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You have a name on your heart. A son who walked away. A husband who will not listen. A sister who rolls her eyes every time you mention Jesus. A coworker. A people group. You have prayed. You have cried. You have wondered if anything is moving at all.
Something is moving. But something is also resisting. Salvation is free, yet souls are contested. If you do not understand the war, you will mistake a spiritual blockade for a stubborn personality.
The Battle Behind the Blindness
Paul pulled back the curtain when he wrote, "But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them" (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).
The Greek word for blinded is tuphloo. It means to make blind, to darken the mind, to dull a person's ability to discern. Your loved one is not your enemy. Your loved one is blinded. Why does that matter? Because you do not argue a blind man into seeing. You pray for his eyes to open.
God wants to save their soul. Peter wrote, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).
You are not twisting God's arm when you pray for salvation. You are agreeing with His heart. That is your confidence. That is where the warfare starts.
Pray With Precision
Vague prayers will not do. Ask the Father to draw them. Jesus said, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:44).
Ask Him to open their eyes. Jesus sent Paul "to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God" (Acts 26:18).
Ask Him to open their heart. When Lydia heard the gospel, "The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul" (Acts 16:14).
Ask Him to send a voice. Jesus told His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest" (Matthew 9:37-38). You may not be the one they will listen to. God has someone they will.
Persist Past the Pushback
It may look worse before it looks better. They may harden. They may run. Do not read resistance as defeat. Paul wrote, "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart" (Galatians 6:9).
Prayer plows hard ground. Prayer waters buried seed. Prayer holds the line when nothing seems to change. So keep praying. Keep loving. Keep your mouth off their faults and on God's promises.
The enemy has blinded their mind, but he did not pay for their soul. Jesus did. So stand. Pray. Refuse to let go. War for that soul until the veil lifts and the light of the gospel breaks in.
