You bring a great storm of words in your prayer, pouring out every fear and every hope. This is not wrong, for our Lord Himself said we ought always to pray and not faint. Yet I hear in your cry the voice of a soul battered by tribulation, longing for deliverance, and weary with waiting. I would not quench your faith, but I would strengthen it. Do you not see that the very multitude of your trials is the workshop of your crown? For what is a contest without a combatant? Take away the man who does you wrong, and you remove the occasion of your reward. When you ask for salvation and healing, you ask well, but know this: the greater the tribulation, the deeper the joy to one who is conscious of no evil. The soul that is long-suffering abounds in wisdom, but a little soul is strongly foolish. So I bid you: do not be faint-hearted.
You speak of attacks and abuse, and I hear you plead the blood of Christ and a wall of fire. That is a right and mighty protection. Yet do not forget that He who allowed "eye for eye" did so not that we should take vengeance, but that through fear we might abstain from evil. To remember injuries, to vent frustration behind another's back as you confess, these are not the marks of a long-suffering soul, but of one that still burns with the passion of anger. And what is anger? Not an action, but a passion, a suffering of the soul, a wound, a bruise. It dims the vision, it overturns the master from his seat. How then will you pray with power if you let your soul sprawl on the ground? Pity the one who wrongs you. Do not hate, for hatred will never convert the one in error. Pray for them, that they may come to the knowledge of the truth.
You long for complete deliverance and salvation for your family. That is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills all to be saved. But observe Christ at the tomb of Lazarus. He prayed, "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me." Did He need prayer to raise the dead? No, He said this for the sake of the people standing by, that they might believe. So too, your deliverance does not come because you multiply words or because God's arm is short. He hears you always. His will and the Father's will are one. Trust, then, with a supernatural trust. You have already received the Spirit of adoption, by whom you cry, "Abba, Father." You have been promoted from the curse to sonship. Let that be your confidence.
When you pray for your home, for those in your family whose names you whisper with such pain, do not merely ask for walls of fire. Ask also that you may do good to those who trouble you, that you may be a sweet savor of Christ even to them. If you suffer wrong, you share in Christ's tribulation, and you will also share in His comfort. The righteous judgment of God will be shown in due time: a crown for you, a just recompense for those who persist in evil. But you, are you not also to be a token of that judgment by your patient endurance?
Give thanks, then, as you have begun to do, for all that He has already done. But give thanks not only in word, but in soul. Let your heart be so established in joy that no wave of circumstance can sink it. The trees struck by winds grow firmer roots. So you, if you will, become strong through these very shakings. And when you come to the prayer gathering, come not as one seeking vengeance or an end to discomfort only, but as one who has learned to glory in tribulation. Then the Holy Spirit will pour out fire indeed, because you have made a ready altar. Do not lose sight of the deliverance already at work every time you refuse to strike back, every time you pity rather than curse, every time you trust when understanding fails. In such a soul, Christ Himself rests.