Silas
Beloved of All
Your many prayers have been heard and I thank you for sharing them so openly. The Lord knows each name and each situation you carried before Him, even those requests that were deleted and those burdens you have carried a long time. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, and He desires that the earth be filled with His glory.
I have prayed for you for strong protection and for breakthrough, for wisdom and encouragement and for a fresh anointing on every outreach, service, sermon, workshop and gathering for prayer and praise that is planned. Scripture shows us what the Lord intends His church to be. It is not found by looking at the long history of failure and compromise, but by looking at the pattern in the book of Acts. There we see a people marked by love and by loving works, a people who did not tolerate evil but were discerning, and who did not try to join themselves to the worldly system. Righteousness cannot be legislated from the outside, it must come from a changed heart. The Lord warns that where love grows cold His presence is grieved, and where the church allows hypocrisy and impurity to remain it becomes weak and powerless. That lack of power is not His fault. When His people are purified and walk in love and holiness, power returns. I have asked that He make your fellowship more and more like that pattern, that Jesus Himself would remain the head of the body, guiding and directing every part, that He would convict where conviction is needed, raise up more people given to prayer, and fill your gatherings with His presence so that many will be saved through Jesus Christ alone.
I have also brought before the Lord the conflicts you mentioned, including those you called forgotten and those involving people close to you. I prayed that He would bring true reconciliation where it is possible, and that He would confront what is not of Him and bring deep conviction of sin. Where relationships are dysfunctional or outside of His design, I did not ask Him to bless them but to intervene with mercy and truth, to stop what is harmful, to heal soul wounds, and to draw each person to salvation first. Marriage in Scripture is a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and all sexual intimacy belongs only within that covenant. Any other relationship needs repentance and healing, not celebration. I prayed for the children and young people you named, for school and exams, for healing of bodies and of inner wounds, that the Lord would show Himself as Father to the fatherless, that He would rear and encourage and restore, and that He would bring miracles of healing and transformation according to His perfect will. For your own work and for the team, for meetings and for the tensions at church, I asked for wisdom, strength, authority in love, and favor, and that you would be able to do your work in a manner pleasing to Him and that differences would be resolved within the fellowship in a biblical way.
You were right to confess speaking in anger about others. When we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us, and I have thanked Him for His forgiveness toward you and asked Him to help you speak with grace and truth going forward. I prayed for your weakness, for your place in the church, for those who have wandered away that the Lord would draw them back, and for the hurt that remains in others that He would bring genuine healing.
Finally I joined you in praying for the larger burdens on your heart, for persecuted Christians, for those who are still without Christ that they would be saved, for the peace of Jerusalem, for those suffering in war zones and from calamities, and for abused children and all who are vulnerable. The early believers understood that the church is one body, and when one part suffers all suffer. Though you are far from many of them, your prayers join you to them and the Lord hears.
May the Lord encourage you greatly, defeat the works of the enemy in your life and in your fellowship, and fill you with hope as you look for His coming. Maranatha, the Lord is coming, and until then may He keep you, guide you, and empower you to walk in love and in truth.
I have prayed for you for strong protection and for breakthrough, for wisdom and encouragement and for a fresh anointing on every outreach, service, sermon, workshop and gathering for prayer and praise that is planned. Scripture shows us what the Lord intends His church to be. It is not found by looking at the long history of failure and compromise, but by looking at the pattern in the book of Acts. There we see a people marked by love and by loving works, a people who did not tolerate evil but were discerning, and who did not try to join themselves to the worldly system. Righteousness cannot be legislated from the outside, it must come from a changed heart. The Lord warns that where love grows cold His presence is grieved, and where the church allows hypocrisy and impurity to remain it becomes weak and powerless. That lack of power is not His fault. When His people are purified and walk in love and holiness, power returns. I have asked that He make your fellowship more and more like that pattern, that Jesus Himself would remain the head of the body, guiding and directing every part, that He would convict where conviction is needed, raise up more people given to prayer, and fill your gatherings with His presence so that many will be saved through Jesus Christ alone.
I have also brought before the Lord the conflicts you mentioned, including those you called forgotten and those involving people close to you. I prayed that He would bring true reconciliation where it is possible, and that He would confront what is not of Him and bring deep conviction of sin. Where relationships are dysfunctional or outside of His design, I did not ask Him to bless them but to intervene with mercy and truth, to stop what is harmful, to heal soul wounds, and to draw each person to salvation first. Marriage in Scripture is a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and all sexual intimacy belongs only within that covenant. Any other relationship needs repentance and healing, not celebration. I prayed for the children and young people you named, for school and exams, for healing of bodies and of inner wounds, that the Lord would show Himself as Father to the fatherless, that He would rear and encourage and restore, and that He would bring miracles of healing and transformation according to His perfect will. For your own work and for the team, for meetings and for the tensions at church, I asked for wisdom, strength, authority in love, and favor, and that you would be able to do your work in a manner pleasing to Him and that differences would be resolved within the fellowship in a biblical way.
You were right to confess speaking in anger about others. When we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us, and I have thanked Him for His forgiveness toward you and asked Him to help you speak with grace and truth going forward. I prayed for your weakness, for your place in the church, for those who have wandered away that the Lord would draw them back, and for the hurt that remains in others that He would bring genuine healing.
Finally I joined you in praying for the larger burdens on your heart, for persecuted Christians, for those who are still without Christ that they would be saved, for the peace of Jerusalem, for those suffering in war zones and from calamities, and for abused children and all who are vulnerable. The early believers understood that the church is one body, and when one part suffers all suffer. Though you are far from many of them, your prayers join you to them and the Lord hears.
May the Lord encourage you greatly, defeat the works of the enemy in your life and in your fellowship, and fill you with hope as you look for His coming. Maranatha, the Lord is coming, and until then may He keep you, guide you, and empower you to walk in love and in truth.
