Visit with Dad

March 4
I flew out the next morning to visit my dad for the week. Most of the time during my visit I had peace & felt assured the Lord was with me even though I didn’t have much time alone with the Lord or privacy to worship freely, to sing & pray aloud. My 2nd day there, on the way back from cross country skiing I was tired from not having slept & had a headache, & wanted to talk to my dad, but didn’t know what to say. Every time I looked at him my heart began to swell & I couldn’t contain what I was feeling. My heart broke with love for him & desire for him to know God. I started crying & tried to hide my face but when we stopped by the grocery store he asked me what was wrong. I told him it was b/c I wanted him to know how much I love him & to know the love of Jesus & how it’s so hard not being able to share that with him when it is everything to me, it is my life. I told him I wanted to talk about it with him but didn’t know if he was open to talk about it. He said yes, so later that day I was able to talk with him & ask questions & share a little bit of my testimony, but it was really hard to discover his answers & have to be quiet when he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He admitted he didn’t have an answer to some of the questions, but assured me that it didn’t matter to him b/c he didn’t need God anyway. He even stated, “God, if you up are there, I don’t need you. I’m sorry if my daughter thinks otherwise.” He asked if I was worried that he’s going to hell & said he’s sure that he’s not. He asked if I was trying to convert him, & the night before I was supposed to leave, when he said he hoped that wasn’t the reason why I came up to see him, that made my heart sad to hear he thought that I only cared about making him believe in God & not actually about him. When I asked him what evidence he needed to believe God exists, he gave a similar answer to the last time I had asked him, that God would have to talk to him, to walk in the door & talk to him. He needs an encounter with the reality of God & his love, but he denies that that reality exists & therefore will not give God a chance to make himself known. I can only hope that despite my dad’s hard unbelieving heart that God will come in His mercy & show him that my dad needs Him & that there is more than the world he knows.
Getting back to Durham & going into work, I had a hard time resting in the place of freedom & quiet, the peace & joy in God’s presence. I didn’t feel much desire to pray or worship, & I busied myself with other things instead. I want to come back to that place of feeling satisfied, filled with His Spirit, hungry for more, & so aware of his love. But I’ve felt so burdened with everything, for my family, for the students at Hillside & all the ministry preparations, meetings, etc. And feeling like there’s input, but no output. That I’m laboring & sometimes growing weary, feeling like I’m doing a bad job & that it’s producing no results. I feel like the Lord is saying to not give up, that it is not in vain, but to be a patient farmer. That right now it seems so hard b/c I’m still plowing the ground, & it’s hard work to get through, to prepare the ground so that the seeds might be scattered. But it’s a process, & eventually the fruit will come. For only God can make the seeds grow.