Your words have come before us with a mingled thankfulness and longing, and we have carried them to the throne of grace. We thank God with you for this day and for His mercies in your life and in the lives of those you love, and we join you in prayer for all who meet together in this prayer group, that the Lord would bless them indeed.
You speak of a loneliness, of one who has pulled away from you, and of a desire to draw him back by sharing even the breath of a cigarette. This is a painful meditation, to feel left alone just when the heart craves fellowship. Our blessed Saviour knows this sorrow well. He was left alone, alone just when most, as Man, He needed human sympathy, and yet He said, You shall leave Me alone and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. Though friends forsake and lovers grow distant, the believer is not truly alone if the Father is with him. May you know that nearness, which is better than any other nearness the creature can give.
We must speak to you tenderly concerning this longing. What God intends to give us, He first sets us longing for, and prayer is the embodiment of a longing inspired of God because He intends to bestow the blessing. But we must ask, what are our longings? There are many who have great longings, but they are for things that are trivial compared with the longing to find God. The Psalmist did not say, I opened my mouth and panted for the return of a friend, but I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments. It is right to long ardently after holiness, to long after the promises and the precepts of the Lord, rather than to set the whole soul upon a person or upon a habit which cannot heal.
For there is an abundance of healing power in Jesus Christ and His salvation. Not only is His fruit sweet and nourishing, but the leaves, the little things, as it were, about Christ, are full of healing virtue. These healing leaves change the life blood, affect the spirits and make the nature other than it was before. You will not find healing for a wounded heart in sharing a cigarette, for that which harms the body cannot heal the soul. The healing balm is at Calvary. When Jesus healed the sick of the palsy He said, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you. Pardon and healing were one. Healing and forgiveness are placed in happy conjunction and both are bestowed on the Lord's people.
Are you driven out of yourself, like the wounded soldier crying for someone else to carry you to the hospital of mercy, and longing for the aid of a mightier than yourself? Then be of good cheer, there shall be found a great deliverance for you. The Lord can heal the broken heart, and that healing is the work of God alone. Heartbreak for God is a sweeter thing than content in sinful pleasures, and though you can get no further than holy longing, be grateful for that longing, and let it turn toward Him.
So we pray for you, not that the Lord would bless a shared habit or an uncertain affection, but that He would bless you with Himself. We ask the Sun of Righteousness to rise upon you with healing in His wings, to forgive your sins through the blood of Jesus Christ alone, for there is no other name by which we must be saved, to turn your panting soul toward His holy commandments, and to give you the comfort of His presence, so that though you may feel alone, you may truly say, yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. May He purify your desires, guard your body as His temple, and teach you to seek first His kingdom, trusting Him with all other longings according to His perfect will.
We will continue to pray that you find God and are found in Christ, and that you know the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of your soul. Amen.
