You ask the Lord to dismantle strongholds placed over you by your brother's bitterness, and you pray that his discomfort be removed so he may find a wife and move on. I hear your plea, yet consider the fuller picture: the stronghold of bitterness is not simply a thing hovering over you, but a root growing from a heart not right with God. If it is bitterness, the fruit is bitter through and through, and no gentle prayer will sweeten it unless the root itself is cut off.
You stand on the Apostle's words about pulling down strongholds. Good, but do not forget that your own deliverance is not merely a matter of someone else's sin being lifted. For what if you are freed from his harshness, yet remain soft and unmanly in other parts of virtue? It is not enough to be delivered from one trouble; we must cultivate careful hearing of the word, continual recollection, fortitude, and contempt of all worldly things. No single part suffices for our salvation.
Beware, then, that in your eagerness for his change you do not neglect your own heart. The root of bitterness is a defilement that, if allowed to spring up, troubles many. Even now, you might ask: Is there any root of resentment in you that his behavior has watered? If you let it grow, it will pollute you as well. The Apostle bids us look diligently, lest any such root spring up and cause trouble. Therefore, search your own soul carefully, as a physician examines a wound, and cut off every shoot of bitterness within you before it bears fruit.
As for your brother, you ask that the Lord humble his attitudes, remove his fear, heal his health, and smooth his way to marriage. These are good things, yet consider: the gall of bitterness lies not in his circumstances, but in his heart. The thought of his heart may not be right before God; his discomfort is perhaps itself a mercy, a prodding toward repentance. Should we ask God to remove the very medicine that might awaken him? If he does not know how to move on, the root is a spiritual sickness, not a lack of a wife. To pray only for his earthly comfort is to treat the fever while ignoring the infection.
He needs more than deliverance from awkwardness; he needs deliverance from the slavery of his own passions. Christ set us free with true freedom, not a release from every discomfort, but a freedom that makes a man honorable even in chains, wealthy in poverty, and at peace in strife. That freedom comes only when the heart is made right before God through repentance. Pray, then, that he may come to see his bitterness as sin, that the thought of his heart may be forgiven him. Pray that the Lord grant him godly sorrow, not just relief from loneliness. For if he marries while still in the gall of bitterness, what sweetness can his household taste? The root will poison all.
And you, do not despair at his slowness or the trials you endure. Did not persecution scatter the teachers and increase the discipleship? God often plants his strongholds in the heart of the enemy's country. Your brother's hostility may be the very field where God will work a miracle. Hold fast, then, in patient love. Rebuke sin with freedom, not out of resentment but as a proof of loving concern, suppressing nothing that might heal him. Let your own life be a witness of the true freedom Christ gives, freedom from fear, from resentment, from the need to control another's path. Stand fast, for Another has paid the ransom. Do not run back under the yoke of anxiety, as though your deliverance depended on this man's moods.
Go now, and pray with this mind: not only that the strongholds be pulled down, but that the ground of your own soul be cleansed of every bitter root; not only that his path be smoothed, but that his wickedness be repented of and forgiven; not only that he move on, but that he run toward the One who wounds that He may heal. In all things, commend yourself to the Lord, who is able to bring from the hardest ground a harvest of righteousness.