"Don't get your hopes up." That's the response I get from most unbelievers when I talk about how I pray for the Lord to someday save my father; to reveal His glory in him.  It got to the point where I started to believe he would never come back, never be saved, there was no hope.  At marriage counseling even our old pastor basically said it was a lost hope to save my parents marriage (none of us were saved at the time, but that was never addressed).  Why was everyone so quick to give up?  Why is it impossible for him to change?  Such thoughts threw me to the ground weeping before my heavenly Father.

I desperately desire to have a godly father, who will lead and teach me in the ways of our heavenly Father.  For a while I lost hope that there was any chance that my father could ever be saved.  I had shared the gospel with him time and time again.  I thought that I just kept messing up whenever I shared the gospel, or I just kept making it worse, that I was pushing him farther and farther away from God.  Wasn't there something I could do?  Something I could say?  God gave me that among many other answers through the teaching of a man by the name of Paul Washer.

Now, my Bible Study group will always laugh whenever I quote Paul Washer, because I'm always quoting Paul Washer (with Scripture).  Now to make this clear, Paul Washer is still just a man, not a great man of God, just a weak little man with a great God.  Though I've never actually met him, he is like a father to me, in the absence of my own.  The Lord has used him to daily teach me about my Lord, constantly revealing my own depravity and the great mercy and love of our Lord.  I do believe that the more we learn about our own depravity, the greater our love for Him grows. 

"For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." (Luke 7:47).  This is where my greatest hope comes from, for my dad.  The Lord will often use the vilest of sinners to reveal His glory.  Paul Washer is a living example of that.  I pray that someday the Lord will reveal His glory in my dad by radically changing him, and bestowing His love upon him.  One day I hope my dad will one pick up his cross and follow closely after the Lord.  But as much as I love my father and desire for Him to be saved, if he dies apart from Christ, I will still praise my Lord, for He is good.