next day I left for the home. And a week later I received a letter that reduced me to tears of awe and gratitude.“Poppy,” my father wrote, “the morning you left, I got down on my knees and asked Jesus Christ to forgive my sins and come into my heart.  I’ve done it several times since.  I am going into town to find a Bible and to ask about a church I can go to.”Dad lived ten more years. He read his Bible through many times, along with several readings of J.I. Packer’s “Knowing God.” He found a small, informal church fellowship meeting near his home and was part of a home Bible study.It was not my faith that brought my father to Christ. It was God alone, moving through His Spirit. And I was more stunned than anyone that my father would respond!

Are you praying for your father, my friend?  I hope this story encourages you to never give up, no matter how humanly impossible it seems. 

Will you commit to keep praying?

Blessings on your journey with Him,PoppyPhoto credit: GraphicStock