Chrysostom
Beloved Warrior
Your prayer reveals a soul crying out with great faith, yet also with great fear. You place your trust in the mighty protection of the Lord, pleading the blood of Christ and calling upon the holy angels, which is good. Yet immediately you tremble over every earthly circumstance, naming this person and that trouble, as if salvation depended on the outcome of a school conflict or the stopping of a particular relationship. You must examine this. To be freed from one type of care only to be consumed by another is still to be choked by the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world. That deceit includes not only wealth but any worldly attachment that usurps the place of trust in God alone. No one part of virtue is sufficient for our salvation. There is required a careful hearing, a continual recollection, and a deliverance from all worldly things. Your prayer for supernatural trust and the faith of Christ is the very thing you must now seize, and that means laying down the frantic enumeration of every possible affliction as if the Lord does not already know them.
You ask for salvation for your whole family, and you cry out for it as if God’s arm were short. Yet hear this: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Do not postpone trust until the deliverance is seen. The very afflictions you suffer, the weariness, the attacks, even the venting you confessed, are the soil in which patience and hope are worked out. Whether we be afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, which works in the patient enduring of the same sufferings. Your endurance of these very things, when offered to God, becomes a means of grace not only for you but for those very family members you plead for. Do not despise the medicine because it is bitter. The passover of the Lord’s passion was a mystery for the world’s salvation, and even his betrayal was known and permitted for that end. So too, your present tribulations, even those caused by others, can be the means by which God brings about a deeper healing and reconciliation than you can imagine, if you will stop dictating the precise manner of the rescue and instead cling to the One who rescues.
Concerning your prayers against specific enemies and troublesome people, take the greatest care. You ask for deliverance, which is right, but you must also examine your heart. To pray against our enemies while we ourselves are negligent in hearing and doing the word is to add sin to sin, making our own salvation doubtful. Do not waste this acceptable time by nursing grievances in your prayers. The Lord came not to judge but to save, and he speaks now for your salvation, not your condemnation. Instead of detailing the failures of another for God’s rebuke, pour out that energy in weeping for them, for they do not know the common salvation. It is a mark of those who perish not to recognize the things that lead to salvation. Love them enough to pray for their true healing and deliverance from the snares they cannot see, leaving the manner and timing of any confrontation entirely to the Master.
Finally, you ask for the restoration of what is hopelessly broken. Rest in this: the hope of the faithful is not in the quick fixing of circumstances but in the unshakeable fact that whether comforted or afflicted, it is all for salvation. Your part is to cultivate a right heart, a new mind full of love, peace, and joy by the Holy Spirit. The Lord will glorify himself in a mighty way, but his might is often perfected in what seems like utter weakness and long delay. Do not lose sight of what he has already done while waiting for what is still to come, but do not measure his faithfulness by the removal of every trial. The true gain is not the world set right, but the soul saved. For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
You ask for salvation for your whole family, and you cry out for it as if God’s arm were short. Yet hear this: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Do not postpone trust until the deliverance is seen. The very afflictions you suffer, the weariness, the attacks, even the venting you confessed, are the soil in which patience and hope are worked out. Whether we be afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation, which works in the patient enduring of the same sufferings. Your endurance of these very things, when offered to God, becomes a means of grace not only for you but for those very family members you plead for. Do not despise the medicine because it is bitter. The passover of the Lord’s passion was a mystery for the world’s salvation, and even his betrayal was known and permitted for that end. So too, your present tribulations, even those caused by others, can be the means by which God brings about a deeper healing and reconciliation than you can imagine, if you will stop dictating the precise manner of the rescue and instead cling to the One who rescues.
Concerning your prayers against specific enemies and troublesome people, take the greatest care. You ask for deliverance, which is right, but you must also examine your heart. To pray against our enemies while we ourselves are negligent in hearing and doing the word is to add sin to sin, making our own salvation doubtful. Do not waste this acceptable time by nursing grievances in your prayers. The Lord came not to judge but to save, and he speaks now for your salvation, not your condemnation. Instead of detailing the failures of another for God’s rebuke, pour out that energy in weeping for them, for they do not know the common salvation. It is a mark of those who perish not to recognize the things that lead to salvation. Love them enough to pray for their true healing and deliverance from the snares they cannot see, leaving the manner and timing of any confrontation entirely to the Master.
Finally, you ask for the restoration of what is hopelessly broken. Rest in this: the hope of the faithful is not in the quick fixing of circumstances but in the unshakeable fact that whether comforted or afflicted, it is all for salvation. Your part is to cultivate a right heart, a new mind full of love, peace, and joy by the Holy Spirit. The Lord will glorify himself in a mighty way, but his might is often perfected in what seems like utter weakness and long delay. Do not lose sight of what he has already done while waiting for what is still to come, but do not measure his faithfulness by the removal of every trial. The true gain is not the world set right, but the soul saved. For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
