In my last post, I mentioned some situations I felt had led me to begin doubting God. I think that I would have started doubting Him regardless of what happened because a big part of it was becoming a newer, more mature version of myself and not just the naive, innocent child who never dared question God because she believed it was wrong. I learned He could handle my doubts, and when I started listening to Christian music that was honest about our doubts and struggles, it made me realize I wasn’t unique in feeling this way.

One of the things that I mentioned hurt me for a time was when I had this desperate desire to help be part of God’s saving work in people’s lives, which I still have, but at this time it was consuming and obsessive. I was over-compensating for other things I didn’t have, but I also genuinely was becoming passionate about reaching the lost in a way I hadn’t been before.

My mom and I started getting more involved in our church as time went on, and I ended up going with her to one of their adult Bible study classes even though I was still a young teenager at the time. I was ready to grow in my faith, though, and needed that level of depth, so I am still thankful I was able to go to the class with her. At the class, I met several amazing people in my church who were doing incredible work in various ministries. They were especially active in prison ministry, which really inspired me at the time, because I never thought of prison ministry as being something you could be excited about. It seemed so dull and unsafe, but that is not the way they described it. I heard them telling stories about going there every week and meeting with these guys and how they were becoming serious in their faith or giving their lives to Christ. I thought that had to be one of the coolest things to be part of.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: we don’t save people. That might sound weird since God has called us to ministry as if it’s up to us to save people (Matthew 28:19), but it’s not. It’s our job to tell others about Him and plant the seeds, but we don’t have any control over the seeds once they’re planted (1 Corinthians 15:37). We can water them, but God and the individual have to work together to nurture the seed, and it is up to God to save anyone (1 Corinthians 3:6; Ephesians 2:8-9).

But that’s getting ahead here. I knew all this intellectually, and the people at my church were so humble; they never made me feel like it was them saving people, but I, once again, was impatient. When I get an idea to do something, I want to do it now, so when I saw them being involved in ministry and read a bunch of articles on Desiring God about it, including one where John Piper says to imagine the joy you’d feel knowing you were part of leading someone to Christ, I did start getting FOMO. I wanted to have that joy.

I felt like up until this point, I’d been trying so hard to be used by God. I’d been writing my blog for two years, and even though it had gained readers—some of you still reading it now, AKA LYNN, I love you to death—it hadn’t “taken off” the way I had hoped and the way I’d heard of other people’s blogs taking off in only two years. That also started fueling some of my disappointment in God. I’d heard people say that everything you do matters when it comes to influencing people for Christ; how you live matters. You don’t necessarily need to travel to the other side of the world to make an impact, although that is a fantastic thing God calls many people to do. But I started wanting more. I wanted to actually see someone get saved where I knew I’d planted a seed, not just know I’ve planted seeds without seeing their growth.

This post is going to cover several things: first, I’ll start by sharing a specific story of mine with trying to reach out to someone and some of the mistakes I made in reviewing the situation, and then I’ll cover some topics associated with this, like what to do if you’re not seeing someone get saved you’re praying for or, worse yet, if someone dies and you don’t believe they were saved—how do you cope with that? I’ve read a ton of biblical articles on this over the years, and thankfully, God does give us answers and hope. I’ll also touch briefly on a topic that goes hand-in-hand with this that I’ll be writing on in more depth in the weeks to come.

My Story: Ministering to Someone Who Needed to Hear About God’s Salvation and Love

I can’t believe how fast the time has gone; it’s already been so long since this story took place. It was the summer before I went into eighth grade, which was also the summer where I knew I lost most of my friends and the summer I started getting involved with an adult Bible study group at my church. An opportunity came up that summer where God laid a situation on my heart, and it really broke my heart. It was something I’d been seeing in the news, and up to this point, I’d just been blowing it off like any other sad news story I’d become desensitized to. But it didn’t go away, and the more I heard about it, the more it pulled at me. It was a local story, too, so I think I started hearing about it more in that context, and God started moving me where I wasn’t so judgmental, and I felt it was an opportunity to share God’s light with people.

I didn’t really know how to help because I didn’t know anyone involved, but I was talking to my grandma about my feelings around it and how I really wanted to share God’s love with someone in this situation, and she gave me the idea to write them a letter. It took me months to actually write this letter because I was nervous to. It wasn’t something I took lightly to tell someone about God. I wanted to make sure I did Him justice, even though I know it’s not up to me. I also spent that time wondering if it was something God actually wanted me to do. I didn’t want to step into a situation I hadn’t been asked to help with or do more harm than good, but after reading a bunch of articles—also on Desiring God, a website that was huge in growing my faith around this time—about being able to tell if something is God’s will, I was finally able to see that we can’t overthink everything. God doesn’t want us spending time waiting for 100 signs if every little thing is His will; He wants us to act if something isn’t violating what He’s expressed His will is in our lives through His Word. I also found reassurance knowing that God is sovereign over our steps; we’re not powerful enough to ruin things He’s started, and He can redeem us and get us back on track if we do take a step He didn’t want us to.

The turning point for me was reading this article on Desiring God. Please read this article if you have the time; it’s not that long at all, and it has SO many good points that still inspire me to this day. It was about a guy I’d never heard of and some trouble he got into I also hadn’t heard of, but it was talking about how Christians need to be willing to go after even him for salvation, and who is going to go after the lost people in our lives? It ends with a short open letter to him, too. When I saw that article, I knew I wanted to write this letter, but I still spent a lot of time praying about it and then overthinking a lot of the writing. I rewrote it once after reading it to my mom and she told me it would be good for anybody, but I didn’t want that because I didn’t want it to sound generic. I wanted it to be personable, like I was writing it specifically for this person because I was; I wasn’t sending a mass amount of letters to people in their situation just hoping they’d all be saved—although that isn’t a bad idea. But for the time being, I really wanted to reach this person and let them know I sincerely cared about them and that God does even more than me, not that I was just doing it out of some Christian duty.

After I rewrote it, I liked it much better, and I knew I couldn’t overthink it, either. I’d carefully chosen Bible verses and themes I felt this person would most need to hear, as well as some themes from Christian songs I found applicable. My mom liked this letter, too. I kept praying about it, and I told the people at my church so they could pray about it as well, and they helped me with some of the logistics in sending it. By the time I mailed it, it was late fall.

A couple things about this letter that I was intentional about: I wrote it anonymously, partly because of safety concerns but also because I wasn’t the point of it. This person didn’t know me at all, and it didn’t matter that I was the one telling them; I just wanted them to hear about Jesus and know that somebody was praying for them. However, I did include an address on the letter—not mine—because if this person did have any questions about what I was saying or wanted to talk about God further, I wanted them to have that option. I wasn’t expecting a response back, but of course, deep down I know I wanted to hear back because I could know for sure they’d received it, and it would be the most ideal outcome if they wrote back and appreciated hearing about God because then I could know it meant something. I also made sure the letter didn’t get returned in case I’d formatted or addressed it wrong or they weren’t allowed to receive it. It never did come back so I assumed they got it.

In the months to come, something was happening in this situation where I felt like it would provide a chance for me to see if this person had absorbed anything the letter had said or if they’d been saved. It was also a chance to see if some of my prayers for the other people involved were being answered, too. Over the summer, I began following and reading several stories similar to this situation, and there were a couple testimonies, in particular, that were incredible—where God had healed and saved everyone involved in situations like these. I had been praying constantly for that to happen in this situation. I felt like Paul caring for his churches—like this was the situation God had given me people to pray over. I’d spent literally hours praying for these people, and about a week before this development, I felt like I’d received a “sign” in a Karen Kingsbury book I was reading. It was one of hers I’d read a long time ago, but I was going back and buying all the books in this series and re-reading them again. There was a situation very similar in this book I was reading that I’d forgotten all about, and when I read that, it seemed like such a coincidence, especially because the character was described just like the person I wrote the letter to. I felt like that was even more confirmation from God that I’d done the right thing and He was working in this person’s life.

A week later, I anxiously awaited updates for what had unfolded in the situation, and that night, when I got home from school, I was devastated. The person I’d written the letter to didn’t seem any different like it had made any impact on them. My prayers had clearly not been answered based on the behavior of the other people involved. All around, it felt like I had gotten the exact opposite of what I prayed for, which is something I thought God said He wouldn’t let happen (see Matthew 7:7-11).

I started thinking back on everything and wondering where I’d gone wrong. I really thought I’d had the right motives. I’d felt a deep need in my spirit that this person needed to be reminded or told for the first time about God’s redemptive salvation, and that was my only intent in writing them a letter. I hadn’t wanted to do it for myself, even though of course I would have loved to hear about it having an awesome impact. I never did get a response in the weeks to come, and I made my peace with it. I was definitely curious and prayed that they got it, but it was out of my hands, and I knew I’d asked God to do with it as He wanted. But I didn’t understand why God would lay this person and situation on my heart if He didn’t plan on working in them, and it hurt. It hurt not because I expected anything from this person at all but because it felt like a slap in the face from God. It felt like I’d read Him all wrong, and here I was so excited, believing I was doing this great work to honor Him that He’d opened every door for, only to find out I’d read it all wrong, I thought.

I’d read all the books this fall. I prayed believing, and I prayed constantly like He says in Matthew 7:7. I felt like He’d shown me so many things that said this was His will. It just didn’t make any sense, and it broke my heart, because this situation that was already so sad seemed to have ended even worse. And I really believed it wasn’t going to.

It was around Christmastime by this point, and I remember that night, our church was having its candlelight Christmas service in the evening. My poor mom always had the pleasure of listening to me when I was hysterical, and I think I cried all the way over there because I remember still being emotional even when we were there. I remember we talked to one of the ladies in our Bible study, and she was so understanding and empathetic about it, and I remember even to this day how she told me the Word of God never returns void and how that might come back to them further down the line.

I did eventually heal and move on as the months went by. I was very upset with God and how much it disappointed me, and He let me bring all my doubts to Him. A couple days later, He did bring me some more understanding as I realized, like with many of the things in my life, the story isn’t over yet. I don’t think any of my prayers had been wrong, and I do still believe it is God’s desire to redeem this situation and that one day, He will. But a lot of times when we pray for things, it’s not always a matter of being “wrong” but perhaps not having the right timing. It had been not even two full months between the time I mailed this letter and the time this development occurred. That’s actually not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, especially for someone to completely change their life.

I think it’s really easy to compare to the results of things without taking into account the journey it takes to get there. Even when I was feeling bad about people in my church seeing all these guys in the prisons being saved, you don’t know what or how long it took for them to get there. You don’t know how many seeds had to be planted and watered before they made that decision. And sure, maybe for some of them, it didn’t take long. I look at Paul’s life—the apostle I told this person about most in the letter—and how for him, his world was turned upside down in a day where he went from being a murderer of Christians to one of God’s most anointed followers, but I think those cases are the exception and not the rule. God can and does save people like that, but probably for most people, it takes a lot of time, a lot of seeds, and a lot of watering. I certainly didn’t get to be where I am overnight. It took YEARS for me to become as serious in my faith as I am now, and it will take years for me to become even more serious. I realized that maybe some of the signs and encouragement God had given me wasn’t so much meant for this specific point in time as it was for the days and months and years to follow, to keep the faith even when I had no idea what He was doing.

I wish I could tell you this had a happy ending for everyone involved and for my minuscule role in it. The truth is that I haven’t heard anything. I do still pray for this person and everyone involved, and I do still pray that someday, somehow, God will use that letter and let me know how He did. That hasn’t happened yet, but I’m not losing faith that it never will. I know 13-year-old me probably would have jumped off a cliff had she known she still wouldn’t learn anything seven years later, but you can’t think like that. I remember a Desiring God article talking about that when it comes to being persistent in prayer—you can’t worry about how long it’s going to take God to answer; you just have to live one day at a time and keep trusting and persevering.

The Mistakes I Made Assessing the Situation

We touched on it a little bit already, but the biggest mistake I made during this time is wanting to see God work on my schedule. Now, sometimes you need something by a specific time. I was praying that God would work this out before this time, but (to me) it looked like He didn’t. He doesn’t have to do the things we ask, and that is one of the hardest pills to swallow, even though it seems so obvious because we know (or we say we know) He’s not a genie. A big part of what made this so confusing and heartbreaking for me was that I didn’t think I was praying for something selfish; it would make no impact on me personally whatsoever how this situation and person ended up, except I might be overjoyed if God did work through it. And I thought He wanted everyone to be saved, that this would be something in line with His will.

Well, it was. It is His will to save people; however, one of the hardest truths as a Christian is to know not everyone will be. I’m not making any assumptions about this person and their eternal destiny—I really do believe they will be saved someday, if they haven’t been already (I seriously wouldn’t know). It was hard for me to learn that just because something is God’s will in the sense that He desires it doesn’t mean He’s going to allow it to happen. That sounds really confusing and gets into the whole predestination thing, which I don’t really want to cover right now, but it can be summed up in this Bible verse: “‘For many are invited, but few are chosen'” (Matthew 22:14 NIV), and 2 Timothy 2:4 says God desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

To make it even simpler than that, God does want everyone to be saved, but the reason they’re not is because He gives us free will. He must open up our eyes and begin His work of salvation in our heart, but we still make choices, including hardening our heart against Him. He already knows everyone who will be saved because He knows all things, but just because He knows doesn’t negate the work we need to do as Christians in reaching out to the lost because we don’t know who’s going to end up being saved, and it may be our influence that God uses to save someone. I can go deeper into this if you still have questions—don’t hesitate to let me know; it was Desiring God’s website that introduced me to the topic of predestination and its complexity, and it was John Piper’s book on this topic that helped me somewhat grasp it. To be clear, though, I didn’t read his entire book; I literally read the last page with the conclusion of the matter and thought that’ll work for the time being. 😂 I do want to go back and read his whole book, though.

So we’ve covered a couple things I did wrong: not having patience and realizing it may take a while for someone to be saved, but it doesn’t mean God won’t ever save them, and I had to realize that this person still has free will; God isn’t going to force them to be saved or do some sort of mind control on them. He does desire them to be saved, but it’s His job to open up their eyes and do that in His timing, and that person needs to be receptive.

Here’s the other big thing I didn’t learn until recently: I didn’t develop good enough boundaries. You can probably see where some of this is going or why I felt so passionate about this based on where I was at in life like I described in the beginning of the post. Even though I intellectually knew it wasn’t up to me to save this person, a big part of me hinged on the “success” of this outreach. It wasn’t even that I wanted to puff myself up and be like “oh look, I saved someone,” but rather, I knew the joy other Christians had when they got to be involved in seeing God’s work in people’s lives, and I knew that as a Christian, I am supposed to be influencing other people through my life and testimony.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is something that happened at the end of seventh grade right before this summer. I had two friends I was close to during this year: one had been my closest friend for years, and the other was a new friend I’d gotten to know through our sports and classes, and we’d really hit it off and become close. The friend I’d had longest had been an atheist for almost as long as I’d known her, but this other friend seemed open to faith and said she was a Christian or at least had been raised that way. She wasn’t actively “practicing,” if that’s what you want to call it, in the sense that she wasn’t involved with the things like church I was or really cared about pursuing God like I had been that I could see, but she was understanding about my relationship with God and never had any objections.

Flash forward to the end of the year: I was getting exhausted mentally. I am happy to have people in my life who are different from me, but when those are the only people I’m surrounded by with something as important to me as my faith, I was getting discouraged. Okay, this is all well and good, you’ve probably all heard this and then how I started distancing myself. What ended up happening is that these two friends I had became really good friends with each other, and I became out of the picture. I was fine with that because in a sense, it was my own fault. I had been trying to distance myself from them, so I couldn’t be mad that they were going off on their own. However, I’d still planned on keeping them as friends and not just cutting them out completely, but I could tell that was going to happen based on the nature of the dynamics.

It felt really bad to cut out a friend I’d had for years, even though I knew she was different from me and our differences were getting worse, not better, but I think part of me still had hoped some of my faith would eventually sink in. To make matters worse, one day I remember being told by her before we all stopped keeping in touch that my other friend no longer considered herself a Christian. I remember being surprised by that and pressed her for details, and then I ended up reaching out to this friend directly about it, and she sent me a lengthy text about why she wasn’t anymore, even though she probably never had been. I appreciated her text because it did shed light on her decision, and I appreciated her at least sharing her thoughts with me. I didn’t try to beg her to become a Christian or even ask any follow-up questions. I just thanked her for sharing that with me and told her to let me know if she ever had any questions or wanted to talk about things further.

But when that happened, it stung. I found it incredibly hard not to take it personally because all my life, I’d been following these sort of “famous Christians” who always had stories to tell about people being inspired by them and contacting them to let them know they’d given their life to Christ, and that had never happened to me. It wasn’t happening with people in my family, and now it wasn’t happening among my friends, and to drive it all home, I had now been friends with someone who at least thought of herself as a Christian before meeting me but after meeting me decided she no longer was. Not only did I feel like a failure for not having friends and being a normal teenager, I felt like I was failing in my faith and at the one thing God had called me to do.

I did share these feelings with my mom and I’m sure other people around me, and I know my mom was adamant that it wasn’t my fault and I couldn’t take it personally; plus, we knew this girl was probably not a Christian to begin with. I’m not saying that judgmentally; I’m saying that because I don’t think she’d ever made the decision to consciously follow Christ or decide what she actually believed in herself. There’s knowledge of Christianity, and then there’s actually being a Christian. I remember thinking that I want her to make a decision for or against God, too, and not be lukewarm about it because there are so many pretend Christians in the world who are trying to please both God and the world, but it inevitably ends up being the world with only the appearance of faith because there is no 10% or 30% or 50% surrender to God—it’s all or nothing. But I think subconsciously it still stayed with me, and that could have been a big reason not WHY I’d wrote this letter but in my disappointment afterward when I didn’t see what I wanted to see.

In fact, just this summer, I read a book that finally clarified some boundaries on this. Over the years, I did realize I’d gotten a little too emotionally “invested” in this, but we ARE supposed to grieve for the lost (Romans 9:2). My mistake, though, was in obsessing over it when it was no longer my “job” to control anything, and this is something we’re going to address in the next few headings because you have to learn you don’t have any control over someone’s salvation. It’s not up to you to bring that about—it’s between God and the individual. All you can do is continually pray and be a good witness, and that’s where I should’ve left things. Time did force me to let go and move on and not think about it so much, even though of course I still pray for and care about this person and always will because of this. But I don’t have that emotion stocked into it anymore.

The book I read was Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, which is a life-changing book and philosophy, especially for Christians who, unfortunately, have been taught a lot of mixed messages about healthy psychological boundaries by the church over the decades. Everyone needs to read this book. I’m going to do a whole post on it soon because that was actually one of my requests, and I wanted to talk about it anyway. One of the areas this book talked about was how even God sets boundaries with us. Though He calls us all to respond to Him in relationship and repentance, He does not live with the pain of our rejection forever—He lets us make our choices and calls other people who might be willing, which is what Jesus calls us to do, too (Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5—that’s repeated in three out of four Gospels, which makes it especially important). It’s not His desire for you to obsess over another person’s salvation or behavior; it’s out of your control—you’re not responsible for them. You can certainly grieve and process your emotions, but God doesn’t want you to stay in that place of obsession. He wants you to heal and let go. Obviously, this can be challenging when it’s someone you really love or care about, which brings me to the next point.

How Do You Surrender Your Desire for Someone You Love to Be Saved?

In short, you keep praying and don’t give up. It’s tough when it looks like they’re not changing, but you can’t control that; you must trust God and find your ultimate joy, satisfaction, and emotional needs through Him, which is something the Boundaries book distinguishes really well. Another reason I recommend this book is because a lot of Christian parents think it’s up to them to save their children or believe that the most successful thing they could do in life is have godly children. That’s a blessing, not a guarantee, though, and the belief that you find your worth and success as a parent or person from how well your kids do is something I vehemently reject.

I remember even in fifth grade, I had a teacher I loved and who I still think fondly of, but one time, she made a comment that said she believed the best thing you could do in life is have successful children. Again, I’m not arguing how rewarding that can be, but I think it’s still very worldly. Something I’ve even had to tell my mom and grandma (and note that obviously I don’t have children so maybe I don’t have the same perspective to view it with, but in a way I’m grateful for that because how I think now is how I still want to think when I have kids) is that your identity is not in your kids. They are their own people with the capacity to make their own choices. I am not doubting or minimizing the impact parents have on their children for better or worse, but I’ve even read secular psychology textbooks that say healing and behavioral choices are still up to the individual. You can’t control another person, and if you try to, it won’t end well. God doesn’t try to control us, even—He gives us free will to choose and lets the consequences follow. Do you think He takes it personally that most people aren’t saved? No, it’s their choice. It breaks His heart, but He will let them be who they choose to be. That doesn’t mean they’ll be free from the consequences, though.

I know my mom and grandma have both made comments to me about wanting their children to be saved and how my grandma’s mom believed that was the best thing to have as a successful mom, but again, you can’t place your worth in something that’s out of your control (which is something I need to have a major take-to-heart with since I do it with other things). Every godly parent prays for godly children to continue their legacy and heed their upbringing, but every person must make their own choice. Even David Jeremiah, one of my favorite pastors and Bible scholars, said that the commonly-cited verse in Proverbs about training your children in the way they should go and they won’t depart from it (Proverbs 22:6) is a parable meant to be more of a generalized observation. In other words, that is most likely what will happen, but it’s not a promise, kind of like the verse that says to obey your parents and live a long life. Obviously, not everyone who dies young rebelled against their parents, but it makes sense that kids who do live in rebellion and don’t heed instruction about anything would make choices that could result in an early death.

My mom, grandma, and I have also talked about some anxiety we have thinking about the end times, like if Jesus does come back in our lifetimes, and how they’re not quite ready for that because of unsaved people they know. I can definitely empathize with this, and I especially did during this season of my life, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized we have to trust Him and can’t make idols out of even good things. I’m sure it is easier for me since I don’t have kids to worry about yet, but I have other things I worry about if Jesus comes back soon—I want to have sex and be married before I die since that’s no longer going to be part of the new earth. But I’ve realized even with that, I can’t put those things ahead of God—even if I want them for Him. I have to trust His timing and plans. One of my favorite verses I share with Mom and Grandma about this is as follows:

“‘Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.'”

Matthew 10:37 NIV

I realize that might sound harsh, but it is the truth. It’s not to say God faults us for loving or grieving our lost children/family members—He loves them even more than you—but we have to remember He is Who we’re ultimately serving, living for, and made for. The following verse is also what I remind them of to encourage them:

“‘And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.'”

Matthew 19:29 NIV

I’ve read so many good things about how God will not be in debt to any man and even what we lose or give up for Him as sacrifices as thanks for His ultimate sacrifice will not go unrewarded by Him. Now, there’s one more point about this that ties in with the last heading and fear people may have about this.

How Do You Cope with Knowing Someone You Loved Has Died without Being Saved?

This is a loaded question to address and probably a Christian’s biggest fear. After all, we don’t need to fear death since we know our eternity is with Him, but what about those we love dying without salvation? There are a couple points to remember: (1) you don’t always know, even if common sense or most of what you saw suggests someone wasn’t saved. We have wonderful miracles of salvation throughout the Bible like the thief on the cross, who surrendered his life at the last few moments and still was saved (Luke 23:43), and (2) you have to trust that God will do what is right, especially when the circumstances seem a bit murky. The following verse is a great testament to this:

“‘Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?'”

Genesis 18:25B NIV

You have to trust in that and then not think about it beyond that. You must take all your grief, sorrow, and emotions about it to Him, who will bring about healing and peace. For more on this in depth, I want to stop here and instead link to another wonderful article from Desiring God that influenced and helped me a lot with this subject called “What Hope Can We Have for Lost Loved Ones?“

I really hope this post can inspire you and encourage you as embark on not only your faith journey but your evangelism journey. Since the road to heaven is narrow (Matthew 7:14), it’s unfortunate that many people we know and minister to will not be saved, but you never know the impact you might have nonetheless. Keep pressing on and having faith—something I need to remember, too, and actually what I want to end with is how what helped me the most in healing and moving on from this situation were several things God brought about in my life where I’d hear something from someone I wasn’t expecting about my impact. That happened numerous times over the years, and I began realizing that what I see is not always the whole truth of how things are. Remember that, too, and take heart.

I want to share one of my favorite John Piper quotes that was relevant when I talked about disappointment and what I think is relevant for this, too: “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.”