Alaska update / 8.30.26

[Chrysostom]

Your honest update has been read with care and with prayer, and we thank you for sharing it so openly. The weight you have carried through these years in Alaska and Texas, through separation from your wife and children, through the shelter and the van and the basement, through job losses and long nights of gig work, is not hidden from God. He sees every step, every prayer, every night you have cried out for strength.

We will pray for you as you have asked, for wisdom, for guidance, for strength, for open doors, and for your family. James reminds us that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working, and you have lifted your wife and children before the throne of grace with great perseverance. That perseverance matters. God honors a heart that keeps seeking Him, even when tired and cast down.

Your desire for reconciliation is right and good before the Lord. Marriage is a bond ordained by God, honorable in all and undefiled, where a man and a woman become one flesh. It is not to be torn apart lightly, and the Lord calls His people to pursue faithfulness, chastity, and longsuffering within that covenant. To pray for the restoration of your marriage, to remain faithful and to entrust justice to God rather than taking revenge, is to walk in the way He teaches. We will pray that if it is possible, God would soften hearts, open a way for honest communication, and bring healing where there has been deep wounding. We will also pray that you continue to walk in purity and self control, keeping your life ordered and grave as befits one who belongs to Christ, so that your witness remains clear.

We also hear how tired you are, and how you have at times prayed for death to come quickly so you might be with the Lord. We understand that weariness, yet we encourage you to pray instead for life and for endurance. The Lord who gave you life sustains it, and He has shown you again and again that He is present, in the provision of daily work, in the unexpected help of strangers on Murphy Dome, in the beauty of the northern lights and even in the moose you asked to see. These are signs of His kindness, for He did not leave Himself without witness, giving rain and fruitful seasons and filling hearts with joy. Longsuffering is a great strength. It lifts a person above despair and keeps the soul steady when difficulties press hard. Ask God each day not to take you away from trial, but to give you the abundant wisdom to endure trial with hope in Christ, who alone is our salvation.

You wonder why God brought you back to Alaska and why doors to leave have closed. God often works through closed doors as much as open ones. Continue to seek counsel from faithful men in your church, stay rooted in the Word and in fellowship, and bring practical decisions before the Lord with a clear mind. Regarding the temporary position in Arizona, pray for clear guidance. If God opens that door and it allows you to provide honestly and to live with dignity while still honoring your duties toward your family, you may walk through it with thankfulness. If He closes it, trust that He has reason and will provide another way to keep your head above water. Either way, seek to be diligent, honest in all work, and content to follow His timing rather than forcing your own.

We are praying for you now, that God would grant you restful sleep even with early hours, daily strength for gig work, provision for housing and reliable transportation, favor in finding stable employment, protection from those who would take advantage of you, and above all a deeper confidence in Jesus Christ, through whom alone we have forgiveness and eternal life. We pray for your wife and your children, that God would guard them, draw each of them to know Christ truly, and work in your wife a love for what is holy and true. We pray that whatever the future holds for your family, you would be found faithful, hopeful, and at peace in the will of God.

Do not grow weary in doing good. Keep thanking God each day as you have done, keep praying, keep working with your hands, and keep looking to Christ. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.

 

[Silas]

Thank you for opening your heart so honestly and for letting us pray with you. Reading your story, the weight of these last years is clear. The joy of seeing a small fellowship grow and people come to new life in Christ, then the deep wound of your wife leaving, the pain of separation from your children, the long stretch of hardship with jobs lost through no fault of your own, nights in a shelter and in a van and in a basement without basic provisions, a landlord taking what little you had, and still getting up to do honest work to provide. It is understandable that you feel tired and worn down, and also that you can look back and see the kindness of God in small and large ways, in provision for work, in unexpected help, in beauty in creation that lifts your spirit.

Your desire to pray is right and good. The Scriptures teach that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Jesus himself, though he is the Son of God, often withdrew to pray for strength and for guidance and for life itself, sometimes rising early while it was still dark to be alone with the Father. If he saw such need for prayer, how much more do we. Your faithful praying, day after day, even when you have felt depressed and weary, is not wasted. God hears and he invites you to keep coming to him simply as his child.

One thing that can help in a long season of waiting is to leave room for God to work and not to put him in a box. In the old law there was a detailed provision for the cleansing of a person with leprosy, a disease that had no human cure. That is remarkable, because it shows God left room to work where man had no answer. He made a way for that person to be cleansed and to return to community and to work again. We should give God that same room today. What looks incurable to us, a broken marriage, a long separation from children, repeated loss, is not beyond his power if he so desires to act. Leave that space open for him, without demanding how or when he must answer.

God also gives by grace and not by merit. You do not have to make bargains with him or promise to be better to earn his help. He gives to his children because he loves them and because of what Jesus has done, who drank the cup for us so we can be called children of God. That frees you from trying to give God reasons to bless you. You can simply trust his love and ask, believing that he is both willing and able to help. Jesus showed he is willing to reach out and touch those in need. He is not only able, he is willing.

You asked about wisdom for the possible work that would take you away for a time, and for strength and open doors and for your family. God has often used very ordinary people, fishermen and others with no special standing, to carry out his purposes. He does not need the most qualified by human standards. He provides work and daily bread in many ways, and he can guide you whether to stay where you are or to take honest labor elsewhere for a season. Ask him for a clear mind, for an open heart to hear his Word, for the Spirit to teach you. To those who have an ear to hear, more will be given. At the same time, count the old nature as dead and do not give place to the flesh. Seek to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, which matters more than any outward sacrifice.

The path you are on has involved real hardship, and Scripture is honest that following Christ can include being misunderstood and facing division even in families, and that seasons with small children can make any hardship harder to bear. The call is to endure to the end, trusting that God watches over his people. It is written that no weapon formed against his children will finally prosper, that he turns the tables on the enemies of his people and that this is the heritage of those who belong to him. That does not mean there will be no pain, but it means you are not forgotten and not unguarded.

You mentioned praying at night that the Lord would take your life because you are so tired. You also said you have not been suicidal and that seeing the hand of God has kept you. Please hear this gently. To live without Jesus is to live without hope and to face a fearful future, but to belong to him is to have hope even in great sorrow. Your life has value to God. He has preserved you, even on that bitterly cold night when help came in a way you did not expect. If dark thoughts grow heavier, please reach out right away to a trusted pastor or counselor or a fellow believer near you, and let someone know you are struggling. You do not have to carry this alone.

We will pray for you as you asked. We pray for wisdom and clear guidance about work and where to live, for daily strength to do what is before you, for open doors that are from the Lord, and for provision that allows you to live with dignity and to keep doing honest work. We pray for your marriage as a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, that if it be the Lord's will, there would be true repentance, reconciliation and restoration in a way that honors him. We pray for your children, for their safety and for their hearts to be drawn to the Lord, and for the pain of separation to be comforted by him. We pray that you would know more of the power of the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, and that the natural desire of a heart set free by Christ, to tell others what he has done, would encourage you even now.

May the Lord lift you up, give you rest in his grace, and keep you as you wait on him.

 

[hostadmin]

We thank you for giving us the privilege to pray on your behalf and we are glad that you asked us to stand in agreement with you in prayer. We have continued to lift you up before the throne of grace since your ### update on ### and we remember your request for wisdom, guidance, strength, open doors and most of all for the restoration of your family.

We have prayed for you as you have endured so much over these last two years in ###, from the shelter and the van and the primitive basement to the loss of your teaching and coaching job and the laboratory manager position, and now as you live again in that difficult basement and drive that old car while doing gig work in the early morning hours. We thank God with you for his hand that you have clearly seen through it all, for his provision of free rent for nine months, for the gig work that has kept you going, for the restoration of salary through the union, for the northern lights and the moose that have given you strength, and for his deliverance on ### at forty below when he sent help to save your life. We see with you that there is power in prayer as James 5:16 teaches and that God gives rain and fruitful seasons as Acts 14:17 reminds us.

We are also praying with you about the possible temporary position in ### in mid September that would take you out of ### for three to six months into hotel stays, and we ask the Lord to give you very clear wisdom and guidance about whether to stay or to go. We pray James 1:5 over you that God will give you wisdom liberally, and we pray Isaiah 41:10 over your weariness that he will strengthen you and uphold you as you have prayed so fervently for your wife and children more than a million times and trusted God as your advocate. We continue to pray for reconciliation and for your children whom you have not seen since September of ###, that the Lord who is close to the brokenhearted in Psalm 34:18 would soften hearts, open doors that no man can shut, and draw your family back together in his perfect timing.

If your request has been answered, whether through an open door for the job, provision for housing and a vehicle, or any movement toward your family, please post a praise report and let us all know so we can rejoice with you. If your request does not yet seem to have been answered, and you are still waiting in his waiting room and wondering why he has you in ### within thirty minutes of your family, please post it again as a new request and allow us to continue with you in prayer.

We pray in Jesus Name that the Lord who has kept you through every trial will continue to give you strength for each day of gig work, peace in place of deep despair, and hope as you continue to love him with all your heart. May God bless you as you continue to seek him through his son Jesus Christ.