Silas
Beloved of All
Thank you for sharing your heart and your prayer so openly. I join you in thanking God for the way He has led you to healthy fellowships in the past, and I join you in asking Him to show the same kindness to your wife and your son.
Remember that Jesus said He Himself will build His church and the powers of hell will not prevail against it. The church is not built on a man, but on the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the foundation, and no other foundation can be laid. That is our confidence as we pray for guidance. God places the members in the body as it pleases Him, and He is able to lead your family to a fellowship where He is truly the center.
My prayer with you is for a church where the whole Bible is taught faithfully, because all Scripture is given by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, and is able to make one wise for salvation through faith in Christ. I pray that both your wife and your son will grow in the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and that they will be helped to obey all that Jesus commanded, as disciples who learn to follow Him. The path of following Jesus is a path of denying self and taking up the cross, coming to the end of our own way so that His way can shape us.
I also pray for your marriage. God shows us in Scripture that the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, and the wife is to respect her husband as the church is subject to Christ. When that love and that respect are lived out, marriage becomes a beautiful picture of Christ and His church and can be the closest thing to heaven on earth. Part of that love is finding full satisfaction in your own wife, rejoicing in her, and guarding the precious gift that belongs within the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman. It is a joy to pray for a husband and wife team in ministry who can come alongside you, like Priscilla and Aquila who together helped explain the way of God more accurately, serving with gentleness and care near to where your family lives.
A healthy church has spiritual oversight. Pray for elders and mature believers, men and women of character, who watch over the flock, pray together, and seek what is best for the body. Thank God for the blessing of older men and older women who have walked with the Lord for years and for the ministry of intercessory prayer that sustains the church day and night. Pray also for discernment, because there are those who love to have preeminence and those who compromise the truth. My prayer is that the Lord will keep your wife and son from being deceived, from false teaching and from those who have a form of godliness but deny its power, and instead bring them among kind people who are able to teach with patience and gentleness, leading others to repentance and to escape the snare of the devil.
I pray for the protection you asked for, that the Lord will keep them from sin and wrongdoing, from lies and fear, from temptation and from the evil one, and that He will give His angels charge over them. He is faithful and will guard them. Above all, I pray that their hope remains in the Son, for the record God has given is that He has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him. May your wife and son know that life fully through faith in Jesus.
So with you I bring these requests to God with thanksgiving, trusting His peace to guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and trusting that every promise of God finds its yes in Christ. Amen.
Remember that Jesus said He Himself will build His church and the powers of hell will not prevail against it. The church is not built on a man, but on the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the foundation, and no other foundation can be laid. That is our confidence as we pray for guidance. God places the members in the body as it pleases Him, and He is able to lead your family to a fellowship where He is truly the center.
My prayer with you is for a church where the whole Bible is taught faithfully, because all Scripture is given by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, and is able to make one wise for salvation through faith in Christ. I pray that both your wife and your son will grow in the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and that they will be helped to obey all that Jesus commanded, as disciples who learn to follow Him. The path of following Jesus is a path of denying self and taking up the cross, coming to the end of our own way so that His way can shape us.
I also pray for your marriage. God shows us in Scripture that the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, and the wife is to respect her husband as the church is subject to Christ. When that love and that respect are lived out, marriage becomes a beautiful picture of Christ and His church and can be the closest thing to heaven on earth. Part of that love is finding full satisfaction in your own wife, rejoicing in her, and guarding the precious gift that belongs within the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman. It is a joy to pray for a husband and wife team in ministry who can come alongside you, like Priscilla and Aquila who together helped explain the way of God more accurately, serving with gentleness and care near to where your family lives.
A healthy church has spiritual oversight. Pray for elders and mature believers, men and women of character, who watch over the flock, pray together, and seek what is best for the body. Thank God for the blessing of older men and older women who have walked with the Lord for years and for the ministry of intercessory prayer that sustains the church day and night. Pray also for discernment, because there are those who love to have preeminence and those who compromise the truth. My prayer is that the Lord will keep your wife and son from being deceived, from false teaching and from those who have a form of godliness but deny its power, and instead bring them among kind people who are able to teach with patience and gentleness, leading others to repentance and to escape the snare of the devil.
I pray for the protection you asked for, that the Lord will keep them from sin and wrongdoing, from lies and fear, from temptation and from the evil one, and that He will give His angels charge over them. He is faithful and will guard them. Above all, I pray that their hope remains in the Son, for the record God has given is that He has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him. May your wife and son know that life fully through faith in Jesus.
So with you I bring these requests to God with thanksgiving, trusting His peace to guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and trusting that every promise of God finds its yes in Christ. Amen.
