40 Years of Prayer:

As a child, I was told to pray a very specific prayer every day. My mom, with patience, love, and sincerity in her voice, often reminded me to pray for my grandparents (her parents) to become Christians. In my very first prayer journal, I wrote down this prayer along with a few more trivial requests. Next to each prayer, I wrote the day it was answered, but for a long time, “for 外婆 and 外公 to become Christians” had a blank next to it, waiting for the day the prayer would be answered. Over time, I grew skeptical that it could really be answered.

Both of my parents grew up in Malaysia. Although my mom’s family did not attend church, her parents allowed her (the eldest of six siblings) to attend kindergarten at a local Methodist church on their street, hoping that this would help her make friends. But God had even greater plans! Because my mom, and later her sisters, went to school there, they were also invited to attend Sunday School. Even when the family moved to a new house and the sisters could no longer walk to church, the church arranged for a car to pick them up so that they could still attend.

In their home, my grandparents worshiped their Buddhist idols, and their parents before them were also devout idol worshipers. As a child, I visited their home and wondered what the austere figurines on their mantel were. I didn’t fully understand at that time that, when my mother became a Christian, she broke the generational cycle of idol worship—which was why the idols that were familiar to her growing up were completely unfamiliar to me.

From the time my mother came to faith in the Lord Jesus in the 1970s, she prayed for her parents’ salvation. She and her siblings, who also were believers, witnessed to their parents and grandparents. My mom is a gentle woman, far from defiant, but when my grandmother tried to make her drink ashes and liquid that had been burned to idols, my mother refused. As she continued going to church, my grandfather made threats that he never acted on. When I asked her how she persevered despite these challenges, my mother stated that she “just had a desire to go to church” and that nothing could stop her. Since childhood, my mother has told me these stories of how she persevered in her faith despite her parents’ objections. They remain a source of inspiration for my life and ministry even today.

As the years went on, my mother continued attending church. Eventually, she met a mature, godly boy in her youth group who would become her future husband and my father. Even without Christian parents, my mother’s faith continued to deepen. When she wanted to get baptized, my grandparents told her she was not allowed to get baptized until she was 21. According to my father, this was her parents telling her it was okay to go to church, but they did not want her to get “too deep” into the Christian faith. When my mother turned 21, she told her parents that she was going to get baptized—and while they did not stop her, they did not attend the baptism themselves.

During the time my parents were dating, my father was preparing for pastoral ministry. Initially, my grandparents expressed concerns about the relationship, fearing that if Mother married a minister, she would have to provide for the family, because they would be poor. This was likely the result of others speaking ill of the pastoral profession. However, by the time my father proposed, they did not object and were even friendly toward him. On multiple occasions, my father shared the gospel with his future in-laws, but my grandfather “refused to listen.” Although my grandmother listened to the gospel and said, “the gospel is good,” she did not feel the time was right to accept the gospel and made excuses for why it was not the right time to come to Christ. It is possible that my grandparents felt it would upset their parents because becoming a Christian would mean no longer participating in ancestor worship.

During Mom’s high school years, she began giving piano lessons to students. It made an extremely profitable living for her. She even bought her own car, a bright orange vehicle that I’ve only ever seen in pictures. However, she gave up her lucrative career for my dad. In 1986, my parents married and answered God’s call to move to the United States so that my father could pursue further theological education and serve as a pastor. While my father served as a pastor, my mother served in various capacities in music ministry. In the 1990s, they had me, then my two brothers. When possible, we would visit our family members in Malaysia. Mom reminded me often that her parents were not believers and that we needed to pray for them. I’ve always been a realistic and pragmatic person, and I saw plainly how the odds were stacked against my grandparents ever becoming Christians. And my great-grandparents were idol worshipers, old, and probably set in their ways. I did not pray with nearly the same measure of faith my mother did. But her prayers were not wasted and were answered in God’s perfect timing.

The first breakthrough in my grandparents’ salvation journey did not come until February 2013, when I was already in college. My mother and her five siblings gathered in Malaysia for a Chinese New Year celebration. One sister suggested family worship, which was unprecedented. During the second family worship of that trip, my grandfather was interested and sat in the room observing, while my grandmother refused to join. My mother and her siblings used this as an opportunity to tell my grandfather that they believed in Jesus, which meant they were going to Heaven, and they asked him if he would like to go there with them. After decades of his children’s witness and testimonies, my grandfather was actually soft-hearted at this time but also afraid of what my grandmother would think. However, 10 months later, four of my mother’s siblings held another family worship, and this time, when asked whether he wanted to believe, my grandfather said he believed, even though my grandmother did not. Then in February 2014, my grandmother had the family’s Buddhist idols removed from their house, which was her way of expressing that she wanted to become a Christian. After 40 years of prayer, the miraculous had happened! Two idol worshipers who were completely against Christianity had placed their trust in Christ for their salvation. I could hardly believe it when my mother told me that my grandparents were going to be baptized!

At this point, I had not returned to Malaysia for more than 10 years. However, since I had just graduated from college, my mother asked if I wanted to go with her to witness my grandparents’ baptism. Eager and excited to see the fruit of her praying for four decades, we went on our international mother-daughter trip. Although there were many memorable moments from that trip, the one that touched my heart and has grown my faith the most was witnessing my grandparents’ baptism on December 6, 2015. My grandparents’ choice to get baptized truly was a miracle, considering they did not attend my mother’s baptism decades prior and were resistant to the gospel for most of their lives. In the very church where my parents met and my mother was baptized, my grandparents publicly declared their faith in Christ.

My grandfather passed into Glory on January 12, 2025, less than a year after he became a great-grandfather to my daughter. He had been ill for a while, and my mother was able to say her final goodbyes to him shortly before he passed away. My parents attended his funeral, and in a true display of his faith, his funeral was a Christian one. His tombstone is marked with two Scriptures, Psalm 23:6 and John 3:16.

In August 2025, my entire family went to Malaysia. This time, when I went to my grandmother’s home, the idols were not there. Instead, when I went to the kitchen, I found a simple sign that said, “God bless our home.” That Sunday, I revisited the church where I had witnessed my grandparents’ baptism with my family. After the service, even though I was not with my parents because I had been in the children’s room with my daughter, someone immediately recognized me as Pastor and Mrs. Lim’s daughter because of my resemblance to my mother. Teenage me might have been embarrassed to be called out like that, but instead, I was pleased that this person could see the image of my mother, a godly and prayerful woman, in me. After that, when we ate snacks with the other church members, I saw my grandmother sitting at a table, happily conversing with them. That simple scene flooded my heart with gratitude and amazement that after all those years of my mom praying and me praying alongside her, albeit less faithfully and fervently than her, our prayers had been answered in the best way imaginable. And when I visited my grandfather’s grave and saw his resting place for myself, my gratitude for God’s answered prayer was renewed.

My mother continues to be a godly example of what it means to pray without ceasing. She is soft-spoken and never wants to talk into a microphone. Even at my wedding, when the microphone was offered to her during the parents’ sharing portion of the program, she waved it away. But the way her faith speaks transcends words. Her godly, faithful example continues to be a blessing in my life. My prayer is that her story would inspire us all to pray without ceasing, especially for those we love who still do not believe in Jesus. It may take a few days, a few years, maybe even 40. But God hears our prayers, and my grandparents’ story and my mother’s faith are a reminder that He can do the impossible.

When I think about this testimony story, I am reminded of the words of one of my favorite hymns, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”:

What a friend we have in Jesus

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

Oh, what peace we often forfeit,

Oh, what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer!

Samantha Chao is the worship and praise minister at Hosanna Presbyterian Church in Carrollton, Texas, and an adjunct dissertation reader for California Baptist University. The details of this article came from interviews she conducted with her parents in 2022 for a class project.