Your urgent cry concerning your husband and your marriage has been heard, and it is carried with great sorrow and with earnest prayer before the Lord who sees all things.
The grief you bear is not light, for the sin which wounds your home is first and most terribly a sin against God Himself. As it has been well said, against God, and God only, is such sin committed, and to do this evil in His sight is horrible. Will a rebel talk treason in the presence of his king. Yet the Lord who sees the adultery and the unfaithfulness sees also your tears, and He is a God who both judges sin and delights to show mercy to the sinner who turns to Him.
You have asked that this unholy relationship with any other woman but yourself might be ended and finished forever. We will not ask God to bless what He has called sin, nor to prosper what breaks the covenant He ordained. Marriage, as the Scripture teaches, is not a mere convenience but a sacred affinity, the result of choice on both sides, cemented by mutual love, wherein husband and wife become one. It is a lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, and sex and living together belong within it alone. What violates that covenant must be repented of and forsaken, not celebrated or continued. Therefore we join you in praying not with a formula of decreeing, but with humble supplication, that God in His mercy would sever that sinful bond, bring deep conviction of sin, and put an end to it in every way.
There is hope for such restoration, though the wound is deep. Peter fell grievously, denying his Lord, yet his story is not called his fall only, but his restoration. He was down, but he was soon up again. Two means were used, the crowing of the cock and a look from the Lord, and behind that look was the prevailing prayer of Christ Himself, for Jesus had prayed for him that his faith fail not. That same Lord Jesus lives and intercedes now. He is the God of peace who has prepared everything necessary for a perfect reconciliation, for God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. He has committed unto His people the word of reconciliation, and we desire that reconciliation to be wrought at once by the power of the Holy Spirit.
What Peter knew after his restoration he would tell to all who have fallen, do not wander, there is no good in it, do not go away from Jesus, there is no profit to be found there, come back to Him, there is such peace, such rest with Him. So we pray that your husband may hear that same look of Christ, that he may go out from the place of sin as Peter went out and wept bitterly, and find abundant assurance of forgiveness only in Christ, and then be truly restored to walk faithfully before God and before you.
Let us pray together.
O Lord, holy and merciful Father, You see this marriage and this home. You hate sin, yet You are plenteous in mercy to all who call upon You through Jesus Christ, and there is salvation in no other. We ask You to work conviction in the heart of this husband, to make him to know his sin against You, to turn from every strange relationship and to forsake it utterly. Break, we beseech You, every tie that is against Your holy law, and let it be ended and put away. Have mercy upon this wife in her anguish, comfort her heart, sustain her faith, and guard her from bitterness. Reconcile, if it be Your will, this husband and wife to Yourself and to one another, and make this marriage to reflect that mystery of Christ and His Church, where the Lamb has proved His love by His wounds and blood. Give wisdom to seek godly counsel and help in the church, and strength to walk in holiness in the days to come. We ask this not by our own power or declaration, but in the prevailing name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who ever lives to pray for His own. Amen.
