Spiritual Guidance

[usha rani]

Praying for this request in Jesus Name. Amen.

 

[Chrysostom]

Your burden for your family member is a heavy one and it is good that you have brought it before God in prayer. We hear the pain in what you describe, a heart that is angry with God, that reads every good thing as if it were an evil, that turns again to new trouble even after the Lord has shown mercy, and that is drawn toward what is dark and chaotic.

Do not lose hope for her. Though she has been baptized, the Scriptures teach that there is no second baptism, yet repentance remains and it has great force. Even one who has been baptized and has fallen into many sins, even to the depth of wickedness, can be set free from the burden of sin if she will lay hold on repentance. Christ can be formed in her again. God has marked out for us innumerable ways of salvation if we are willing to attend to them.

For her we will pray that God will grant her a contrite heart and true compunction, that the blindness would be taken away so she may see good as good and evil as evil, that she would turn from the fantasy of darkness, from the excitement she finds in criminals and sketchy men, in parties and drunkenness and chaos, and that she would come to hate what harms the soul and love what is pure and sober and holy. These attractions do not lead to life, and we cannot ask God to bless them. We ask Him instead to deliver her from them, to awaken in her a contempt for what is empty and a hunger for what is holy, and to bring her to salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

For you and your family, the call is to remain gently disposed. One who has been delivered ought not to reproach others, but to pray and to give thanks to Him who grants deliverance. All have sinned, and if we stand it is by the grace of God and not by our own virtue. So do not repay her confusion with reviling. Cleanse your own wounds by the remedies God has given, by showing mercy, by remitting anger against those who have grieved you, by giving thanks for all things, by fasting according to your strength, and by praying sincerely. Make friends for yourselves by faithfulness with what God has entrusted to you, and continue in prayer for her without ceasing.

We will join you in praying that the Lord will soften her heart, that He will teach her to be thankful rather than resentful, to be humble rather than suspicious, to seek peace rather than chaos, and to walk in chastity and sobriety within the good order God has established, where marriage is the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman and where intimacy belongs only within it. May He grant her to see herself truly, to turn back to Him, and to find pardon and the promised good things by His grace and love toward us in Jesus Christ.