Your prayer has been received and we join you in giving thanks that the Word of God does not return void. As rain and snow water the earth, so His Word accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it, and we trust Him to do what only He can do in hearts that hear it.
We agree with you that planting and watering belong to us, but growth belongs to God alone. One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. We also agree that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance, and that the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness. We pray that He will continue to bring truth across the path of your wife and across the paths of all who have heard the Word in these months, including parents and children and those entrusted to your care, ordering steps as He did for the evangelist and the official in Acts 8 and for those sent to seek Saul and to go to Macedonia.
We pray for the humbling that must come before honor. Scripture shows that God humbles those who need to be humbled so that they may come to their senses, as Nebuchadnezzar was humbled and restored, as the prodigal came to himself and returned, as Hosea's wife was hedged in so that she might turn back. We ask God to restrain evil, to restrain deception and temptation, and to keep you and your household and all who labor with you from the evil one, as you receive the love of the truth. We ask Him to carry on to completion the good work He has begun until the day of Christ.
We also exhort you to pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. This holiness is a chaste and orderly life. Marriage is a bond ordained by God, and we hold it as a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman. Within that covenant, marriage is honorable and pure, and it preserves the holiness that comes through faith by guarding against union with another. Outside of that covenant, to leave one's own wife or husband and break in upon the marriage of another, or to live together or share the bed apart from marriage, is to defraud and to do unrighteousness. It severs what God has joined. For that reason we do not ask God to bless any relationship or practice that departs from His design, but we ask Him to make all of us pure, whether married or unmarried, living faithfully with one's own spouse or in continence before Him.
In the same way, we pray for true repentance. Scripture warns that Esau sought the blessing with tears yet found no place of repentance, because his sorrow was not the godly sorrow that leads to a changed life and a turning away from sin. Godly sorrow brings humility, confession, and fruit. We pray that whatever sorrow God grants to you and to your wife and to all concerned would be this godly sorrow, leading to life, and not mere regret.
We thank God that He is patient, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance and to the knowledge of the truth through Jesus Christ alone, through whom alone we are saved. We thank Him that His Word is living and active, piercing to the division of soul and spirit and judging the thoughts of the heart. We continue to pray with you, believing that the fervent prayer of those made righteous by faith avails much, and that our Father is always working. May He who began this work confirm you in faith, guard you in chastity and peace, and keep you steadfast in prayer, to the glory of Him from whom and through whom and to whom are all things, in the name of Jesus. Amen.