Silas
Beloved of All
We join you in thanking God for what He has done. After more than four months of silence He has opened a door for peace and for restored video time with your young son, and that is His mercy. What God does endures, and we pray He will establish this restored connection on a firm foundation and use it for lasting good.
We also pray with you for a renewed return to your first love, Jesus Christ. He stands at the door and knocks, and when we open to Him He comes in. As you freely receive His love you will be able to freely pour that love on your son. May your conversations be shaped first by His will and His words. Pray that your son will come to know God as gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and that he will learn to love God with all his heart and to love others, while being brought up in the training and instruction of the Lord through the Scriptures which are able to make us wise for salvation and equip us for every good work. We pray you will grow in understanding each other, even in language, and that God will help you both to guard your tongues and to speak with grace. Your desire to hold nothing against his mother but to place her in God's hands is right and Christlike.
We agree with you in praying for her to come to her senses. Like the prodigal who finally saw his condition and returned to his father, we pray the Holy Spirit will bring conviction of sin and grant true repentance. The Lord in His love sometimes hedges a way with thorns so that a person cannot keep pursuing what is destroying them, not to harm but to turn them back. We pray that any way that leads away from God would be blocked and that she would turn from the broad road that leads to destruction and seek the narrow gate that leads to life.
Scripture is clear that eternal life is in the Son. Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not have life but remains under wrath. That is why repentance is so urgent. The gospel calls all people everywhere to repent and turn to God. True repentance is not only words or tears about consequences but a real change of mind and direction that shows itself in fruit. John the Baptist called for fruit that proves repentance is real, because without that fruit there is no evidence of a changed heart.
Part of that fruit is reckoning the flesh as crucified with Christ and giving it no place. The deeds of the flesh are plain, including sexual immorality and living a lie, and Scripture warns that those who practice such things without repentance remain outside. God cannot be mocked. We reap what we sow, and despising spiritual things for the desires of the flesh, as Esau did when he despised his birthright, always leads to loss. God designed the gift of intimacy to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, to drink water from your own well and to rejoice with the wife of your youth, not to be scattered outside that covenant. We do not ask God to bless what He calls sin. We ask Him to bring cleansing, forgiveness through Jesus, and a new life.
A practical part of that new life is bringing sin into the light. Confessing sin to faithful shepherds and walking in honest accountability, turning away from places and habits that feed temptation such as social media that encourages pursuit of others, are ways that a changed heart shows itself. We pray her pastors will see clearly, speak the truth in love, and lovingly confront what needs to be confronted.
We also pray for protection for your son and for you both. We ask the Father to keep your son from evil and to guard you both from the evil one and from those who would lead astray, from deception and temptation and from the influence of wicked spiritual forces. May He keep your son from fear and lies and keep your home in truth and peace, and may He help his mother to act in a way that helps these calls go smoothly and does good and not harm.
Father, we thank You for the mercy You have already shown in restoring time together. Continue that good work. Draw each heart closer to Jesus, form in this child a true knowledge of Your gracious character, and bring deep and lasting repentance where it is needed so that sin is forsaken and nothing worse follows. Let there be a clear turning from sin and a going forward that sins no more, by Your grace and for Your glory. We ask this in the name of Jesus.
We also pray with you for a renewed return to your first love, Jesus Christ. He stands at the door and knocks, and when we open to Him He comes in. As you freely receive His love you will be able to freely pour that love on your son. May your conversations be shaped first by His will and His words. Pray that your son will come to know God as gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and that he will learn to love God with all his heart and to love others, while being brought up in the training and instruction of the Lord through the Scriptures which are able to make us wise for salvation and equip us for every good work. We pray you will grow in understanding each other, even in language, and that God will help you both to guard your tongues and to speak with grace. Your desire to hold nothing against his mother but to place her in God's hands is right and Christlike.
We agree with you in praying for her to come to her senses. Like the prodigal who finally saw his condition and returned to his father, we pray the Holy Spirit will bring conviction of sin and grant true repentance. The Lord in His love sometimes hedges a way with thorns so that a person cannot keep pursuing what is destroying them, not to harm but to turn them back. We pray that any way that leads away from God would be blocked and that she would turn from the broad road that leads to destruction and seek the narrow gate that leads to life.
Scripture is clear that eternal life is in the Son. Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not have life but remains under wrath. That is why repentance is so urgent. The gospel calls all people everywhere to repent and turn to God. True repentance is not only words or tears about consequences but a real change of mind and direction that shows itself in fruit. John the Baptist called for fruit that proves repentance is real, because without that fruit there is no evidence of a changed heart.
Part of that fruit is reckoning the flesh as crucified with Christ and giving it no place. The deeds of the flesh are plain, including sexual immorality and living a lie, and Scripture warns that those who practice such things without repentance remain outside. God cannot be mocked. We reap what we sow, and despising spiritual things for the desires of the flesh, as Esau did when he despised his birthright, always leads to loss. God designed the gift of intimacy to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, to drink water from your own well and to rejoice with the wife of your youth, not to be scattered outside that covenant. We do not ask God to bless what He calls sin. We ask Him to bring cleansing, forgiveness through Jesus, and a new life.
A practical part of that new life is bringing sin into the light. Confessing sin to faithful shepherds and walking in honest accountability, turning away from places and habits that feed temptation such as social media that encourages pursuit of others, are ways that a changed heart shows itself. We pray her pastors will see clearly, speak the truth in love, and lovingly confront what needs to be confronted.
We also pray for protection for your son and for you both. We ask the Father to keep your son from evil and to guard you both from the evil one and from those who would lead astray, from deception and temptation and from the influence of wicked spiritual forces. May He keep your son from fear and lies and keep your home in truth and peace, and may He help his mother to act in a way that helps these calls go smoothly and does good and not harm.
Father, we thank You for the mercy You have already shown in restoring time together. Continue that good work. Draw each heart closer to Jesus, form in this child a true knowledge of Your gracious character, and bring deep and lasting repentance where it is needed so that sin is forsaken and nothing worse follows. Let there be a clear turning from sin and a going forward that sins no more, by Your grace and for Your glory. We ask this in the name of Jesus.
