Dear one, trials aren't traps. God is not throwing traps before our feet, and He's not looking for us to win or lose. He doesn't throw a curve ball to someone whose arms are broken. We are built upon our failures by God's strength. The purpose of all trials God allows for us, is to strengthen us in Him, not to doom us. We're not meant to ace the tests without worry. We're meant to struggle with them. We're meant to learn from them. If we want to get stronger, we must get to know our weakness, to actually be weak, and we must get to know our need for Him.
So if you feel like you're weak, and if you feel like you can't pass the test, if you feel helpless and you're clinging on to God with whatever hope you have, you have already passed the test, just as He knew you would. You just don't know it yet. Everything God does to us, is according to His own love. You must know that it's all in love. If we are corrected and chastised, that too happens in love. If we are disciplined, love is behind it. There is no need to worry so much, because God absolutely knows what He is doing. If anyone knows, it's God, Christ and nobody else. We can surrender our struggles to Him who already knows what is happening with and within us.
The strength we get from God literally means the strength of God, not ours. If we count upon our own strength, we will soon find out we don't have enough. Whatever strength of character we have, how much stronger we get, we must realize all of that is from Him. It was His strength all along. So even if we are weak, we are, in fact, strong. His strength upholds us, and everything else, no matter what our feelings tell us.
About your parents, dear brother, you can give them to God as well. Remember when Jesus told the parable:
Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
I love this parable, because the one who is knocking and asking, doesn't really want anything for himself, he wants bread for other people. And we all know Jesus is the bread of life, and it is promised that even the Holy Spirit can be a matter of just asking, praying and knocking. We have also read that an unbelieving husband is sanctified by his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by her husband, which is an indication that God's grace doesn't stop at us, it's not just for us, and what we get will also be for the benefit of our loved ones. We have also read in at least a couple of passages, that some early christians baptized themselves for the dead ones, so that people wouldn't lose hope for their "unsaved" loved ones who passed away - and they are comforted. We have also read that Jesus Christ Himself preached to the evil people who died in the times of Noah. We have also read that anything we ask in Jesus' name, will be given to us. And what better thing could we pray for, than to ask for His grace and salvation to the people we love, and even to the ones we don't? That is His will. We cannot pray for better things.
Then, we can also read this:
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Brother Yusuphhai, the love of Christ surpasses all knowledge. Pray for your parents, believe that the good will of God will be done to them, and it will happen, no matter what you feel, see or hear. Don't worry about them not being intellectually convinced. Faith is not a mathematical equation, and we cannot know the measure of God's workings. If you want further encouragement, remember when Christ said, that when there are two or more people praying in His name, they would get what they desire? So here we are, all of us here, praying for the same thing, in the name of Jesus Christ, that you would have peace, your parents would have the grace of God in whatever way God sees is good, and in the end we would all see how gracious God really is, how he doesn't let any love go to waste.
We can pray for this, and all good things, with shameless audacity. Bold, shameless audacity, that compels us to hope that God could be so good. We won't be given stones, scorpions or snakes. Our God delights to give good things, especially good spiritual things. He delights in it, and He delights in us when we ask for them.
Don't judge the heart of God by your depressed and anxious feelings. Those feelings are yours, not His. His heart isn't struggling like yours is. This is what His heart is like: when we were at our worst, when we were nothing but sinners, He gave us His Son, so that we wouldn't have to despair. We gave Him nothing but contempt, and what did He do? He gave us the most precious thing, Jesus Christ. What did Jesus Christ do when we were killing Him? He prayed for us, and then He died for the ungodly. Christ died for the ungodly. Here we can see the heart of God and what it is like.
Please know that I struggle with this too, I've been struggling with it for years. But I am a fool if I think that God is contained in my ill feelings. If my heart is ill or struggling with unbelief and despair, God isn't changed by any of that. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever. The same Christ, who came for the sinners, prayed for the ones killing Him, and died for the ungodly. He's the same. A true rock, immovable. Today, my mood may be good. Tomorrow, I can have despair. But it doesn't matter. Because He does not change. This is why I must separate my ill heart from the heart of God, which is not ill. Whatever I experience, be it doubt, anxiety, despair - it cannot undo what God is, it cannot undo what He did, it cannot undo what He does, it cannot unpromise what He has promised. The winds can blow and toss me around, but the rock of Christ will not be moved. It will not be moved.
Christ be with you all, and He certainly is.
