What sinners are REALLY welcome in your church? In your life

[Fez]

I'd like to hear the experience of those who have had to rebuke their believing parent/s?

Unfortunately my father was an unbeliever and a scoffer until he died. I was not saved before he died and it never worried me, I just ignored him. Obviously now, my heart breaks for him.

My mom was saved from the age of 12, when she walked out of the catholic church "I wanted to talk to Jesus directly, not through another person" - her words not mine.

She endured a family that was not saved, with grace and Patience, and it must the rubbed off. All three of her children, and her grand children, were saved, and she got to see that before she died. My brother is an elder, his son is a youth pastor, and South and I are on the leadership team of our church. She never got to meet South, who she would have loved....

She never rebuked, she just let her walk do the rebuking. Her walk was based on faith like a rock. I looked after her in the last few years of her life. She was paralyzed from the waist down, blind in one eye, suffered from a spine disease called spodylitus (sp?), and was bedridden for two years. She was in constant pain, (I woke up often to hear her screaming in pain) and I had to do everything for her day and night for two years. Feeding her, bathing her, toilet runs three times a night. During that time I averaged 4 hours sleep a night.

I asked her once "Mom are you still praying?". She looked at me like I was 10 years old again (I was in my 50's), and said with an incredulous voice "Of course! What else is there to do?" Her faith was a rock.

And it took 30 years with me, but it worked. Patience is a virtue we could all do with.

"Patience is not in the waiting, it is in how we wait' - Martin Luther

Patience is the key. A patience founded on love, anchored in faith.

Any sinner is welcome in my life, or church. There is hope for anybody. I have seen and lived it.

Blessings