Silas
Beloved of All
Thank you for sharing this burden and for praying with such care and discernment. Your prayer honors the cross and the suffering of Jesus for all who believe, and it is right to come together in His name trusting that God hears when His people agree in prayer. His thoughts and plans for us are far greater than our own, and His desire is to deliver and restore.
The heart of your request is for true deliverance for this man, and Scripture shows that deliverance is both present and future. Through faith in Jesus Christ we are delivered from the hold the world has on us even while we still live in the world, and one day He will deliver us completely out of this world. That deliverance comes only through faith in Jesus. Our standing before God is not in ourselves but in Christ, clothed in His righteousness. When Christ becomes the center, He is enthroned in the heart and life is no longer about pleasing self but about pleasing Him.
You prayed that he would hear God's voice and see the truth about his identity in Christ. That is the deepest need. Apart from Christ we take on a false identity when we follow our own desires and stray from the narrow path. But when a person is adopted into God's family through faith in Jesus, he becomes a child of promise and receives a new identity. The old self was crucified with Christ so that the power of sin might be broken, and the life we now live is to be hid with Christ in God, rooted and built up in Him. Pray that the love of Christ, which was shown while we were still sinners, would be revealed to him more deeply, because it is that love that draws the heart and constrains us to live for Him and to bear fruit of a righteous life.
You asked God to break a stony heart and to grant courage to walk the narrow way. That is a work only the Holy Spirit can do, and it is the reason for travailing prayer until Christ is formed in a person. Continue to pray in that way, asking God to soften his heart, to give him a holy fear of the Lord, and to grant understanding to depart from evil. Where there is control, blackmail, and danger, and where an ungodly relationship has taken hold, Scripture calls for separation not to condemn but to bring to repentance so that the spirit may be saved. The goal is always restoration in a spirit of meekness, with the hope that he will turn and be restored to fellowship.
You also prayed that he would be separated from ungodly influences, even in his own household, and from the evil that entangles him. That is a biblical prayer. Those who are in Christ are called to live by a greater law, the law of love for Jesus, which means we cannot indulge the flesh but are called to holiness and sincerity. Pray that God will open his eyes to see both the depth of God's love and the destructiveness of the sinful relationships that have held him, and that he will have grace to turn from them.
Entrust him to Jesus our great High Priest, who has opened the way through His own sacrifice and who invites all who trust in Him to come in by faith. The new covenant rests not on what we do but on what God has done in Christ and on our believing and trusting that finished work. Encourage him, as God gives opportunity, to rest in that finished work rather than striving in his own strength, and to find that the place of surrender, where it is no longer self but Christ living within, is the place of victory and of possessing what God has promised.
We join you in praying that God will protect him where his life may be in danger, that He will break every controlling influence, that He will grant repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and that He will establish him in a walk that honors marriage as God designed it, a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, with purity reserved for that covenant. May the Lord give you steadiness as you continue to intercede, and may He cause both you and this man to abound in the grace and kindness that are ours in Christ Jesus. In Jesus name, amen.
The heart of your request is for true deliverance for this man, and Scripture shows that deliverance is both present and future. Through faith in Jesus Christ we are delivered from the hold the world has on us even while we still live in the world, and one day He will deliver us completely out of this world. That deliverance comes only through faith in Jesus. Our standing before God is not in ourselves but in Christ, clothed in His righteousness. When Christ becomes the center, He is enthroned in the heart and life is no longer about pleasing self but about pleasing Him.
You prayed that he would hear God's voice and see the truth about his identity in Christ. That is the deepest need. Apart from Christ we take on a false identity when we follow our own desires and stray from the narrow path. But when a person is adopted into God's family through faith in Jesus, he becomes a child of promise and receives a new identity. The old self was crucified with Christ so that the power of sin might be broken, and the life we now live is to be hid with Christ in God, rooted and built up in Him. Pray that the love of Christ, which was shown while we were still sinners, would be revealed to him more deeply, because it is that love that draws the heart and constrains us to live for Him and to bear fruit of a righteous life.
You asked God to break a stony heart and to grant courage to walk the narrow way. That is a work only the Holy Spirit can do, and it is the reason for travailing prayer until Christ is formed in a person. Continue to pray in that way, asking God to soften his heart, to give him a holy fear of the Lord, and to grant understanding to depart from evil. Where there is control, blackmail, and danger, and where an ungodly relationship has taken hold, Scripture calls for separation not to condemn but to bring to repentance so that the spirit may be saved. The goal is always restoration in a spirit of meekness, with the hope that he will turn and be restored to fellowship.
You also prayed that he would be separated from ungodly influences, even in his own household, and from the evil that entangles him. That is a biblical prayer. Those who are in Christ are called to live by a greater law, the law of love for Jesus, which means we cannot indulge the flesh but are called to holiness and sincerity. Pray that God will open his eyes to see both the depth of God's love and the destructiveness of the sinful relationships that have held him, and that he will have grace to turn from them.
Entrust him to Jesus our great High Priest, who has opened the way through His own sacrifice and who invites all who trust in Him to come in by faith. The new covenant rests not on what we do but on what God has done in Christ and on our believing and trusting that finished work. Encourage him, as God gives opportunity, to rest in that finished work rather than striving in his own strength, and to find that the place of surrender, where it is no longer self but Christ living within, is the place of victory and of possessing what God has promised.
We join you in praying that God will protect him where his life may be in danger, that He will break every controlling influence, that He will grant repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and that He will establish him in a walk that honors marriage as God designed it, a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, with purity reserved for that covenant. May the Lord give you steadiness as you continue to intercede, and may He cause both you and this man to abound in the grace and kindness that are ours in Christ Jesus. In Jesus name, amen.
