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A Prayer for Our Friends in Need of Rescue and Restoration

     Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Gal. 6:1-2

Heavenly Father, we come to your throne of grace today grateful for our salvation, yet groaning for friends in various struggles and entanglements. Grant us grace and wisdom to serve them well. None of us naturally enjoys confrontation, and we all decry self-righteous fixers who show up in our lives. But these words of Paul paint a different picture and present a different spirit for loving in messy stories.

Give us fire and kindness. If a friend loves in all seasons, that certainly must involve the seasons when we get entangled in sin. Sin brings death. We tend to forget this—death. If we saw a friend drinking poison, we wouldn’t hesitate to do something. If we saw a friend stepping close to a pit of rattlesnakes, we’d warn them. Help us hate sin enough and love our friends enough to risk getting involved. Better to risk our awkwardness and their defensiveness than to watch another life or marriage simply go down.

Give us discernment and persistence. It’s not about a rush to judgment but about a journey to restoration. Help us listen well before launching prematurely. Restoration, not rebuke, must be our primary goal. Some entanglements take a long time to get disentangled; some chains have bigger links than others; some delusions are more powerful than others. Father, we need the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus.

Give us humility and hope. The best speck removers are those who are aware of the log in their own eyes. None of us is beyond the need of grace, and none of us is beyond the reach of grace. Keep us gentle and keep us expectant. Jesus is the great Restorer, not us. This is the law of Christ we are fulfilling; his yoke we are bearing; his story that’s being written. Fill us with hope. Fill us with the hope of the gospel.

Father, as those in various local churches, help us be more welcoming of sinners; pursuant of “runners”; faithful in discipline; expectant of repentance and celebrant in restoration. Make the gospel unavoidable in our communities. Make Jesus famous in our midst. So very Amen we pray, in his holy and loving name.

 


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