The prayer you offer is filled with Scripture, but take heed lest the very word you speak becomes a testimony against you if it is not mixed with a proper understanding. You ask for thorns to hedge her way, referencing Hosea. You speak rightly that God sends affliction to turn the wanderer back. But consider what the thorns truly are. They are not merely outward obstacles. The Scripture says the word is choked by thorns, and “the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.” The thorns are the desires for other things growing within the soul, the pride, the fear of man, the love of a false reputation you mention. God’s hedging is often to let the soul taste the bitter fruit of its own way until it is brought to loathe the sin itself. Your desire is for her restraint, but the greater restraint is when the conscience awakens and the gall of sin becomes its own hedge, making the forbidden thing repulsive. Pray for that, for an outward hedge alone is but a restraint of the body while the soul may yet remain a willing captive.
You long for messengers with the sword of the Spirit to go and bring the word. This is a holy desire. Yet remember what has been said: in the spiritual soil, it is not the teacher’s part alone. “It is our part indeed to cast the seed, but yours to do the things spoken for your recollection, by your works to show the fruits, to pull up the thorns by the roots.” The word is cast, but what then? The devil carries it away, our sloth destroys it, the sun dries it up, the thorns choke it. Do not think that a single confrontation, even if done with zeal, finishes the work. There needs to be much husbandry afterward, driving off the birds, rooting up the thorns, filling up the stony ground. You are asking for others to go, but you yourself have a work to do: to pull up by constant remembrance and prayer the thorns you see choking her and, I dare say, choking your own soul as well. A spirit so agitated, demanding action from Eli-like pastors while recounting the sins of a niece and the failings of a sister, risks taking upon itself the seat of judgment while claiming to seek mercy. “Thou treasurest up unto thyself wrath,” the Apostle says, not God for thee. He did all to call thee to repentance. Let that long-suffering which drew you be the very thing you model, not the demand for a swift and sharp cutting off which, if it comes without the balm of a gentle spirit, may drive the wounded one further into the snare.
You fear she will treat grace as license for immorality and deny the Master. This is a right fear. For there are falls beyond recovery, not because repentance is impossible, but because the soul throws itself away. Did you not read of the traitor? When his sin was completed, remorse came, but the devil led him out of his repentance too soon, so that he reaped no fruit from it, and carried him off by a most disgraceful death. The great danger for her is not merely that she fornicates, but that after sinning, despair or a hardened pride takes hold, and she makes a truce with her shame. What is needed is not merely a rebuke that shames her into ceasing one outward act, but a revelation that leads to the kind of sorrow that produces a repentance without regret, a turning of the whole soul. To confess the specific sin of adultery to those sinned against is a fruit of that very repentance, not a condition to earn it. Beware you do not prescribe the medicine so rigidly that you crush the bruised reed before the healing can begin.
You speak of the fear of God. What is this fear? It is hatred of evil. You rebuked the sister’s post sharply, and perhaps rightly, for that sensual display is a public scandal. But examine your own heart. When you look upon the vast ruin of sin, is there any movement of the soul except a cry for fire from heaven? Look to the example of the Master. When the world called Him a deceiver, a pestilent fellow, He did not revile in return. He declared desirable the very things men avoid: poverty, mourning, persecution, evil report. He who had all power to call down legions of angels instead took the form of a servant. Where is that spirit in a prayer that catalogs the sins of others, from the adulterous woman to her sister to her teenage niece, as if laying a charge before the heavenly court? The Pharisee in the temple also began by thanking God he was not like other men, even naming their specific sins, yet he went down unjustified. The publican beat his breast and could not lift his eyes. Which posture more truly prepares the soul to be a vessel of healing for another?
Your plea for inner healing, for the restoration of the soul, this is the center. “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores.” This is the state of every soul severed from the life of God, including hers, including yours, including mine apart from grace. The healing you request is found not primarily in the rearrangement of another’s circumstances, but in the soul’s own return to the Great Physician. You ask for the Lord to be your shepherd, that you not want, and that your soul be restored. Then prove the truth of that prayer. Let your soul be led beside the still waters. The psalm you quote is not the cry of a soldier marshaling troops for a disciplinary action; it is the quiet confidence of a sheep who knows the shepherd’s voice and follows. A soul truly restored by the Shepherd does not gaze anxiously at the wolves, nor does it instruct the Shepherd on how sharply to use His rod. It rests, and in that rest, becomes a living testimony.
Do you want her delivered from evil men and imposters? Then show her the path away from them, which is the beauty of holiness, not merely the terror of consequence. She is asleep and snoring in the depth of night, and those who chase wantonness quench the light of the Spirit. They see one thing instead of another, hear one thing instead of another. She is presently drunk with a forbidden pleasure that has become her master. A harsh word alone might startle her awake into anger, not into life. A word spoken gently but firmly, as you acknowledge, must come from a heart that has first wept for her. The Apostles spoke of fearful things, yes. But remember that the same hand that warns of the sin unto death also travails in birth until Christ is formed in the hearers.
Therefore, let this be the course: continue in prayer for her hedging, understanding it as the inward awakening to the bitterness of sin. Continue asking for messengers, but most of all, become the message. Pull up the thorns of self-righteousness and angry zeal in your own field, so that when you speak, the seed is not cast into the air. Pray that she be given the gift of true repentance, which is not a terror that leads to hanging like Judas, but a sorrow that clings to the feet of the One who has power on earth to forgive sins. And trust that the righteous Judge, who alone knows how to give repentance and escape from the snare, will do what is right. Cease from the fervent cataloguing of every stumble of those around you, and commit them to God who alone can make them stand. The greatest hedge you can ask for is that the light of Christ would so shine that the darkness becomes hateful to her, and that His goodness would lead her to repentance. For a soul brought to the knowledge of its wounds is already being prepared for the only healing that matters.
Father, thank You for grace to pray for her signaling to me You are not finished working on her. Thank You for hedging her way with thorns so she can't overtake her lovers, Hosea 2:6-7, since there will be wrath and tribulation for every soul that does evil, Rom 2:9. I ask YOU warn her family and church and get her pastors and friends involved -- and we ask one pastor is family would fear God over his family and honor You above them, Matt 10:28, for the fear of man is a snare, Prov 29:25, as You prophesied to Eli in 1 Samuel 2:29-30, 1 Sam 3:13-14, and fulfilled it in 1 Sam 4:17-18...
