Free Will Limits Potential to be Blessed

My testimony continues to develop, not always in ways that flatter me.

It has been impossible for me to steady myself and take firm positions during my dad’s illness and transformation. I take certain positions, and then circumstances change, and I realize I have to adapt.

He became a new person this year. He went from calling the Bible a book of fairy tales to urging me enthusiastically to pray with him. He lost his anger. He quit saying things that created anxiety for me. He stopped accusing me and criticizing me. He started blessing me verbally and exclaiming that he loved me. I have marveled at the transformation.

Several years ago, God told me he had cut my dad off. He had also told me my dad would be saved, so when he said he was cut off, I knew he didn’t mean my dad was going to hell. God had decided to cut off some of his mercy here on earth.

The Bible says God’s mercy endures forever, but people misunderstand. His mercy endures forever in heaven, for those who are saved. Here on earth, his patience is limited, regardless of what ignorant people say in order to justify continuing to sin. A God with infinite patience would not have flooded the world or created hell. God shows us great forbearance, but even he requires closure and justice. He’s not going to remain in labor forever just so we can do as we please.

After God told me he had cut my dad off, my dad sank into dementia. I took care of him at home for several years, and during that time, he retained his bitterness, anger, sense of entitlement, and so on. He continued to reject God. After he went to assisted living, the transformation took place.

I pray for people every day. I have a list. My dad has not been on the list for a very long time. I would guess he came off the list something like 5 years ago. I prayed for certain things for people I knew to be Christians, and I included their families. I prayed for my dad separately, because I felt he needed something different.

When I first started to think my dad had memory issues, I began praying regularly for God to take them away, but nothing happened. My dad didn’t develop what I would call full-blown dementia until around 2015, but he was forgetting things a few years before that. After I took my dad off my list, I stopped praying for God to fix his memory. I continued to pray for God to save him, however.

In recent years, I have not prayed for God to take the dementia away. When God told me he had cut my dad off, I knew praying for a cure was pointless, and I also felt that it was enmity toward God. I got used to this stance.

The problem with my position was this: it was a little too convenient for my flesh. I am not the kind of person who would push a parent down the stairs in order to get an inheritance or relief from abuse, but I am a human being, and even though my dad’s problems were disturbing to me, I felt a selfish motivation to refrain from attacking them supernaturally. What if he recovered fully, resented everything I had done since taking over for him, resumed insulting God, and made my life miserable for 5 more years? The prospect was not pleasant.

After my dad changed for the better, I asked myself if it made sense to limit my prayers for him. He was not the same person who had rejected God in the past. He was my new brother. Shouldn’t I pray for him, just as I prayed for other people?

I didn’t feel right about things. I felt like I was committing the sin of Onan, who refused to sow seed in his brother’s widow because he wanted his brother’s inheritance.

Day before yesterday, I decided to pray for him to be healed of dementia and his physical problems. I did it sincerely. I felt God wanted me to do it, if not for my dad, for the health of my own soul. Afterward, I felt peace come to me.

Yesterday, when I went to see my dad, his mind was clearer. He was also angry. When I arrived at the ALF, he was arguing with his roommate. They were having a disagreement about the window blinds. My dad called him a filthy name.

I took my dad to the place where we usually talk, and when God came up, my dad said the Bible was a story book. He said he had only prayed with me in order to make me happy.

What he said wasn’t true. My dad would not pray just to make me happy. That’s not him. He believed. He was sincerely concerned about his future when we prayed.

I had prayed for my dad to be healed, and the very thing I had feared had happened, overnight. He had started to reject God. He was regressing.

While I sat with my dad, I went back over my testimony with him. I reminded him of various things we had discussed. I didn’t push him, but I did preach a little. He started to revert to believing, as though his sudden backsliding had never happened. I asked God, silently, what I should do. Then I got an idea.

I asked my dad if he would agree that arranging for one’s welfare in the afterlife was the most important thing a person could do. He agreed strongly. I asked him if I could pray that God would help him do whatever was necessary to assure his future. I said he could agree with me in prayer. He consented with enthusiasm.

Aloud, I prayed that God would help him to do whatever had to be done, giving up whatever was necessary, in order to make it to heaven. I asked God to take away anything that had to be taken away. My dad agreed, and that was that. Afterward, God’s peace came back to me.

Here’s what I think. I believe God does not want to take away my dad’s dementia, because my dad is proud. If he is completely healed, he will deny God, and the result will be catastrophic. My dad is going to stay demented, and he will not live long. On the other hand, I should not have refrained from prayer out of carnal motives. I needed to drop the barrier and do the right thing, even though God didn’t intend to give me what I asked for.

My dad has made the right choice, so God will help him to get to heaven. I have done the right thing. Things will go well now.

In the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar went mad. God had given him the greatest kingdom on earth, and he had refused to acknowledge God, so his mind was taken away from him. He crawled around like an animal and ate grass for seven years. In the end, Nebuchadnezzar was restored, and he glorified God. My dad is apparently more stubborn than Nebuchadnezzar. I think he is getting the same basic treatment, however.

God wants perfect health and sanity for all of us. He wants us to be financially sound. He wants life to go well for us. Nonetheless, there are people who can’t receive certain blessings without turning against God. If I had received the success I wanted early in life, I would not know God now.

My dad is better off as he is than he would be as a sane, healthy man who rejected salvation. That’s just how it is. The problem isn’t God’s will. My dad’s will is the issue. If he gets certain blessings, he will choose damnation again.

My new dad is a wonderful person (apart from last night’s aberration). I love going to see him. I love praying with him. I love doing things for him. I don’t want him to go. At the same time, I believe that his will has put firm limitations on what God can do for him. Also, no matter how much I love my dad, I know it’s not God’s will that I be burdened with his willful problem child much longer.

My dad is experiencing the gentlest takeoff his own will permits. God is helping me get his estate ready. He is ending the father-son conflicts that poisoned my life. He has put my dad in an excellent facility where he will get good care until he goes. I can’t ask for anything more.

I don’t plan to ask God to heal him any more. Of course, that may change. This is a turbulent time for us. I never know what’s going to happen next.

I am content. I do not intend to run to God and beg when my dad’s end draws near. There are worse things than dementia and death, and God has been extremely patient and generous. It’s very hard to see health problems growing on my dad like moss, but I am not God, and I have limited power and responsibility. I can’t make everything perfect for a man who won’t cooperate.

Things are going extremely well, given what God has to work with.