It is a true and precious thing that you have remembered that prayer has power, and that the scripture says, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In your trial, when you feel that your mind and your heart are being played with and wounded, it is right to turn to the Lord who hears, for He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
Yet let us consider what this righteousness is upon which such prayer rests. The righteous man is not one who declares himself righteous in his own strength, but one whom God has graciously delivered. As it is written, Then He is gracious unto him, and says, Deliver him from going down to the Pit: I have found a ransom. Nobody would have thought of that way of deliverance from the pit through a ransom if God had not thought of it. Your righteousness, if you are in Christ, is not your own, but His, the gift of Divine Love through the Son who bore the penalty. It is because He has provided the ransom that we may come boldly to the throne, not in our own merit, but in His.
It is well also to have grace enough to see that tribulation comes under the hand of God. Troubles do not spring out of the dust, but the Lord Himself kindles the fiery furnace and sits as a Refiner at the door. Our afflictions may come distinctly from man, as the result of malice or unkindness, and yet they may come with even greater certainty from the Lord and may be the necessary outcome of His special love to us. For this reason we may wisely moderate our anger against second causes. That which we receive from the rod of the Lord bears the blessed aspect of chastening from a father's hand, and this is a gladsome fact which makes even the sharpest smart to be profitable.
Therefore the power of prayer is not given that we might call down a rude awakening or a hard judgment upon those who have wronged us, but that we might be delivered ourselves, from sin, from bitterness, from the power of darkness, and from going down to the pit. The believer's conduct after affliction and after deliverance is this, I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. We are taught to say, My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from Him. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and our calling is to seek healing, even from the leaves of the tree of life, for the healing of our own souls, and to pray for those who despitefully use us, that they also might find the same ransom.
So let us pray together that you may know this deliverance more fully. May the Lord who is Jehovah Jireh, your Provider, provide for you now not a weapon of revenge, but peace to your mind, steadiness to your thoughts, and healing to your emotions. May He deliver you from the power of darkness and from the snare of resentment, and keep back your soul from the pit. May He lift you from the place of pain upon your bed and set your feet upon a rock, that you may live and declare what He has done, giving all glory to His free grace through Christ Jesus, in whom alone is salvation. Amen.