Silas
Beloved of All
The matter you are bringing before the Lord is, at its root, a matter of the heart. We can fast and we can pray and we can plead the Scriptures, and that is right and good. But what you are really asking God to do is something no amount of human effort can produce: a brand-new heart in someone who has chosen to harden her own. That is the kind of miracle only the new covenant promises.
Think carefully about what it means to harden a heart. Scripture shows that a person can stiffen their own heart against the Lord time after time. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, it was his own doing, ten times over. He refused to yield. Only then, after he had repeatedly set his will against God, did the Lord make that hardness firm. It is a solemn pattern. When a man or woman hears truth, receives counsel, feels the pull of the Spirit, yet keeps walking away and refusing to answer, they are not merely drifting; they are actively hardening themselves. That is what makes your prayers so urgent. You are asking God to intervene before the hardening becomes fixed.
And yet, the very fact that you are praying this way touches on the hope of the new covenant. Under the old covenant, everything depended on the people’s obedience, and they broke it constantly. But God promised a day when He would take out the heart of stone and put a heart of flesh within, when He would write His law on the inward parts so that it would rise from the will, not from external pressure. That is exactly what the person you love needs. She needs something no number of texts, phone calls, or even pastoral visits can force. She needs to be born from above. She needs the true circumcision, not of the flesh, but of the heart, where the love of sin is cut away and a new desire for God takes its place.
While you wait and pray, guard your own heart carefully. It is easy for hurt to turn into bitterness, and for a legitimate grief to become an idol of resentment that takes up more room than trust in God. You have mentioned fasting and praying for mercy. That mercy must begin in you as well, so that you do not find yourself secretly blessing yourself in your own heart, thinking you will have peace even while the imagination of your heart nurses wounds. Keep your own heart soft. God sees what is in the heart, and He weighs the motives as much as the actions. If your deep desire is for her salvation and restoration for the glory of God, that very desire is precious to Him, even if you are not able to bring it to pass yourself. David had it in his heart to build a temple for God, and though God did not let him do it, God counted it to him as good. So your longing, as long as it is pure, is not wasted.
The outward actions you described, the adultery, the broken vows, the refusal to reconcile, are the symptoms of an idolatrous heart that has placed other loves above the Lord. Jesus taught that adultery itself begins inwardly, in the gaze and the desire, long before it becomes an outward act. So the problem is older and deeper than the decisions that are now causing you pain. And only a new heart, a new creation, can change that. Mere behavior modification will fail, just as surface revivals that never reach the heart always fade. We must ask God for the real thing: that His light would shine into the darkness of her understanding, that He would open her eyes so she turns from the power of Satan to God, and that she would receive the inheritance of the sanctified through faith in Christ.
Do not lose heart. The God who said He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked is the same God who can still break through. But while you pray, rest in this: the covenant God has made with us in Christ is not one that can be broken by human failure. Her unfaithfulness, and even the fracture of a marriage covenant, does not nullify God’s faithfulness or His power to save. So keep praying with a heart that is clean before Him, stay merciful so that you yourself may receive mercy, and leave the timing and the method of the heart surgery entirely in His hands.
Think carefully about what it means to harden a heart. Scripture shows that a person can stiffen their own heart against the Lord time after time. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, it was his own doing, ten times over. He refused to yield. Only then, after he had repeatedly set his will against God, did the Lord make that hardness firm. It is a solemn pattern. When a man or woman hears truth, receives counsel, feels the pull of the Spirit, yet keeps walking away and refusing to answer, they are not merely drifting; they are actively hardening themselves. That is what makes your prayers so urgent. You are asking God to intervene before the hardening becomes fixed.
And yet, the very fact that you are praying this way touches on the hope of the new covenant. Under the old covenant, everything depended on the people’s obedience, and they broke it constantly. But God promised a day when He would take out the heart of stone and put a heart of flesh within, when He would write His law on the inward parts so that it would rise from the will, not from external pressure. That is exactly what the person you love needs. She needs something no number of texts, phone calls, or even pastoral visits can force. She needs to be born from above. She needs the true circumcision, not of the flesh, but of the heart, where the love of sin is cut away and a new desire for God takes its place.
While you wait and pray, guard your own heart carefully. It is easy for hurt to turn into bitterness, and for a legitimate grief to become an idol of resentment that takes up more room than trust in God. You have mentioned fasting and praying for mercy. That mercy must begin in you as well, so that you do not find yourself secretly blessing yourself in your own heart, thinking you will have peace even while the imagination of your heart nurses wounds. Keep your own heart soft. God sees what is in the heart, and He weighs the motives as much as the actions. If your deep desire is for her salvation and restoration for the glory of God, that very desire is precious to Him, even if you are not able to bring it to pass yourself. David had it in his heart to build a temple for God, and though God did not let him do it, God counted it to him as good. So your longing, as long as it is pure, is not wasted.
The outward actions you described, the adultery, the broken vows, the refusal to reconcile, are the symptoms of an idolatrous heart that has placed other loves above the Lord. Jesus taught that adultery itself begins inwardly, in the gaze and the desire, long before it becomes an outward act. So the problem is older and deeper than the decisions that are now causing you pain. And only a new heart, a new creation, can change that. Mere behavior modification will fail, just as surface revivals that never reach the heart always fade. We must ask God for the real thing: that His light would shine into the darkness of her understanding, that He would open her eyes so she turns from the power of Satan to God, and that she would receive the inheritance of the sanctified through faith in Christ.
Do not lose heart. The God who said He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked is the same God who can still break through. But while you pray, rest in this: the covenant God has made with us in Christ is not one that can be broken by human failure. Her unfaithfulness, and even the fracture of a marriage covenant, does not nullify God’s faithfulness or His power to save. So keep praying with a heart that is clean before Him, stay merciful so that you yourself may receive mercy, and leave the timing and the method of the heart surgery entirely in His hands.
