A Prayer Those With A Heavy Heart

 

 

God of compassion, mercy, kindness and love, You see the tears and know the hurts of Your people today, even as You did in the days when Your Son walked on planet earth.  This week we lift into Your presence those with heavy hearts.  We realize that many things cause heavy hearts, but those for whom we pray this week are the mothers and fathers who faithfully taught their children of Your love and forgiving grace, but now find them walking in a way which gives little evidence of their accepting the teaching of their youth.  Some like the prodigal son live in the far off country.  Their life style causes many a faithful servant of Yours to wonder if their loved one is a member of the elect. We pray for those mothers and fathers who would be willing to be numbered among the lost rather than have one of their own flesh and blood spend eternity in the bottomless pit.  Can it really be that some members, who have known the blessing of being members of a covenant family, are lost and will be turned away from heavens gate?

 

We pray this week for those mothers and fathers who are asking themselves if it could be that some people are intentionally and irretrievably consigned to perdition.  Are some people irredeemable?  Were they never meant to be part of the redeemed?  We are praying for those who faintly remember that Paul wrote of Jacob being loved, but Esau being hated?  Is it possible that the name of one of their flesh and blood does not appear in the Lamb’s Book of Life?  

 

Father we pray for those who carry such a burden and we ask that Your Holy Spirit may remind them that no human being is unredeemable.  That Paul’s statement about Your love for Jacob and Your hatred of Esau was a reference to the nation of Israel and the nation of Edom.  You have said in Your Word that “Your everlasting desire is that all men might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”  Again we read, “You are  patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  Surely the salvation of the thief on the cross is evidence of Your readiness to reach out and claim Your own even at the eleventh hour.  

 

We pray that parents, burdened with the present rejection of the faith by a son or daughter, may throw themselves on the promise of Your Holy Word.  May they cling to the promise that,  “If we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  Let them lay claim to that promise as they place their loved one into Your hands, trusting that You will call forth faith and surrender according to Your plan and purpose.  Give to all who bear the burden of the heavy heart the strength, the faith, and the peace that refuses to surrender their loved one to anyone but You.

 

Hear this prayer, offered in the name of Jesus.    Amen