by an Alliance international worker serving in the North and Central Asia Region
Faith*, one of the leaders in our outreach to university students, struggled for years with her father’s resistance to her faith. She had taken a strong stand against the idolatry her extended family embraced, including her grandmother’s worshiping of idols and bringing spiritual mediums into the home to appease the gods.
The spiritual tug-of-war intensified when Faith’s father, Joe, began experiencing recurrences of cancer. Faith received many emergency calls, requiring her to travel back and forth from her work on our team to care for him.
Obedience
One night, exhausted, Faith cried out to the Lord. She immediately heard a voice tell her, “Go pray with your mother.” Faith hesitated.
Her relationship with her mother, Alice, had been distant for some time. But that night, Faith obeyed the Holy Spirit’s urging.
She found her mother alone on the balcony of the family home. This was a rare occurrence, since Alice typically was in the kitchen at that hour and unavailable for conversation. Faith hugged her and pleaded, “Mother, please, please, pray with me. Only when we cry out for God’s help can Dad be saved!”
Cursed
To Faith’s surprise, Alice agreed. The few times Faith had invited her mother to pray with her for her father, Alice had resisted. Her mother had attended church regularly for years, but she had mysteriously stopped going and appeared to have given up her faith.
“I didn’t know until that night why my mother had stopped going to church,” Faith told us later. “I simply assumed she was weak. And I was irritated with her. But that night I learned what had happened.”
Alice told Faith that for years when Joe knew she was headed to church, he cursed her, telling her he hoped a car would hit her. One day while en route to church, Alice was in a car accident. “She wasn’t hurt, but that stopped her cold from returning to church,” Faith said.
Faith was deeply saddened to learn from her mother that Joe also physically and verbally abused Alice when he was drunk. He had continued to verbally abuse Alice after he became ill. “My relationship with my mother was healed as I began to understand her for the first time,” Faith told us.
Restoration
That evening, Faith took a bold step, “Mother, dad needs mercy. Will you forgive him?”
She couldn’t believe it when her mom said, “Yes!”
As they prayed together, Faith sensed a strong power present with them—the love of God. “All of the barriers and unforgiveness between my mother and me melted away. God restored my relationship with my mother that night.”
The next day, two pastors from the local church visited Joe. They shared their testimonies and encouraged him to receive Jesus.
Save Me!
“Something happened to my dad’s hard heart right then,” Faith said. “He repented!
“I heard him cry out, ‘Lord, I’m a sinner. Lord, I need You. Lord, save me!’ Oh, how my heart was filled with gratitude!”
As time passed, Joe’s health deteriorated. My husband, Paul, and I visited him in the hospital, not knowing what to expect. But there in his hospital bed—resisting pressure from his own mother to accept the incantations of idol worshipers—Joe chose to be baptized in the Lord’s name.
Joe has since gone to be with the Lord. We rejoice in knowing God performed a mighty miracle to change his heart. The Lord also worked through Joe’s illness to bring healing and renewal between a father and mother and their daughter. We know His work of salvation has just begun in this family.
*Names changed
Learn More
Faith is a leader in the thriving outreach to university students that the author and her husband, Alliance international workers, began in this creative-access country 14 years ago. Today, their training center equips young leaders with biblical principles and practical ministry skills; staff members also provide encouragement and help facilitate spiritual and emotional healing. Since March 2017, they have trained more than 600 ministry leaders from 46 churches across this nation and in other regions of the world.