Silas
Beloved of All
Your prayer for this person reflects a burden that comes from the heart of God himself. When we find ourselves carrying a deep concern for someone who is resistant to Jesus, it is because God has first loved that person and desires that none should perish. That burden is a gift, and it calls us to pray and to love with patience.
Scripture shows us both the patience of God and the responsibility of man. We read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart against the Lord again and again, ten times it is recorded that he hardened his heart, and only after that persistent refusal did the Lord confirm him in that choice and make his heart firm in the direction he had already chosen. This reminds us that God is long suffering and gives time and opportunity to turn, but a person can persistently resist truth and become settled in that resistance. For that reason we pray earnestly now, while there is opportunity, that the hardness would be broken and the heart softened before it becomes fixed.
There is no other escape for any of us except through Jesus Christ. Salvation cannot come by being good enough, by keeping rules, or by being religious. If it could, Christ would not have needed to go to the cross. The fact that He did drink that cup shows that our only hope is His great salvation, which is not only forgiveness of sins but the promise of eternal life and glory with Him. That salvation was first spoken by the Lord himself and it rests on one truth, that there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who alone touches both God and man and whose blood can cleanse from all sin. At the final judgment the central question will not be a list of failures, but what a person did with Jesus and His offer of pardon.
In praying for this person, it is right to ask God to remove deception, spiritual blindness, and any influence of darkness, including any involvement with witchcraft or harmful associations, and to shine His light so clearly that the gospel can be seen for what it is. It is also right to pray for the mind and emotions, for finances that have suffered, for fear and the fear of man, for coping patterns rooted in rejection, for pride and inaction, and for hope that has been deferred. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, and He is able to bring healing and restoration. Yet the deepest need is the heart, which Scripture speaks of as the center of the will, not just the thoughts in the mind but the place where a person truly believes and chooses. We can ask God to work in that person both to will and to do according to His good pleasure, for it is God who gives the desire and the ability to respond. Our part is to pray, to speak the truth in love, and to trust the Holy Spirit to bring conviction.
The invitation of the gospel remains open. On the door of grace it is written, whosoever will may come. No one is excluded from the call to enter and receive the gift of salvation through faith in Christ, confessing Him as Lord and believing that God raised Him from the dead. If a person rejects that invitation, God allows that choice, but while breath remains the door is open. Continue to pray that this person would have eyes to see, that stagnation would be broken, that humility would replace pride, that boldness would replace fear, and that limited thinking shaped by the projections of others would be replaced by confidence in what God says is true. Pray simply and biblically, in the name of Jesus, trusting not in formulas but in the living Christ who intercedes for us, and ask that this dear one would encounter Jesus himself and know His saving grace.
Scripture shows us both the patience of God and the responsibility of man. We read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart against the Lord again and again, ten times it is recorded that he hardened his heart, and only after that persistent refusal did the Lord confirm him in that choice and make his heart firm in the direction he had already chosen. This reminds us that God is long suffering and gives time and opportunity to turn, but a person can persistently resist truth and become settled in that resistance. For that reason we pray earnestly now, while there is opportunity, that the hardness would be broken and the heart softened before it becomes fixed.
There is no other escape for any of us except through Jesus Christ. Salvation cannot come by being good enough, by keeping rules, or by being religious. If it could, Christ would not have needed to go to the cross. The fact that He did drink that cup shows that our only hope is His great salvation, which is not only forgiveness of sins but the promise of eternal life and glory with Him. That salvation was first spoken by the Lord himself and it rests on one truth, that there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who alone touches both God and man and whose blood can cleanse from all sin. At the final judgment the central question will not be a list of failures, but what a person did with Jesus and His offer of pardon.
In praying for this person, it is right to ask God to remove deception, spiritual blindness, and any influence of darkness, including any involvement with witchcraft or harmful associations, and to shine His light so clearly that the gospel can be seen for what it is. It is also right to pray for the mind and emotions, for finances that have suffered, for fear and the fear of man, for coping patterns rooted in rejection, for pride and inaction, and for hope that has been deferred. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, and He is able to bring healing and restoration. Yet the deepest need is the heart, which Scripture speaks of as the center of the will, not just the thoughts in the mind but the place where a person truly believes and chooses. We can ask God to work in that person both to will and to do according to His good pleasure, for it is God who gives the desire and the ability to respond. Our part is to pray, to speak the truth in love, and to trust the Holy Spirit to bring conviction.
The invitation of the gospel remains open. On the door of grace it is written, whosoever will may come. No one is excluded from the call to enter and receive the gift of salvation through faith in Christ, confessing Him as Lord and believing that God raised Him from the dead. If a person rejects that invitation, God allows that choice, but while breath remains the door is open. Continue to pray that this person would have eyes to see, that stagnation would be broken, that humility would replace pride, that boldness would replace fear, and that limited thinking shaped by the projections of others would be replaced by confidence in what God says is true. Pray simply and biblically, in the name of Jesus, trusting not in formulas but in the living Christ who intercedes for us, and ask that this dear one would encounter Jesus himself and know His saving grace.
