I have many family members who do not know Jesus. This article hit me profoundly...

I’ve heard the story so many times lately that it seems hardly a week passes by without my hearing about this grief: believing loved ones praying for family members who’ve never followed Christ or who have abandoned the faith of their upbringing. Sometimes it’s parents praying for teen and adult children; at other times, it’s teen and adult children still praying for older parents and grandparents. 

I know this anguish because I prayed for 36 years for my dad and 47 years for my mom before they both became Christ-followers. I would be lying if I said that I never once lost faith or doubted God in the decades that I prayed. I was a pastor for a number of those years, but even I wondered if God were ever going to answer my prayers. It felt like the more I prayed, the worse the situation seemed. 

My wife, Pam, and I don’t have children, but we have been surrogate “parents,” “grandparents,” “aunt” and “uncle” to some who’ve wandered from the faith. I know how much we’ve grieved these situations, and I cannot imagine how much deeper the pain must be for biological parents who did their best to raise their offspring in a Christian home. As a pastor, I’ve wept with more than one parent bearing this burden; at other times, I’ve wept myself over folks I love. Sometimes, though, I’ve watched as God graciously drew to Himself someone for whom I and others had been praying for years. The latter situation has always been worth the wait. 

My goal in this article is to help you not lose hope when you have unbelieving or prodigal loved ones—or, if all your family members are believers, to help you encourage others who do face the struggle with loved ones. My thoughts are probably not revolutionary, but I trust that hearing them again will be important when your faith begins to struggle. 

Reaching Unbelieving Loved Ones

If you’ve been praying for unbelieving loved ones for a long time, I encourage you to:

Just keep praying. I describe prayer as “a cry for relationship with God and a confession of dependence on Him.”[i] On one hand, prayer says, “God, I love You”; on the other, it says, “God, I need You.” Prayer on behalf of unbelieving loved ones says both: “God, I want them to love you, but I cannot change their hearts. I’m completely dependent on You to do that.” 

Frankly, it was the latter reality that most drove me to pray for my parents during their later years. The older they got, the more urgency drove me to intercede for them. They seemed to get harder and harder over the years . . . until God graciously stepped into their lives. My challenge was to not allow my heart to become hardened while waiting decades for God to answer my prayers. Now, knowing that both my parents are with the Lord, I’m deeply grateful to God that I didn’t stop praying. I challenge you not to stop, either. 

Get others to pray with you for your loved ones. In my various roles as pastor, professor, and missionary trainer, I’ve had opportunities for many years to travel all over North America and around the globe. I’ve also taught generations of students in my almost 30 years of teaching. Early in these roles, I made a commitment to ask believers everywhere to pray for my parents. I made that request through translators at times, but I can’t recall ever missing an opportunity to gather prayer warriors around me on behalf of Mom and Dad. Through the years, I’ve asked students to join me in this intercessory work as well. I can just envision the prayers from different peoples, living in numerous countries, representing multiple generations, speaking in various languages, lifting my parents to the Lord.

When my parents did turn to the Lord, I’m convinced God responded to the prayers of generations of believers. In fact, I delighted when folks who had been praying with me for decades rejoiced with me, too. Perhaps you don’t have the same access to believers around the globe that I’ve had, but I suspect you do have other believers you can intentionally invite to join you in intercession for your loved ones. Just start asking today. 

Ask God to give you and/or others opportunities to speak truth into your loved ones’ lives. The apostle Paul asked for prayer that he might speak the gospel boldly and clearly, and that God might give him an open door to speak to others (Eph 6:18-20, Col 4:2-4). If the apostle Paul needed prayer support to speak the gospel, surely you and I need the same kind of undergirding—especially when we’re watching for open doors to speak to loved ones. It’s often easier to speak the gospel to strangers than it is to proclaim it to the people who know us best.

After Pam and I moved from Ohio where my parents lived, we knew our opportunities to influence them would be fewer. Increasing geographical distance separated us and pushed us to pray for others to be witnesses to them. My brother and his family lived near them, and it was primarily they who led my parents to the Lord. I was a professor of evangelism at the time, but it was others who did the evangelistic work in my parents’ lives. Who did the gospel witness didn’t matter, though; what mattered was that God used someone to do it. Begin praying today for someone to speak gospel truth to your loved ones.

Trust that God’s working even when you cannot see what He’s doing. I regularly remind myself of the story of Jairus in Mark 5. He had asked Jesus to come heal his dying daughter, but Jesus did not get there in time. The daughter died. Still, Jesus told the dad to let go of his fear and just believe. All the evidence from a human perspective said the story was over, but Jesus knew better. He knew God was still up to something—though Jairus would not know what He was doing until the miracle of resurrection had taken place. Sometimes we see God’s hand more retroactively after He works than we did when we were wrestling with His silence in the present.

Neither of my parents first made their profession of faith in the context of a church worship service. We had prayed for them and invited them to church for years, but it was not in a “response time” at the end of a service that they first prayed for forgiveness. Rather, my dad called my believing younger brother and told him he wanted to talk about Jesus again. . . right then, in fact—and my brother helped our dad turn to Christ. More than a decade later, my mom simply informed us about how she had sought God’s grace and forgiveness when she realized that God would, in fact, forgive her. She didn’t know all the proper terminology, but she knew God had changed her heart.

In both cases, God had been working even though we did not know it at the time. More than once since then, I’ve told folks that God reminded me of this truth through the conversion of my parents: “When God’s doing His work, He’s under no obligation to let us in on the details.” He’s God, and we’re not—and our responsibility is to keep trusting Him even in His seeming silence. 

Don’t let the enemy rob you of hope when he aims his arrows of doubt at you. My older sister is the one remaining immediate family member who has not yet followed Christ. I have another buddy who is like a son to me who has turned fully from his faith. Given the stories of my parents’ dramatic conversions—not to mention my younger brother’s prior transformation through grace—you would think I would always, always trust God’s hand in the lives of people I love. Even I, though, face the enemy’s attacks of discouragement and doubt at times.

That’s when I remember these truths that have meant so much to me over the years: 

• • God is God. He just is.
  • God has already disarmed the powers through Jesus’ death on the cross (Col 2:15).
  • God is still drawing to Himself a people.
  • God loves my loved ones much more than I do.
  • God still hears prayers—and I still have reason for faith-focused hope. Further, here’s what I’ve learned: when God finally does answer our prayers, any delay in His response doesn’t matter anymore. God’s timing is always right.

Reaching Prodigals

If you have a prodigal child raised in the faith but now wandering, the above words certainly apply in your situation, too. Keep praying, Get others to pray with you. Ask God to give you and/or others opportunities to speak. Trust that God is at work, and take up the shield of faith to ward off the enemy’s arrows (Eph 6). To those words I add these thoughts below, some that I wrote in a blog post years ago:

1. 1. Keep walking faithfully. Stay faithful yourself. Don’t turn in anger from God. You can’t expect Him to answer your prayers for somebody else when you’re not walking with Him yourself.
   2. Keep standing. Here’s my point (and it’s not an easy one): don’t let your prodigal’s departure lead you to redefine what is right and wrong. Sin remains sin, regardless of how much we love the people living in it. 
   3. Keep grieving. That means your anguish may not go away entirely, but the minute you stop grieving sin is the minute you also start caring less about your prodigal’s choices. Agonizing over sin keeps you on your knees—the right place to be on behalf of a prodigal. 
   4. Keep loving. There’s a legitimate place for church discipline, but some prodigals have walked away from the church first because they assumed the church would reject them. Love your prodigals even if others don’t seem to—and even if they think you’ve lost your love for them, too. 
   5. Keep listening. Follow the Spirit’s guide to know when and how to speak into the situation, but be willing to listen more than speak if needed. An open ear might take you a long way with your prodigal.    
   6. Keep waiting. Returning to God is seldom easy for a prodigal. It’s sometimes equally hard to return home. Wait patiently (and then continue to be patient when he or she does come home, as living out change usually takes a while). 
   7. Keep trusting. To be honest, God might allow your prodigal to suffer the pains of disobedience to turn him back toward Him. You might want to try to fix the situation so that doesn’t happen, but trust God. He knows what’s needed. 
   8. Keep watching. Like the father of the prodigal son in Luke 15, keep your eyes on the driveway. You never know when you’ll see your prodigal on his way home. 
   9. Encourage others walking the same path. Something just happens when you share your burden with other believers carrying the same anguish. Just knowing others understand your heartache as they walk arm-in-arm with you can renew your faith along the way. 
   10. Be sure to throw a party when your prodigal does come home. Celebrate. Honor the Lord for answering your prayer—in His timing.

We at Church Answers are happy to join you in prayer, too. Feel free to reach out to me at Chuck@churchanswers.com if you would like us to intercede as well.

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[i] Chuck Lawless, The Potential and Power of Prayer: How to Unleash the Praying Church (Church Answers Resources) (p. 25). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Let's pray and believe together!

SONGS FOR SUNDAY

All Creatures of Our God and King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4OnoVqSz00

Still God Still Good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei8XWHpFDq4

Fear of God

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFRLYSNvGZ0