Don’t Give Up: An Encouragement to Pray
My dad, as a child of the cocktail generation, has maintained a love affair with alcohol almost his whole life. He told me that even as a 10 or 12-year-old, his parents would have huge parties and he’d wake up in the morning way before his hungover folks and go drink all the lukewarm beer that was left out on the table.
His drinking continued to get more and more serious as the years went on. He had a demanding and stressful job as a firefighter, a wife (my mom) who had an undiagnosed and unpredictable mental disorder and toss in all the soul-emptiness that comes from not knowing Christ, and there’s no reason to not get extremely drunk literally every night of the week for, say, 20 years. And that’s exactly what he did my entire childhood. I loved my dad growing up, but because he was always hidden behind a haze of alcohol, I never really knew him.
When I was in my early twenties, Dad divorced Mom and soon after married someone else. I was mad at him for how the whole thing went about and spent 5 years not talking to him. This sounds extreme, but it was a compound fracture waiting to happen. I had built up a sizable load of resentment against both parents and their divorce was the last straw. I needed a break from how crazy they were and it just happened to find expression in not talking to my dad.
When his wife finally tracked me down and convinced me to interact with him again, I found my dad to be a different person. His wife, who was quite appropriately named Faith, helped him find God and eventually helped him get off alcohol. I couldn’t believe it. I had prayed for both these things since I got saved in Jr. High.
But it gets better.
So for a while, he wasn’t completely sober but he also wasn’t a huge drunk anymore either. He whittled his habit down to a beer or two every few days. Not bad. But Faith, being the good Baptist girl she was, encouraged him to stop entirely. So he did.
And a year into zero alcohol, on a hot summer afternoon, he decided he deserved a cold beer and made a quick trip to the store for a six pack. As he was hanging out in his barn sipping on his beer (and simultaneously hiding his little treat from Faith, I’m sure, old addict that he was), suddenly his throat started to close up. It was so bad he went to the hospital.
A few months later, he sat down with his sister-in-law who was there as a spotter in case he had another allergic reaction (at this point, sadly, Faith had passed away), and he tried some wine. “Maybe it was just the beer. Maybe I can have wine,” he thought.
Nope.
She said his face flushed white after one sip and he said could feel his throat tighten again. It turns out my dad is completely allergic to alcohol.
I’ve never heard of an alcohol allergy before in my life. To me, this is nothing short of a miracle that someone like my dad would one day end up allergic to his favorite vice. This is a severe sort of mercy that I would have never seen coming. Not only did God enable my dad to quit drinking, but He made it so my dad would never be able to go back down that road again. He delivered my dad and then vaporized the bridge that led back to his slavery.
I’m telling this story to those who have prayed for things, like I did with my dad's drinking, for years or decades. Hours and hours and tears and pleading with God for literally years, just for my dad, just for this one issue. And now he can never drink again (that is, if he’d like to keep his airways open).
We all know some prayers will never be answered like this. Many, many times, God’s answer to our prayers for someone else is a disappointing and heartbreaking “No” and we have to trust that He knows best. Some people we pray for will never come around. But I wanted to share this because sometimes they DO come around. And if we aren’t willing to put the hard work into praying for them, then we won’t get to share in the joy of God’s work in quite the same way.
To any person reading this, my dad’s journey is just a story with a happy ending. But to me, who lived through the sadness and trauma of an alcoholic dad and who begged God for his deliverance, this is the Red Sea parting. This is Elijah’s rain. This is “Lazarus, come forth.” It isn’t just that God did something amazing in my dad’s life, but that I got to be an actual part of it as someone who prayed for him. This is God’s blessing to me, through my dad. He may have been the one delivered from alcoholism, but I’m the one who received the answer to my prayers. It’s so cosmic and intense and incredible.
Keep praying for your hard cases. Keep fighting for the people in your life who seem hopeless. You never know what God might do 20 years from now with those prayers. You might see a roiling sea of addiction or pride or unbelief suddenly part and a loved one walk right through it, out of bondage into freedom.
“Pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”