Prayer and Fasting (Story #2)

It’s October 1994, I call my parents’ house and reach my mom. She tells me about this great time she had with my dad on their anniversary. I knew things had been rough but I was excited because it seemed things were turning around. I called a couple days later and my mom starts crying when I ask if dad is there. She said, "No, he's out with his girlfriend." I asked, "He told you that?" And my mom just keeps on crying and telling me what's going on. She told me that she had told him that if he didn't stop his unfaithfulness and all the other stuff he was doing that she was going to leave him. 

Now for my mom to say this, I know she was hurting. My dad had been unfaithful to her from almost the start of their marriage but as life went on he became more absorbed in himself and living his sinful life. He always tried to keep up an image of righteousness to us and church but he was far from it and as his kids didn't live in the house any more he didn't have to hide his true self any more. 

What do you say to your mom who's crying and telling her son all that is going on? All I could do was listen and sympathize. When I got off the phone Thursday night, I determined that I would spend the next day fasting until evening. My prayer was that God would put my dad in a place where the only thing he could do was to look to God. Little did I know how God would answer that prayer. I thought of a number of different scenarios but nothing close to what actually happened.

A few days later my dad calls and tells us that mom is missing. The first thing I thought was that this is my answer to prayer. I didn't know how but I knew that this situation was how God was going to work in my dad's heart. I offered to come home from Florida to help find her but he told me to stay put. On Halloween night, my youngest sister, who was also in Florida, and I got a call from my dad saying that they found mom. She was dead. 

My dad had my mom's body flown to MI where she grew up and my family all met up there with my mom's brothers and other family and friends and had her funeral and buried her. We all flew to Az on a Sunday morning. As we were getting off the plane, my dad was arrested for her murder and later that afternoon my dad confessed.

The answer to my prayer was my dad placed in prison so that the only way he could look to was God. The death of my mom and the imprisonment of my dad would not have been my option but God knew that it was the only way to get his attention and to a place long enough that he'd listen. There was a lot of anger from my dad at the wrong people but I truly believe that my dad has repented and is a different person spiritually than he was when he was locked up almost 18 years ago.

I learned to pray for the general and let God worry about the specifics. I knew my dad needed to change and that God knew how to get that accomplished. God knows the big picture and knows the best way to get someone's attention. When you leave the details to God, God's name is glorified.