Praise God for Covid-19

A Hard Word to a Dying Father

You know, most of my family and most of my wife's family are not saved and we're not, we don't hold back. We share with our family members, maybe more harshly than we should at times. But my dad has always been over at my house, I mean, two, three days a week for dinner, just he lives right on the corner.

We've had a great relationship over the years and great with our son, who's now 13 years old. Well, we've witnessed it, my dad for years, and he's one of those guys who's always had head knowledge, but no repentance.

I mean, just continue to live his life. He's had it all in life. And so we've always prayed for him. We've witnessed to him. I know Andrew, as you've been at the house many times here, you've witnessed to my dad as well, and other people have.

And he gives the same old answers, right? Well, my dad went into the hospital back in November. He was diagnosed with double lung pneumonia. And unfortunately, rather than figuring out what type of pneumonia he had, they just assumed it was COVID.

They threw him in a COVID unit, got COVID, and he ended up, didn't even die of COVID. COVID went away, ended up dying of double lung pneumonia that they couldn't figure out and fix. Horrible diagnosis in doing all that.

Conviction in the Hospital Bed

Having said all that, when my dad first went in, we all assumed my dad, healthy 67-year-old, was going to come out in a few days. So when he went into the hospital, I don't know, second, third day in, I said, my dad was complaining that he was having a hard time breathing.

He was on a full oxygen mask, and the meds they were using just to sedate him weren't really working. And so I said, you know, dad, you think breathing now is hard. Wait till you see what hell is like.

Pretty harsh, right? That's the soft way of saying it, huh? You know, sometimes you got to just throw it out there, right? But you know, we were all thinking he's going to get out of the hospital here in a few days.

My brothers were critical of me. My mom was critical of me, even though they had been divorced for the last, I don't know, 15, 16 years now. And so I toned it down. I just continued to give Bible verses every day to my dad and encourage him and whatnot as my dad's getting worse.

So on day eight of my dad's hospitalization, I asked, I texted him, asked him what he needed to do with work. I said, you know, even when you get out of here, it's going to take you weeks of recovery before you can go back to work.

And my dad's response was this. I don't care about work. I had hours of reflecting on my life and what's important. I asked God to forgive my sins and to follow him. He's my savior. My dad proceeded that with saying that in his time thinking, that's everything that we've told him he recognizes is now true.

And that was stunning to me. But of course, you know, in my mind, I'm like, okay, is this really true? Or is he just saying this because he's laying helpless in a hospital bed for eight days? You know, a guy who's unbelievably strong and healthy, right?

Well, I asked my dad what it meant to be forgiven. How do you know you're forgiven? And he said, pray, pray for his forgiveness. I'm learning. He knows what I mean in my heart. And I cried at the same time.

I'm like, wow, that's pretty amazing. On day 12, my dad showed fruit of salvation. So four days later, he sent a text to my youngest brother who is closest with our mom. Again, they divorced 15 some years ago after 30 plus years of marriage.

He said, Domenico, tell your mom I need her to forgive me for how I treated her all those years. To this day, I can't figure out why. None was her fault. I asked God to forgive me also and wash my sin and I will follow him as my savior.

Absolutely amazing for me to get to read that text. I called my dad. So, you know, my dad was on oxygen a lot. He could barely speak because anytime he took the oxygen off, his lung capacity was dropping.

But I called him right after that. And as he answered the phone, he could barely mutter out a word. But in the background, he had Psalm 23. I don't know how he got it there. But Psalm 23 was playing in the background on this never-ending loop with two other Psalms.

And it was absolutely amazing to me. My dad ended up just a few days later having to get sedated because the oxygen wasn't working so well. They ended up putting a ventilator on him, which, you know, they have to drug you and essentially knock you out for.

And so, my dad literally repented and came to Christ just a few days before he was knocked out. And that was the last time that we've been able to communicate with him at all. He ended up dying on January 9th.

He lasted a long time on the ventilator. Times that he would slightly get better and then he would get worse. A little bit better and a little bit worse. And it just trended down the whole time until he passed.

Choosing Christ Over Loss

But, you know, hey, it's bittersweet. We were really close with my dad. But I've said to many people that I would give anything for my dad to be in heaven and die today rather than him live another 20 years and go to hell.

And I prayed for years that God would do whatever he had to do to my family members to bring him to repentance. And, you know, it took God to put my dad on his deathbed after all that time, who, as Andrew knows, was wealthy and headstrong.

And God put him exactly where he needed to to bring him to repentance and faith. You know, it's like Humble Clay said here,.

Don't give up, never give up. And, you know, Nicholas in the private chat is saying, thanks for sharing, Anthony. This is how I've been praying for my family. He earlier said, my eyes are fighting back tears right now.

I've shared the gospel with Anthony's father. I've shared the gospel with his father-in-law. Both men were hard to share the gospel with. Clearly, they heard it before, before I got there for sure. But this is the thing I want to leave as a parting encouragement.

We can sit and look at all the things that have been taken away from us this the last 12 months, or we can choose to look at what Christ is doing in the last 12 months. And that's the perspective I want to leave you guys with.

Just to think about, we're going to move into a period where many of us think that it's going to be a very dark time. Yeah, I do. But the one thing I would say is this, you choose what you're going to do.

Are you going to focus on what you've lost out on? What you don't have anymore? The comforts you want to have? Or are you going to focus on what Christ is doing here on earth?