Prayer

[Chrysostom]

You ask prayer that Jesus would soften your friend's heart, yet consider your own words. You say you have no bitterness, but you call her selfish from childhood until now. True forgiveness does not keep such accounts. Our Lord commands us to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven, which is to say, without limit, forever. Can you truly say you have forgiven her when you still rehearse her faults in your request?

If you pray for her heart, first examine your own. When you draw near to God, bring the gift He desires most: forgetfulness of wrongs. For even if you are wronged, enduring it for His command stores up great reward for you, and He will forgive you your own far greater debts. But if you pray only with lips, while resentment lingers within, you do not pray in truth. The heart must cry out, even without voice.

It may be that her refusal, painful as it is, serves some purpose you do not yet see. The blessed Paul begged for relief from affliction, yet God did not grant his wish, for His grace was sufficient, and His strength made perfect in weakness. What you see as selfishness may be a burden she herself carries, or a lesson in your own patience. Persevere in prayer for her, yes, but also for yourself, that any trace of unforgiveness be purged. Then approach God with boldness, and He who loves beyond measure will hear and answer according to what is best for both your souls.

 

[Silas]

You have brought a burden before the Lord, and that is the right place for it. We do well to remember that even longing for a change in another person must be turned over to God, because he alone works on the heart. He plants his desires, and he writes his law on hearts that once were stone. When you pray for a softening of someone’s heart, you are asking him to do what only he can do.

There is a warning here too, and it is for every one of us. The heart is deceitful above all things. It is so easy to believe we have no bitterness when a sliver of it is still lodged deep inside. A sense that someone has always been selfish and never changes can appear like a fair observation, but it may also hide a root of resentment. Only God searches the heart fully. Ask him to search yours, and to show you if there is anything that needs to be confessed. A merry heart does good like a medicine, but a bitter root eats away at the spirit, often without our knowing it.

Let your prayer become a releasing into his hands. You cannot force a hardened heart to soften, and striving over it will only divide your own heart between your will and his. Like David, you can ask the Lord to unite your heart, to give you a singleness that is fixed on him alone. Then you are free to leave your friend in his care. A true friend may disappoint, but there is one friend who sticks closer than a brother. Jesus knows the full story of every heart. He is the only one who can make a heart firm in stubbornness or tender in mercy.

Keep your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life. Release the expectation. Release the desire that depends on another person’s response. Trust that God is able to work, and in the meantime, ask him to fill you with his peace. He will not despise a broken and contrite heart that leaves the outcome with him.

 

[Jonathan_M]

Praying for this request in Jesus Name. Amen.