You bring this request for your daughter’s care, her medicines and sugar checks, that she be good and not bad, and you seal it with the name of Jesus Christ. That is well, for no other name is given under heaven whereby we must be saved. But observe the root of all true goodness. You desire her to be good, and that is a right desire, but let us never deceive ourselves. There is no goodness in any of us by nature. Good works in sinners are nothing but splendid sins. No work is good unless God has commanded it, no motive is good but His glory, and even our best deeds are so spotted that they need washing in the blood of Christ to avail anything. The first business for your daughter, and for you who pray, is not to be found with a surface righteousness, but to be cleansed from all sin by that precious blood.
You ask that she have no problems. The blood of Christ, then, is all-sufficient. There is no case it cannot meet. Whatever difficulty of body or soul arises, let the blood be applied by faith, and there is a shelter. It is God’s sight of the blood that secures the salvation of the redeemed. Do not trust in a good frame of health nor despair in a bad report; Christ’s blood is no more able to save in a good frame than in a bad one. Your happiness will be in danger if you begin to put good frames and feelings in the place of the blood of Christ. Whether the sugar level is steady or erratic, whether she seems good or manifests the old nature, the plea remains the same: the blood of the everlasting covenant.
Yet you also ask for practical mercies, help with the medicines and checks. That is not a small thing. No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly. The same God who painted the rose and feeds the ravens cares for the bodies of His children. Let your request be made known with thanksgiving, and then leave it with Him. He has said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” There are no imaginable troubles through which this promise will not carry us. Do not be afraid with any amazement, like Sarah, whose daughters you are if you trust. Be calm and confident; the bitter medicines are nauseous, but they are permitted for good.
Pray, then, with this twist: not first for her temporal discipline to make her good, but that she may be found in Christ, receiving a new heart. When Christ saves her, she will cry, “Lord, what will You have me do?” Then the mundane duty of checking blood and taking medicine becomes a business that melts into religion. May the Good Physician grant both the outward regimen and the inward cure. And for yourself, let your soul be joyful in your God, come what may, for the blood of Jesus pleads for the thief, the struggling, the weak, and shall never lose its power.