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Prayer Need Is Great as Abedinis Consider Their Future

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For three and a half years Christians around the world diligently prayed for the reunification of Pastor Saeed Abedini with his wife and two children as he was held prisoner in Iran.

Now, many say prayer is even more critical for the Abedinis as Naghmeh and Saeed work toward healing a very broken relationship.

CBN News spoke with Life Christian Counseling Network founder Dr. Chris Buckingham to discuss her thoughts on how the global Christian community can support the Abedini family while respecting their privacy during this difficult time.

CBN's Abigail Robertson spoke with Dr. Chris Buckingham by phone about the Abedinis situation and the need for continued prayer for the family. Click play to watch.

"We say we'll pray but we really do need to pray," Buckingham said. "We need to pray for them, we need to pray for reconciliation among the different family members, and then I also think that we need to pray for the Church as a whole."

"And we need to pray for our own hearts that we would be open to God sort of examining, correcting and revealing things in us so that maybe some of us who are struggling in some of these areas would feel the courage to come forward and seek help so that there could be real healing and reconciliation in the body of Christ," she said.

Naghmeh announced on her Facebook page that she has filed a domestic relations case against her husband, citing abuse as the reason for their broken marriage.

In her letter, Naghmeh said she hopes that God can reconcile their family's pain.

"I long more than anyone for reconciliation for our family and to be united as a family...I want our reconciliation to be strictly based on God's Word," she said. "I want us to go through counseling, which must first deal with the abuse. Then we can deal with the changes my husband and I must both make moving forward in the process of healing our marriage."

Buckingham said she is always hopeful broken marriages like Naghmeh and Saeed's can be restored.

"God is able to deliver and break captivity and bondage and heal and restore, he's able to do that," she said. "That doesn't mean it's easy, and it doesn't mean it's quick, and it doesn't mean that it's not messy."

"We have seen God move in their lives by having him be released. To think that all the sudden now God's abandoned them or that there's less of a mission on His hand in their life I think would be a mistake and would cause us not to think about God for who he really is," Buckingham said.

Rep. Robert Pittenger, who met with Saeed in Germany, said the father and husband is committed to finding God's will in the situation.

"He is very close to the Lord, we had a wonderful time of prayer. He senses God's calling on his life and he wants to please Him by way of his life and his family first," Pittenger told CBN News.

"He prayed very sincerely that he wants to be God's person and he wanted to be responsive to His will in his life and wants to be the caring husband that he desires to be," he said.

Pittenger took a pastoral tone when addressing the Saeed and Naghmeh's circumstances.

"It stands in the hand of a healing Jesus. Jesus is in the business of reconstruction," he said. "We come as imperfect vessels to the throne and the grace of God. I know he desires to be with his family and be right by the Lord and be right by them, and as I said this is a healing process."

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rep. Robert Pittenger.

CBN News is respecting the Abedini's privacy at this time, but we will keep you updated if Naghmeh or Saeed make any further public comments about their family situation.

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CBN News is a national/international, nonprofit news organization that provides programming 24 hours a day by cable, satellite and the Internet. Staffed by a group of acclaimed news professionals, CBN News delivers stories to over a million viewers each day without a specific agenda. With its headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., CBN News has bureaus in Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere around the world. What began as a segment on CBN's flagship program, The 700 Club, in the early 1980s, CBN News has since expanded into a multimedia news organization that offers today's news headlines