Based on Acts 16:31, can we ask God to save our household?

The Philippian jailer is one context. There you’ve got the head of the household who has come to faith in Christ.

I was brought up in a family that never went to church. My mother and father never went to church until after I was converted. I remember praying desperately the Lord would work in my father’s heart, and kind of complaining to Him after six months because He didn’t seem to be answering my prayers.

It was actually only years later when my dad started coming with me, and then my mom as well. It was only years later I actually discovered how He had been working in my family, and I just didn’t have the discernment to understand what He was doing. As a young Christian, I actually didn’t have the patience to wait. I was so desperate that they would experience what I had experienced.

I think it is a great thing to understand what happened in the fall, that one of the things the serpent was aiming at was the destruction of the family. He did that fairly successfully: Genesis 3, Adam and Eve falling out, and then Cain and Abel and the murder.

So it seems to me that what we should actually expect and therefore pray for, as God works the grace of salvation, is, as Herman Bavinck says, that the rivers of grace will run through the dried up water beds of our fractured lives, and that God will be pleased not just to work in us as individuals but to work in us as families.

I was so desperate as a fifteen-year-old that she would know the Lord, and among my mother’s last words were, “I am trusting the Lord.” If this is a young person, do continue to be patient and look to the Lord to restore your family to Christ.

This transcript is from a live Ask Ligonier event with Sinclair Ferguson and has been lightly edited for readability. To ask Ligonier a biblical or theological question, email ask@ligonier.org or message us on Facebook or Twitter.