Chrysostom
Beloved of All
Your prayer has been heard and I have taken your sorrow to heart, for you describe a house and a neighborhood full of torment, meddling, confusion and the ruin that follows when marriage is broken.
Scripture speaks clearly about this. From the beginning God made marriage to be a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and our Lord said that Moses permitted divorce because hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning, and that to divorce and marry another apart from sexual immorality is to commit adultery. This is not said to crush those who have suffered, but to show how holy and weighty marriage is, and how much we need mercy. Salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, and when we come to Him in repentance He is able to forgive and to make us new. For those who are living together outside of marriage, or in relationships of boyfriend and girlfriend that involve sexual intimacy, we do not ask God to bless that way of living, but we pray that each person would turn to Christ, receive forgiveness, and walk in purity, whether that means pursuing marriage rightly or living chastely before God.
You speak also of divorce spreading like a contagion among friends, family, business and marriages, and of idle hands bringing ruin and disgrace. This is the peril of the last days that the apostle warned of, when people become careless of their neighbor and therefore careless of themselves. For we are members of one another, and when one part suffers the whole body feels it. To bite and devour one another with wronging, accusing and slander, to carry a tale from house to house and say such a one said this, even while asking God not to hold us to account, only spreads the wound. And when we do not attend to our own calling before God, we easily become busybodies in the affairs of others, and that meddling is a great sign of disorder. It creates the very confusion you name, where nothing is seen clearly, where it is said he is not him and she is not her, and the mind becomes turbid and mistakes what is before it. Such confusion does not come from God, and it opens the door to violence and torment.
You also name demons and bewitched confusion and sabotage that seems to imprison and abuse. The works of the flesh are plain, as Paul lists them, envy, drunkenness, malice, hatred and the like, and those who practice them will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. We were once foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by passions, living in malice and envy, hated and hating one another, and we need deliverance that only Christ can give. The man who gives himself over to rage and impurity is not different from one who has lost his senses, and he makes his own soul a polluted place. Therefore we must rebuke all works of darkness and turn from them.
There is a short and easy way of deliverance that God has given, and it is to forgive. It is not a great toil to forgive the one who has grieved us. Rather it is a toil to keep enmity. To be freed from anger brings great refreshment, and it requires no long journey or great expense, only a willing heart. If we wish to obtain mercy from God, we must first show mercy to our neighbor, for blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, and judgment without mercy will be shown to him who has shown no mercy. To love God is to love our neighbor and to keep His commandments, and on this hangs all the law and the prophets. And at times we need to withdraw a little from the tumults and confusion of common life, to seek quiet times and places for prayer, that we may come near to God with a clear mind.
So I pray for you and for your neighborhood now. I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ would rebuke every tormenting and confusing spirit, every work of sabotage, abuse and violence, and bring it to nothing. I pray that He would guard your house from meddling and false imitation, and set a wall of peace around you. I pray for those who are imprisoned, whether in a literal prison or in the prison of hatred and strife, that God would bring justice, protection and repentance. I pray for every woman and man who has passed through a bitter divorce or is suffering now, that God would heal their wounds, grant repentance where there has been sin, grant comfort where there has been sinned against, and lead them to walk in holiness and truth. For those who are not married but living as if they were, I pray that God would grant them conviction and grace to turn from sexual sin and to honor marriage as God ordained. I pray that instead of idle ruin and gossip, God would give honest work, sober minds, and love that seeks not only its own good but the good of the neighbor, to build up and not to tear down. May the Lord give you a willing heart to forgive, a mouth that keeps silence rather than spreading what is not true, and a life that shows mercy, that you may obtain mercy. Amen.
Scripture speaks clearly about this. From the beginning God made marriage to be a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and our Lord said that Moses permitted divorce because hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning, and that to divorce and marry another apart from sexual immorality is to commit adultery. This is not said to crush those who have suffered, but to show how holy and weighty marriage is, and how much we need mercy. Salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, and when we come to Him in repentance He is able to forgive and to make us new. For those who are living together outside of marriage, or in relationships of boyfriend and girlfriend that involve sexual intimacy, we do not ask God to bless that way of living, but we pray that each person would turn to Christ, receive forgiveness, and walk in purity, whether that means pursuing marriage rightly or living chastely before God.
You speak also of divorce spreading like a contagion among friends, family, business and marriages, and of idle hands bringing ruin and disgrace. This is the peril of the last days that the apostle warned of, when people become careless of their neighbor and therefore careless of themselves. For we are members of one another, and when one part suffers the whole body feels it. To bite and devour one another with wronging, accusing and slander, to carry a tale from house to house and say such a one said this, even while asking God not to hold us to account, only spreads the wound. And when we do not attend to our own calling before God, we easily become busybodies in the affairs of others, and that meddling is a great sign of disorder. It creates the very confusion you name, where nothing is seen clearly, where it is said he is not him and she is not her, and the mind becomes turbid and mistakes what is before it. Such confusion does not come from God, and it opens the door to violence and torment.
You also name demons and bewitched confusion and sabotage that seems to imprison and abuse. The works of the flesh are plain, as Paul lists them, envy, drunkenness, malice, hatred and the like, and those who practice them will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. We were once foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by passions, living in malice and envy, hated and hating one another, and we need deliverance that only Christ can give. The man who gives himself over to rage and impurity is not different from one who has lost his senses, and he makes his own soul a polluted place. Therefore we must rebuke all works of darkness and turn from them.
There is a short and easy way of deliverance that God has given, and it is to forgive. It is not a great toil to forgive the one who has grieved us. Rather it is a toil to keep enmity. To be freed from anger brings great refreshment, and it requires no long journey or great expense, only a willing heart. If we wish to obtain mercy from God, we must first show mercy to our neighbor, for blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, and judgment without mercy will be shown to him who has shown no mercy. To love God is to love our neighbor and to keep His commandments, and on this hangs all the law and the prophets. And at times we need to withdraw a little from the tumults and confusion of common life, to seek quiet times and places for prayer, that we may come near to God with a clear mind.
So I pray for you and for your neighborhood now. I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ would rebuke every tormenting and confusing spirit, every work of sabotage, abuse and violence, and bring it to nothing. I pray that He would guard your house from meddling and false imitation, and set a wall of peace around you. I pray for those who are imprisoned, whether in a literal prison or in the prison of hatred and strife, that God would bring justice, protection and repentance. I pray for every woman and man who has passed through a bitter divorce or is suffering now, that God would heal their wounds, grant repentance where there has been sin, grant comfort where there has been sinned against, and lead them to walk in holiness and truth. For those who are not married but living as if they were, I pray that God would grant them conviction and grace to turn from sexual sin and to honor marriage as God ordained. I pray that instead of idle ruin and gossip, God would give honest work, sober minds, and love that seeks not only its own good but the good of the neighbor, to build up and not to tear down. May the Lord give you a willing heart to forgive, a mouth that keeps silence rather than spreading what is not true, and a life that shows mercy, that you may obtain mercy. Amen.
