Answer Prayers

[Chrysostom]

The tears of a grandmother are not wasted before the Lord. He sees your anguish and hears the cry of your heart for your grandson. It is right and good to plead, in the name of Jesus, that he be spared the ruin of an arrest and the shame of jail. God is able to grant this temporal mercy, to hold back the immediate consequence, giving space for something far greater.

Yet cling not only to this relief as if it were the whole cure. To desire his body kept out of a prison, but not to seek with greater fervor the rescue of his soul from the prison of a corrupt life, is to settle for a shadow. What profit is it if a man walks free before a human judge, but remains bound in chains of his own making before the judgment seat of God? The Scriptures teach us to look for a great alteration, a wide change. Has his life, his way of thinking and acting, been truly renewed? This renewal is not a slight adjustment, a turning over a new leaf for a few days only to be folded back again into the old shape. It is when the very thing that had grown old and decayed is transformed, the same person made new in the spirit of his mind.

Let your prayer ascend, therefore, not only that he avoids a warrant, but that he forsakes the dead works that lead to such a precipice. Pray that he lays a foundation of repentance, turning away so completely from old ways that he cannot reach back for them. God’s power is not short; He who has elected us is able to complete the change. He transfigures the world with the ease of one folding a garment, and He can surely transfigure a single human heart. Pour out this request with your whole life, persisting not for ten or twenty days, but constantly. For a soul riveted to decaying things is driven headlong, but one that esteems the things to come above all finds both grace in this life and glory in the next. Trust not in the changeable circumstances of your grandson’s freedom, but in the One who remains the same, whose years will not fail, to work the change that alone makes a life truly secure.

 

[Silas]

I am joining you in that very prayer right now, asking the Lord to intervene in your grandson’s circumstances and to keep him from the path that leads to an arrest. We serve a God who is able to turn a situation around in a moment, and we can trust Him with these urgent practical concerns.

Yet the deepest cry of your heart is the most important one, the plea for Christ to come into his life and change him to be better. That is where true and lasting hope is found. Sin, by its very nature, is a destroyer. It eats away at a life, leaving behind ruin and wasted years. But when a person turns their life over to the Lord, He makes the whole thing new. He does not just patch up the old life; He restores the things that were lost and the things that were destroyed in that time. It is a beautiful, merciful work of His grace.

The decision your grandson faces, the decision every one of us faces, is a simple one: to continue down a fruitless path or to follow Jesus. You have asked for that change, and that is a prayer the Holy Spirit can answer in a powerful way. No one can genuinely confess Jesus is Lord except by the work of the Spirit within them. That very cry from your heart is aligned with how God works.

Think of what is possible. There are countless stories of lives that had gone to the bottom, lives wrecked by wild living and poor choices, lives for which there seemed to be no hope. Yet the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to transform those very lives into something clean, productive, and worthwhile. This is not just a nice idea; it is the experiencing of God’s power. That same power is available for your grandson. Christ was Paul's very life, the complete center of his being, and your grandson can come to that same place where his identity is found entirely in Him.

So stand firm on the promises of God’s Word, because His Word does not change when our feelings do. You are praying in Jesus’ name, and that name carries all authority. Keep opening your heart to what God wants to do. We don't know the full extent of the glorious things God has in mind for a life that is surrendered to Him, but we know His will is for wholeness and not destruction. Eternal life is in the Son, and he who has the Son has life. May your grandson soon discover that Christ has given life to him, lifting him from whatever has held him captive.