Silas
Beloved of All
The hurt you are describing is deep and exhausting, to love someone who says God has ruined her life, who pushes away kindness and answers help with harshness, even when a mother is gently serving her. It is painful to be figuratively spit upon while you are trying to do good, and it is right to bring that pain to the Lord.
A fallen heart cannot on its own see the love of God. When life has included disability from birth and a troubled mind that has grown more difficult, and when desires for marriage and a life of pleasure feel unmet, it is understandable that a person would blame God. Scripture teaches that God holds life in His hands and numbers our days, yet He is not the author of evil. We live in a fallen world where bodies and minds are affected, and the bitterness that grows from that can blind a person to who God really is. God has not left us to guess about His love. He has shown it sufficiently in one place, in Jesus Christ giving Himself for us. We love Him because He first loved us. Until a person comes to know that love in Christ, she cannot truly respond to it, and she will interpret even hardship as proof that God is against her. Your family member going through religious motions to check a box reflects that same blindness. She does not yet know the grace she would be responding to.
Nothing is stopping God from bringing a breakthrough. His work does not depend on our ability to figure it out or to force it to happen. His thoughts and His foreknowledge are far above ours, and we cannot think as He thinks. What He has purposed will come to pass. He is not held back by a disturbed mind or a hard heart, and He is not dependent on our scheming or our perfect efforts to get His work done. We do not have to connive or manipulate to make God act, and we should not try to make ourselves the initiators with God as the responder, as if we must fast or praise or give in order to get Him to move. The gospel is the opposite. God is the initiator. He has already loved and given and provided in Christ. We are the responders. When you continue to show kindness, you are responding to the grace you have already received, not trying to purchase a response from God.
God sees affliction and He hears the cry of His people, and He has come to help. That is true for your family today as it was for His people in Egypt. He is also merciful and patient. As in the days of Noah, He preached righteousness and gave ample time to turn, and He is still gracious to those who will repent and seek Him. His judgment is fair, but He delights to show mercy. He has been faithful to keep every word He has spoken across all of human history, and not one word of His has failed. You can trust His character and His timing even when you cannot understand His ways.
How then do you respond as Christians in the home. First, return to the place where you first met God. When Jacob's family was falling apart, with sin and strife and fear all around him, God called him back to Bethel, back to the place of his first encounter with the Lord, and told him to put away foreign gods from his household. For you that means examining your own hearts before the Lord, confessing any idols or bitterness you may be holding, and dwelling again in simple devotion to Him. God responds to a heart that turns to Him in that way, even bringing His own protection and peace over a household that seeks Him.
Second, do not repay unkindness with unkindness, and do not try to force change through deception or pressure. The work of God is never dependent on that. Continue to treat one another as family in Christ, with the respect Scripture calls for, honoring older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, with purity and patience. That does not mean accepting abuse without boundaries. It means speaking truth calmly, setting limits on harmful speech and behavior, and continuing to do good without boasting or seeking to be seen. Your service, like caring for her hair or other daily needs, is valuable when it flows freely as a response to God's love for you, not as a transaction to make God act.
Third, pray. Even a man who had failed was called to pray and God brought healing through that prayer. Bring your family member before the Lord regularly, asking that He would open her eyes to see His love in Christ, to understand that salvation is through Jesus alone, and that true joy and even the good gift of marriage, which God designed as a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman with purity belonging inside it, are found in His way, not outside it. Pray that she would see that a life lived apart from Him is not freedom or fun, but emptiness, and that life with Him is where wholeness is found, whether He grants marriage or calls her to serve Him in singleness.
You may not see immediate change, and that is not because God is unable or unwilling. He is able to do His work independently of us, yet He invites us to be instruments in His hands, and there is blessing and reward in being available to Him. Even if she continues to resist, God's purposes will not fail. Your calling is to remain faithful, to keep responding to the love you have received at the cross, and to trust the One who sees, who hears, and who keeps every promise.
A fallen heart cannot on its own see the love of God. When life has included disability from birth and a troubled mind that has grown more difficult, and when desires for marriage and a life of pleasure feel unmet, it is understandable that a person would blame God. Scripture teaches that God holds life in His hands and numbers our days, yet He is not the author of evil. We live in a fallen world where bodies and minds are affected, and the bitterness that grows from that can blind a person to who God really is. God has not left us to guess about His love. He has shown it sufficiently in one place, in Jesus Christ giving Himself for us. We love Him because He first loved us. Until a person comes to know that love in Christ, she cannot truly respond to it, and she will interpret even hardship as proof that God is against her. Your family member going through religious motions to check a box reflects that same blindness. She does not yet know the grace she would be responding to.
Nothing is stopping God from bringing a breakthrough. His work does not depend on our ability to figure it out or to force it to happen. His thoughts and His foreknowledge are far above ours, and we cannot think as He thinks. What He has purposed will come to pass. He is not held back by a disturbed mind or a hard heart, and He is not dependent on our scheming or our perfect efforts to get His work done. We do not have to connive or manipulate to make God act, and we should not try to make ourselves the initiators with God as the responder, as if we must fast or praise or give in order to get Him to move. The gospel is the opposite. God is the initiator. He has already loved and given and provided in Christ. We are the responders. When you continue to show kindness, you are responding to the grace you have already received, not trying to purchase a response from God.
God sees affliction and He hears the cry of His people, and He has come to help. That is true for your family today as it was for His people in Egypt. He is also merciful and patient. As in the days of Noah, He preached righteousness and gave ample time to turn, and He is still gracious to those who will repent and seek Him. His judgment is fair, but He delights to show mercy. He has been faithful to keep every word He has spoken across all of human history, and not one word of His has failed. You can trust His character and His timing even when you cannot understand His ways.
How then do you respond as Christians in the home. First, return to the place where you first met God. When Jacob's family was falling apart, with sin and strife and fear all around him, God called him back to Bethel, back to the place of his first encounter with the Lord, and told him to put away foreign gods from his household. For you that means examining your own hearts before the Lord, confessing any idols or bitterness you may be holding, and dwelling again in simple devotion to Him. God responds to a heart that turns to Him in that way, even bringing His own protection and peace over a household that seeks Him.
Second, do not repay unkindness with unkindness, and do not try to force change through deception or pressure. The work of God is never dependent on that. Continue to treat one another as family in Christ, with the respect Scripture calls for, honoring older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, with purity and patience. That does not mean accepting abuse without boundaries. It means speaking truth calmly, setting limits on harmful speech and behavior, and continuing to do good without boasting or seeking to be seen. Your service, like caring for her hair or other daily needs, is valuable when it flows freely as a response to God's love for you, not as a transaction to make God act.
Third, pray. Even a man who had failed was called to pray and God brought healing through that prayer. Bring your family member before the Lord regularly, asking that He would open her eyes to see His love in Christ, to understand that salvation is through Jesus alone, and that true joy and even the good gift of marriage, which God designed as a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman with purity belonging inside it, are found in His way, not outside it. Pray that she would see that a life lived apart from Him is not freedom or fun, but emptiness, and that life with Him is where wholeness is found, whether He grants marriage or calls her to serve Him in singleness.
You may not see immediate change, and that is not because God is unable or unwilling. He is able to do His work independently of us, yet He invites us to be instruments in His hands, and there is blessing and reward in being available to Him. Even if she continues to resist, God's purposes will not fail. Your calling is to remain faithful, to keep responding to the love you have received at the cross, and to trust the One who sees, who hears, and who keeps every promise.
