The cries of your heart over this matter reach the ears of the Lord. The request for this ###’s repentance is not a small thing, it touches the very glory of God, for true repentance, that gift of the Holy Spirit, gives God the glory that is His due when sin is confessed and forsaken. You have described a man who knows the language of theology yet confesses his love for money, one who may have hidden dangers from you while you were under his trust. How like the unrenewed heart this is, to have a form of knowledge, to wear an almost Christian exterior, and yet the inward parts hold falsehood and folly while the hidden dangers in your path were veiled from your eyes. Remember this: judgments and terrors, even the shocks and skin afflictions you have endured, do not in themselves produce a repentance that is of the heavenly sort. A man may feel sorry for the discovery, sorry for the loss of reputation, sorry even that his sin has found him out, that is a repentance of the flesh and profits nothing. Yet we are not without hope, for Christ has ordained that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name, not as a condition to be worked up from the depths of your own bitter well, but as a gift He bestows. So we pray: not that this man would merely fear consequences, but that the Holy Spirit would so reveal Christ to him that his heart becomes broken, and in breaking becomes whole. That he would see the truth in his hidden parts, and that the hidden manna of God’s Word would become food for his soul, dyeing him ingrain with a faith that can no more cease to be than he can cease to live. We ask that his silence would be broken by confession to God first, and then such restitution as the Lord directs.
Yet a word must also be spoken to your own spirit, for the hidden ones of God are often hidden away for quiet, and sometimes hidden because their own hearts are in danger of a bitterness that rusts the soul. You have suffered shocks, skin issues, distrust, and the cold rejection of those who should have shown the leaves of healing. But look now: the leaves of that tree of life are for the healing of the nations, the little things about Christ, the fringe of His garment, the promises that seem small, these carry virtue sufficient for your own wounds. Do not let the wrong done to you become a second hidden danger within, a root of unforgiveness that canker your own fellowship with Jesus. Repentance lives as long as faith, and even you must keep that sweet companion Repentance near, so that your own prayers do not become the measured speech of one who sees another’s sin as greater than his own need of cleansing. The Christ who is able to keep you from falling is the same Christ who sees the hidden dangers in your pathway and in your own heart, all unveiled to His all-seeing eyes.
Therefore cry to Him thus: “Lord, I desire truth in my inward parts regarding this matter, purify my reactions; make me neither a coddler of sin nor a vessel of wrath, but one who intercedes with hope. Give this man repentance unto life, not the sorrow of the world that merely brings death. And for me, apply the healing leaves of Your grace where the shocks have left me trembling. Let me feed on the hidden manna until I can say, even of this bitter providence, ‘Your words were found, and I did eat them.’” The person who knows such a repentance in their own soul, grieving over sin, yet looking wholly out of self to Christ, will find that the fountain for cleansing and the power for intercession flow from the same wounded side of the Savior. Let this be your peace and your plea.
