{"id":119054,"date":"2026-10-19T11:51:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=119054"},"modified":"2026-10-19T11:51:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:51:49","slug":"prayer-for-my-son-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/prayer\/prayer-for-my-son-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer for My Son in Prison: The Verse That Says You&#8217;re in There Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>7 Minute, 42 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\" style=\"max-width:360px;margin:0 auto 2em;\"><div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7yKUGTRMQ8o\" title=\"One Breath Prayer for My Son in Prison\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/figure>\n\n<h2>The Letter That Sat Against the Sugar Tin All Day<\/h2>\n\n<p>The envelope came on Tuesday. It stayed propped against the sugar tin until the house finally went quiet, and now it is open on the table and you have read it four times.<\/p>\n\n<p>A prayer for my son in prison is not a sentence anyone expects to say, and when it arrives it rarely sounds devout. It comes out angry and tender in the same breath. The sixty-second prayer above says that plainly. What it had no room for is the verse that goes further \u2014 the one that does not ask you to imagine being in there with him, because it says you already are.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Hebrews 13:3 Uses a Word Found Nowhere Else in the New Testament<\/h2>\n\n<p>The verse reads: &#8220;Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Skimmed in English that reads as an instruction to feel sorry for prisoners. In Greek it is stranger than that. &#8220;As bound with them&#8221; is a single word \u2014 <em>syndedemenoi<\/em>, built from <em>syn<\/em>, &#8220;together with,&#8221; fastened onto <em>deo<\/em>, &#8220;to bind.&#8221; It is a perfect passive participle, the form Greek uses for something that was done to you and whose effect is still standing. It appears exactly once in the whole New Testament. Nowhere else. The writer could have used the ordinary verb for binding with a preposition beside it. Instead: a compound, made here, never needed again.<\/p>\n\n<p>That changes what the verse asks of you. It is not requesting that you picture a cell; it is reporting your condition. You were tied in alongside him, and the knot is still holding. The weight at that kitchen table is the verse being accurate.<\/p>\n\n<p>The command itself \u2014 <em>mimneskesthe<\/em>, remember \u2014 sits in the present tense, the form Greek uses for something you keep doing rather than do once. Which matters, because the people in this book who end up in cells know what forgetting costs.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Scripture Refuses to Ask About the Person in the Cell<\/h2>\n\n<p>Joseph went to prison innocent. Genesis 39:20 puts him &#8220;into the prison,&#8221; and the next line says &#8220;the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy.&#8221; Then the sentence that stings: &#8220;Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him&#8221; (Genesis 40:23). Two years of silence from the man who could have spoken up.<\/p>\n\n<p>Paul wrote from custody with a soldier posted beside him (Acts 28:16), signed one letter &#8220;Remember my bonds&#8221; (Colossians 4:18), and named the one man who came looking, Onesiphorus: &#8220;he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain,&#8221; who &#8220;sought me out very diligently, and found me&#8221; (2 Timothy 1:16-17). He also asked somebody to bring his coat and his books (2 Timothy 4:13). Contact with a prisoner has always been made of small, unspiritual logistics. Paper. Postage. A coat.<\/p>\n\n<p>What fifty seconds had no room for: every prisoner above was innocent, and scripture does not stop there. One of the men dying beside Jesus said it outright \u2014 &#8220;we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds&#8221; (Luke 23:41) \u2014 and was answered, &#8220;To day shalt thou be with me in paradise&#8221; (Luke 23:43).<\/p>\n\n<p>Hebrews 13:3 draws no line between the wrongly convicted and the rightly convicted. It says <em>them that are in bonds<\/em>, and stops. Whatever your son did or did not do, the command standing over you is unchanged \u2014 you do not have to settle the question of his guilt before you are allowed to pray for him, and <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-answers\/how-to-forgive-someone-who-isnt-sorry\/\">forgiveness has never required pretending nothing happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>The prayer asks that the place not make him harder than it found him. Ezekiel 36:26 stands behind that \u2014 God speaking to a people already gone to stone: &#8220;A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.&#8221; That is a covenant promise to a nation, not a receipt over one inmate. It does settle whether softening hardened people is something God does.<\/p>\n\n<p>The other half of the prayer \u2014 <em>don&#8217;t let me stop writing back<\/em> \u2014 is the half you control. Anger stops letters. If the love and the fury keep arriving in the same hour, <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/prayer\/prayer-for-letting-go-of-anger\/\">that tension is worth its own honest half hour<\/a>. If the silence runs the other way, <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/prayer\/prayer-for-an-estranged-child\/\">there is a way to keep praying across a door that stays shut<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Actions to Take This Week<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>Write<\/strong> the reply you have been putting off, even if it is four sentences about the weather and what you cooked \u2014 the postmark does more work than the content.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Check<\/strong> this week what his facility actually allows through the door \u2014 stamps, photographs, books from an approved supplier, money for the commissary \u2014 and send one permitted thing.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Say<\/strong> his name out loud to one person who will not flinch at it, so you stop carrying this as a secret as well as a grief.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>A Prayer for My Son in Prison<\/h2>\n\n<p>God, it is late and his letter is still open on the table. I love him and I am angry with him, and I have stopped trying to pick one. You know which is which better than I do. Keep him from going hard in there. Keep me from going quiet out here. Let someone in that place be decent to him this week. Let me find words for the next letter, even plain ones about nothing. Stay with him in there. Stay with me out here. Amen.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Journal Prompts<\/h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What do you actually want to say to him that you have not put in a letter yet, and what is stopping you?<\/li>\n<li>When the love and the anger show up in the same hour, which one do you let other people see?<\/li>\n<li>Who else in your life knows where he is, and what has it cost you to keep that list short?<\/li>\n<li>If he came home next month, what would you need to have already worked out in yourself?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<p>Loving him from this side of a wall is not failure \u2014 it is still being his parent. Hebrews 13:3 doesn&#8217;t ask you to imagine being bound with him. It says you already are.<\/p>\n\n<p>#PrayerForMySon #Hebrews133 #PrisonMinistry #ParentPrayers #FaithInHardPlaces<\/p>\n\n<h2>Q&amp;A: One Breath Prayer for My Son in Prison<\/h2>\n\n<h3>What can I pray for my son in prison?<\/h3>\n\n<p>Pray for the two things you cannot control and the one you can: that the place does not harden him, that someone inside treats him decently, and that you keep writing. The one-breath prayer for a son in prison asks exactly that \u2014 &#8220;Don&#8217;t let that place make him harder than it found him. Don&#8217;t let me stop writing back.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<h3>Does the Bible say anything about visiting people in prison?<\/h3>\n\n<p>Yes, directly. Jesus lists it among the things done to him personally: &#8220;I was in prison, and ye came unto me&#8221; (Matthew 25:36). Hebrews 13:3 goes further and commands ongoing remembrance of prisoners, with no condition attached about whether they belong there.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Is it wrong to be angry at my son and still pray for him?<\/h3>\n\n<p>No. Anger and love are not competing claims where one has to win; both can be true in the same hour and both can be said out loud to God. The Psalms are full of people praying while furious, and nothing in scripture asks you to resolve the feeling before you are allowed to speak.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What does Hebrews 13:3 mean by &#8220;as bound with them&#8221;?<\/h3>\n\n<p>The Greek is one word, <em>syndedemenoi<\/em>, from <em>syn<\/em> (&#8220;together with&#8221;) and <em>deo<\/em> (&#8220;to bind&#8221;) \u2014 a perfect passive participle meaning you have been bound alongside them and still are. It appears only once in the New Testament. The verse describes a condition rather than asking for an act of imagination.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Does God forgive someone who is actually guilty?<\/h3>\n\n<p>The clearest answer in the Gospels comes from a man being executed beside Jesus, who said &#8220;we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds&#8221; (Luke 23:41) and was told &#8220;To day shalt thou be with me in paradise&#8221; (Luke 23:43). He admitted the guilt and was not turned away, and nothing in that exchange depended on his sentence being unjust.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Next Envelope<\/h2>\n\n<p>The letter is still on the table. It will be there in the morning, and so will the only thing you have to decide tonight \u2014 not whether you forgive him, not whether he deserved this, only whether there is a next envelope going the other way. Joseph&#8217;s chief butler had two years to send one and never did. Onesiphorus walked around Rome asking after a man in chains until he found him. Those are the two options.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you are sitting up with one of these letters tonight, say so in the comments \u2014 first name only, or none at all. Someone reading this is at the same table.<\/p>\n\n<p>Watch the original prayer: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7yKUGTRMQ8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">One Breath Prayer for My Son in Prison<\/a> on YouTube.<\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"119054\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: 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Hebrews 13:3 goes further: a Greek word used only once in the New Testament says you are already bound in there with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":119053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prayer","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119055,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119054\/revisions\/119055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}