June Chapman, a business professional in the greater Washington, D.C., area, has recently published her first book, Peace in the Waiting: When You Love People Who Don’t Love God. In it, Ms Chapman recognises the heartache believers feel over friends and family who don’t share their faith.“I felt that this book topic was important since I know how painful it can be when believers love people who don’t love the Lord. We live with this painful uncertainty of where they might be spending eternity. It’s so wonderful to know that there are people who prioritise this concern,” June Chapman explained.
Reach
Ms Chapman points out that believers often overestimate the power of their words to convert others and underestimate the power of prayer. She believes that the true transformation of hearts is beyond human control and lies only with God: “We might want to be the instrument that He uses to reach them, but He could be using a million different circumstances that we can’t see and can’t understand. And we might not even know how to reach that person’s heart. He might not need us to strive and manipulate circumstances or situations to reach these people. He loves our service, but He wants our hearts more. We can become so focused on salvation that we make salvation an idol in our lives, or even start worshipping salvation more than we’re worshipping the salvation giver.”
God works in mysterious and miraculous ways, and so we get to rest and trust in His timing and His plan, knowing that He won’t be a moment too late”
Ms Chapman underscores that God’s desire is for believers to walk in freedom and not be burdened by responsibilities they were never meant to carry: “Salvation belongs to the Lord, and it is a gift from God, not a result of human effort, as we see in the scriptures.” The author said, “God wants to set us free from all the brokenness that comes with our walk in this sinful world. He desires that we would walk in freedom and not be burdened by these yokes of our own brokenness or our own slavery because He doesn’t want us to bear the burden of responsibilities that we were never meant to carry. I
t’s so important to remember that we don’t save anybody. Only the Lord can save someone. Our actions will never be able to save someone or change someone’s mind unless the Lord has willed that they are ready.”
In her book, Ms Chapman encourages believers to embrace the freedom God offers, which can liberate them from fears, worries, and anxieties that might otherwise lead them to be self-focused: “Love without freedom isn’t love at all. It’s just control. Our Father doesn’t intend to control or manipulate us. He desires the closeness of a relationship governed by genuine interest, love, and free will.” This freedom, the author told this paper “allows them to serve others more authentically, creating deeper relationships without imposing unrealistic expectations.”
For Ms Chapman, the ultimate responsibility of believers is to be obedient to God’s word and to glorify Him above all else, trusting that He knows the hearts of their loved ones better than they do. June Chapman said: “We don’t want to hinder God’s work more than we help it. A hard truth to sometimes accept is that He knows them so much better than we know them. He knows what they need, and He formed them in their mother’s womb, created in His image. We are all God’s image bearers. And so, He can powerfully pursue them in ways that we can’t plan or expect or understand. God works in mysterious and miraculous ways, and so we get to rest and trust in His timing and His plan, knowing that He won’t be a moment too late.”
Freedom
During the conversation with the paper, the author draw on the example of Jesus, who experienced human suffering and sorrow, to illustrate that He understands the pain believers feel: “Jesus, on Earth, as man, He suffered and felt sorrow, and He even had to get down on His knees and grieve and pray and cry out to the Lord. He knows what we’re going through, and He understands sorrow and He understands grief and He understands love. When we care so deeply about someone or about someone’s soul, it’s easy to focus on our own pain and get distracted by our own efforts rather than trusting and waiting for God. In my book, I try to examine all the barriers that we run up against, all the questions and all the thoughts we examine and tie it back to how we reframe our mindset around God’s mercies. I think focusing on His mercies in our lives is so important. We tend to think so much about ourselves and about our friends. And those are good motivations. It’s good to be concerned about the souls of the people we love. This is so important because it’s exactly what we want for our loved ones.”
Ms Chapman invites readers to embrace the freedom that comes from leaving their concerns in God’s hands and allowing Him to guide their actions and words: “When we can walk into this freedom that Christ has already offered us, we can be freed from our fears, our worries, our personal orchestration and even our anxieties. Instead of being servant hearts, we want to love our friends and our family well. We want to do it in a way that just focuses on our depth of relationship with them and our service toward them, rather than what we need from them.” June Chapman considers that freedom and trust are two sides of the same coin: “We become truly free when we live in God’s hands and when we choose that He is going to be the one behind our actions and our words. God has absolutely commanded us to go and make disciples, and He’s told us that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. We know how important that is in salvation, and we know that He’s commanded us to share the truth with other people. But we can pray, and we can pray for guidance for when sharing is fruitful, we can pray that the Spirit would lead us to share when He wills us to, we can pray for opportunities to share, and we can engage in conversations about our faith all the time.”
If we don’t know the truth, then we can’t make thoughts obedient to it. And the truth is found in the word”
Ms Chapman explains that wisdom comes from the Lord and that believers must immerse themselves in His word to take their anxious thoughts captive and replace them with truth: “Wisdom comes from the Lord, and the Lord has left His word. It reminds me of 2 Corinthians 10:5. That verse says we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. If we don’t know the truth, then we can’t make thoughts obedient to it. And the truth is found in the word. So one of the ways that we replace those anxieties that we have over our loved ones with peace is that we take those thoughts captive and we replace them with truth.”
Prayer
Also, in her book, Ms Chapman repeatedly emphasises the importance of intercessory prayer. While human efforts may fall short, prayers brought before God hold immense power because of His ability to act upon them: “One of the best things that we can do for our lost friends and family is pray because prayer, in addition to bringing the names of these friends and family to God, inclines our will to God. We can pray, and we can open our hands and release control and submit these names and hearts back to God and know that our prayer before Him is so much more important than anything we would ever be able to do or to effectually change. We can find a lot of peace, also, in God’s creativity. No one that we know is outside the reach of a holy righteous God. He is unlimited in His power, in His merciful, loving kindness, and in His ability to save. And then leave the rest to Him to His creativity,” June Chapman continued, “Our prayers themselves won’t change things just like our efforts to convince our friends to convert won’t change their hearts, but when we take our prayers to God, our words hold weight because of who we’re bringing them to and not because of our own power but because of God’s power to carry out our prayers.
Prayer is the most powerful act of service believers can offer their non-Christian loved ones, a
s it aligns their will with God’s”
Prayers, like I have mentioned, also incline our hearts to God. This privilege of prayer is a grand merciful gift. Rather than expecting a clear-cut yes or no from God as an answer, through our prayers, God is inviting us to be involved in His pursuit of our lost friends and family. We get this divine privilege of knowing that God hears our prayers and that He is working in His mighty and mysterious ways. We have this opportunity to submit our will to God. God is inviting us into this communion with Him, into this relationship with Him, in our waiting and our prayers give us this opportunity to not only present our requests to Him, but to submit our will to His. They give us this absolute grand merciful privilege to wait for the salvation of our loved ones alongside God.”
Ms Chapman concludes that prayer is the most powerful act of service believers can offer their non-Christian loved ones, as it aligns their will with God’s and places trust in His boundless power: “Our prayers are perhaps the single greatest way that we can serve our lost friends and family. Pray without ceasing, and we get to lean into the fact that our observations and our power are so small and so finite.”
Only the Lord can save someone. Our actions will never be able to save someone or change someone’s mind unless the Lord has willed that they are ready”
Reassurance
In Peace in the Waiting, Ms Chapman offers a message of hope and encouragement for believers grappling with the spiritual state of their loved ones. She assures them that they are not alone in their waiting and that God loves their hearts and their concern for their friends and family: “God loves you, and He wants to meet you where you are. He doesn’t need you to be in a place of perfect trust before you approach Him for His mercy, and He doesn’t need you to be in a perfect place of surrender”.
By taking refuge in God and dwelling in His goodness, believers can find peace amidst the uncertainty surrounding their loved ones’ salvation”
Ultimately, Ms Chapman’s message is one of hope and trust. She urges believers to expect and look for God’s goodness, even when circumstances seem difficult. “God’s timing and methods may not align with human preferences, but His plans are always perfect. By taking refuge in God and dwelling in His goodness, believers can find peace amidst the uncertainty surrounding their loved ones’ salvation.”
Ms Chapman’s Peace in the Waiting is a call to trust in God’s sovereignty and goodness while actively engaging in prayer and maintaining a servant-hearted approach to relationships. Her book offers a compassionate perspective that seeks to comfort and guide believers through the often-painful experience of loving those who do not share their faith. The author’s message provides a path to peace through trust, prayer and a focus on God’s merciful and mysterious ways. Her insights offer encouragement to believers, reminding them that they are not alone in their journey and that God is always at work, even when it is not immediately apparent.