Silas
Beloved of All
The weight you carry for your son is not hidden from the Lord. When money in his hands becomes only fuel for what dulls his mind and wastes his days, you are seeing the deep poverty Proverbs warns of. The drunkard and the glutton come to poverty, not always of wallet at first, but of purpose, of clarity, of the soul's sharp edge. And drowsiness, that slow surrender to a fog of weed and drink, clothes a man with rags he does not even feel. So your prayer for God to sever him from the companions who feed this is wise. Do not grow weary in asking it.
These are not just bad habits; they are a path where the heart is being guided by the wrong voices. The father in Proverbs pleads with his son: give me your heart, let your eyes observe my ways. That is exactly what you long for, that your son would turn his heart away from those who pull him down and fix his eyes on what is right. Pray that God would not only remove the wrong friendships but also that your son would come to see them as a deep ditch and a narrow pit. The just man falls seven times and rises again. Many falls can be endured, but the real danger is lying there. Ask God to put that holy restlessness in your son’s spirit so he will hate the lying still.
When you pray for godly people to be placed in his life, you are asking for more than good influences. You are asking for those who carry the life that is in the Son. The record God has given is clear: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Your son’s deepest need is not just sobriety or a steady paycheck. It is to possess the Son in living faith. Without that, the wrath of God abides, and the man remains adrift. With Christ, he gains not only forgiveness but adoption as a son. The Spirit of the Son enters the heart and cries, “Abba, Father,” and a new loyalty begins that displaces the old.
So pray boldly in the name of Jesus, for there is no other name. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. To acknowledge the Son is to have the Father also. Your son must come to answer the question Christ put to the Pharisees: “Whose Son is He?” If he remains just a man from Nazareth to your boy, a distant figure, nothing changes. But if the Spirit reveals Him as the Son of God, declared with power by the resurrection from the dead, everything changes. That revelation breaks chains.
Remember how Abraham was told, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love.” God knows a Father’s love for a son. He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. Because of that sacrifice, there is power to cast out the bondwoman and her son, the flesh and its mocking offspring, so that the son of promise might inherit all. Pray with that picture in mind: that what is born of the flesh and what is born of the Spirit would be made painfully clear in your son’s life, and that he would not be content until he knows he belongs to the free woman, an heir through the promise of Christ.
Hold steady. Your intercession is a work of love, and love believes all things, hopes all things. God can make your heart rejoice over a son who speaks right things and walks in wisdom.
These are not just bad habits; they are a path where the heart is being guided by the wrong voices. The father in Proverbs pleads with his son: give me your heart, let your eyes observe my ways. That is exactly what you long for, that your son would turn his heart away from those who pull him down and fix his eyes on what is right. Pray that God would not only remove the wrong friendships but also that your son would come to see them as a deep ditch and a narrow pit. The just man falls seven times and rises again. Many falls can be endured, but the real danger is lying there. Ask God to put that holy restlessness in your son’s spirit so he will hate the lying still.
When you pray for godly people to be placed in his life, you are asking for more than good influences. You are asking for those who carry the life that is in the Son. The record God has given is clear: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Your son’s deepest need is not just sobriety or a steady paycheck. It is to possess the Son in living faith. Without that, the wrath of God abides, and the man remains adrift. With Christ, he gains not only forgiveness but adoption as a son. The Spirit of the Son enters the heart and cries, “Abba, Father,” and a new loyalty begins that displaces the old.
So pray boldly in the name of Jesus, for there is no other name. The Father has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. To acknowledge the Son is to have the Father also. Your son must come to answer the question Christ put to the Pharisees: “Whose Son is He?” If he remains just a man from Nazareth to your boy, a distant figure, nothing changes. But if the Spirit reveals Him as the Son of God, declared with power by the resurrection from the dead, everything changes. That revelation breaks chains.
Remember how Abraham was told, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love.” God knows a Father’s love for a son. He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. Because of that sacrifice, there is power to cast out the bondwoman and her son, the flesh and its mocking offspring, so that the son of promise might inherit all. Pray with that picture in mind: that what is born of the flesh and what is born of the Spirit would be made painfully clear in your son’s life, and that he would not be content until he knows he belongs to the free woman, an heir through the promise of Christ.
Hold steady. Your intercession is a work of love, and love believes all things, hopes all things. God can make your heart rejoice over a son who speaks right things and walks in wisdom.
