God help me,

[Chrysostom]

Your sorrow and your cry have been heard, and I bring your pain before the Lord with you. To be deceived and betrayed in your own covenant, to see your matrimonial bed defiled and another woman bearing a child by your lawful husband, is a great wickedness and a deep wound, and God sees it fully.

Scripture teaches that marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled, a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and that sexual union belongs only within that covenant. When a husband who is bound to his wife defiles himself with another, it is adultery before God, even if the other woman is not bound. It is not only an injury against you, but above all a sin against God Himself, and He will avenge and judge it. God does not overlook such sin, nor does He bless what violates His holy design.

So I pray with you now in the name of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and the only way of salvation. Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ Your Son, have mercy and show Your strength to this mother and her son. Guard their hearts and give them peace in this storm. You see this betrayal and this defilement of the covenant. Bring conviction where there is sin. Bring the husband to repentance and to turn from adultery. Bring the other woman to seek You, to know her sin, and to depart from this covenant that is not hers. Cleanse this home from wickedness. Vindicate this wife who has been scorned, not by her own hand for vengeance belongs to You, but by Your righteous judgment and mercy. Send Your heavenly help to fight for her, to protect her and her child, and to surround them with Your care as You promise to guard Your people. Lead this family in holiness and peace, and keep this mother walking closely with You in prayer and purity as You sustained Anna of old.

Continue to seek the Lord without ceasing, trusting not in your own strength but in Christ alone. Follow peace with all as far as it depends on you, and pursue holiness, for without it no one will see the Lord. Do not repay evil for evil, but commit your cause to Him who judges righteously. He is near to the brokenhearted and He will not forsake you or your son.

May the Lord strengthen you day by day, keep you faithful in His sight, and work in this great trial for His glory and your good. In Jesus name, Amen.

 

[Silas]

Your hurt and your cry have been heard, and the Lord knows the weight you are carrying for yourself and for your son. There is nothing hidden from Him. He sees what others cannot see, the betrayal and rejection you have suffered in private, the pain of feeling scorned and full inside, and He looks on you with compassion and sympathetic understanding of your weakness and need. Only His divine grace can bring the kind of healing that no human effort can provide.

God established marriage to be a covenant in which two become one. It is a compound unity, one man and one woman joined together for life, and sexual union belongs only within that covenant. What has broken into your marriage is not something God blesses or affirms. It is sin and great wickedness, a violation of that one flesh union, and Scripture calls it what it is. To pray for God to bless that relationship would be to ask Him to bless what He has called wrong. Instead the right prayer is the one you have begun to pray, that each person involved would seek God, turn from sin, and be separated from it.

It is natural to want the painful symptoms to be taken away quickly, to want the other woman removed, to want vindication and to feel that God is fighting for you. Those desires are understandable, but the deeper need behind the symptoms is the problem of sin itself. When Jesus met with sinners, His greatest concern was not only to fix outward circumstances but to bring forgiveness of sins, and the evidence of true turning to Him was repentance that showed itself in real change and restoration. That is the greatest need for your husband and for the other woman, even more than a change in circumstances. Salvation is by far the most important thing for any person. It is better to enter heaven with a wounded life than to remain whole and yet lost. And it is also your greatest need as you walk through this betrayal, that your own heart would be kept in forgiveness, mercy and love, and not consumed by striving.

Jesus went about doing only good, healing all kinds of brokenness, and He taught His followers to love one another, to forgive one another, to be merciful and not to strive against one another. That does not mean calling wrong right. It means trusting God to be the one who sees justly and acts justly, while you choose the way of mercy that He taught.

So pray with confidence for what God desires to do. Ask Him to strengthen you and your son day by day and to heal your broken heart by His own power. Ask Him to bring your husband to a place of honest repentance and turning from adultery, and to bring the other woman to seek the Lord for herself and to turn away from sharing in a covenant that is not hers. Pray that any child brought into this situation would be shown mercy and come to know the Lord. Ask God to vindicate you in His perfect way and time, and to guard your heart from bitterness so that you may walk in forgiveness while still holding fast to what is right. He sees you, He loves you, and He is able to work His grace where no human remedy can reach.