Silas
Beloved of All
Your suffering and the danger you have faced have been heard, and it is right to bring this before the Lord. To receive shocks while showering, to be wounded in your own home, to have medical care and then be met with no apology, no help, and instead threats, demands for payment, and efforts to falsify what is true, is a heavy burden. God sees what has been done in secret and in the open, and He cares both for your safety and for justice.
You have asked for prayer that hard hearts would be softened, and Scripture speaks very solemnly about this. In the account of Pharaoh we are told many times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart against the Lord. Only after that repeated choice does Scripture say that the Lord made his heart firm or stiff in the course he had already chosen. Two different ideas are described there. The first is a person setting his own will against God and against what is right. The second is God strengthening a person in the position that person has insisted on taking. God is fully sovereign and yet each person remains responsible for the course he chooses. God will let a person set his direction, and if he persists He may confirm him in it. That is why hardening the heart again and again is so dangerous. A person can persist until repentance becomes very hard to find. Scripture warns that the Spirit of God will not always strive with a person, and that a hard and unrepentant heart stores up wrath for the day when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. This is not to make God the villain, but to show how serious it is to refuse His call to turn from evil. We pray that these people have not come to that place, and that while there is still time they will hear His voice and turn.
You also prayed that the fear of God would come upon them, and that is a biblical prayer. The fear of the Lord in Scripture is not only being afraid that God will punish, though His judgment is real. In its fullest sense it is reverent awe before a holy and loving God, a fear of grieving Him, and with it a hatred of evil because God hates evil. It is described as the beginning and the sum of true knowledge. When a person truly fears the Lord he cannot be comfortable with deception, with asking others to file a false report, with calling a life threatening danger a matter of comfort, or with threatening those who are vulnerable. To fear God is to love truth and to hate what harms others. We are praying that God would awaken that kind of fear in each person involved, the owner, the representatives and the lawyer, that they would come to hate the evil that has been done and to love what is honest and merciful.
God is a God of righteousness and justice. He desires justice to prevail, and when justice is twisted and judgment is turned away, foundations are shaken. He is also merciful and patient, not wanting anyone to perish but wanting all to come to repentance through Jesus Christ alone. That is why we pray not only for your protection and for what is fair and right regarding compensation and a safe place to live, but above all for their souls, that God would take away a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, a heart that can feel remorse, speak truth, apologize, and make restoration where possible.
We will continue to pray for you, for your healing and peace, and for this situation to be turned toward truth. Ask God to guard your own heart from being consumed by fear or bitterness. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Fear and faith cannot rule together, so bring your anxiety to Him daily and let Him be your confidence. Seek wise and lawful help to document what has happened and to protect yourself, and leave vengeance to the Lord who judges righteously.
Father, in the name of Jesus we bring this wounded one before You and we bring these hard hearts before You. You see the shocks, the wounds, the medical reports, the false statements and the threats. We ask for Your protection and for justice to be done. We ask that You would break through hardness, grant the gift of repentance, and place within each person a true fear of You that hates evil and loves truth. Give them a heart of flesh that can hear Your call, submit to You, confess what is wrong, and seek to make it right. Keep Your child in peace, heal what has been harmed, and let Your will be done. Amen.
You have asked for prayer that hard hearts would be softened, and Scripture speaks very solemnly about this. In the account of Pharaoh we are told many times that Pharaoh hardened his own heart against the Lord. Only after that repeated choice does Scripture say that the Lord made his heart firm or stiff in the course he had already chosen. Two different ideas are described there. The first is a person setting his own will against God and against what is right. The second is God strengthening a person in the position that person has insisted on taking. God is fully sovereign and yet each person remains responsible for the course he chooses. God will let a person set his direction, and if he persists He may confirm him in it. That is why hardening the heart again and again is so dangerous. A person can persist until repentance becomes very hard to find. Scripture warns that the Spirit of God will not always strive with a person, and that a hard and unrepentant heart stores up wrath for the day when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. This is not to make God the villain, but to show how serious it is to refuse His call to turn from evil. We pray that these people have not come to that place, and that while there is still time they will hear His voice and turn.
You also prayed that the fear of God would come upon them, and that is a biblical prayer. The fear of the Lord in Scripture is not only being afraid that God will punish, though His judgment is real. In its fullest sense it is reverent awe before a holy and loving God, a fear of grieving Him, and with it a hatred of evil because God hates evil. It is described as the beginning and the sum of true knowledge. When a person truly fears the Lord he cannot be comfortable with deception, with asking others to file a false report, with calling a life threatening danger a matter of comfort, or with threatening those who are vulnerable. To fear God is to love truth and to hate what harms others. We are praying that God would awaken that kind of fear in each person involved, the owner, the representatives and the lawyer, that they would come to hate the evil that has been done and to love what is honest and merciful.
God is a God of righteousness and justice. He desires justice to prevail, and when justice is twisted and judgment is turned away, foundations are shaken. He is also merciful and patient, not wanting anyone to perish but wanting all to come to repentance through Jesus Christ alone. That is why we pray not only for your protection and for what is fair and right regarding compensation and a safe place to live, but above all for their souls, that God would take away a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, a heart that can feel remorse, speak truth, apologize, and make restoration where possible.
We will continue to pray for you, for your healing and peace, and for this situation to be turned toward truth. Ask God to guard your own heart from being consumed by fear or bitterness. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Fear and faith cannot rule together, so bring your anxiety to Him daily and let Him be your confidence. Seek wise and lawful help to document what has happened and to protect yourself, and leave vengeance to the Lord who judges righteously.
Father, in the name of Jesus we bring this wounded one before You and we bring these hard hearts before You. You see the shocks, the wounds, the medical reports, the false statements and the threats. We ask for Your protection and for justice to be done. We ask that You would break through hardness, grant the gift of repentance, and place within each person a true fear of You that hates evil and loves truth. Give them a heart of flesh that can hear Your call, submit to You, confess what is wrong, and seek to make it right. Keep Your child in peace, heal what has been harmed, and let Your will be done. Amen.
