Silas
Beloved of All
Your prayers for your daughters have been heard and I join you in bringing them before the Lord. I hear the weight you carry for your older daughter and your desire to see her protected, restored and walking in freedom again.
You are right to see that living together outside of marriage is not marriage in God's eyes. Scripture presents marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman for life, and it reserves sexual union and the sharing of a home as husband and wife for within that covenant. When that design is set aside, what looks like love often proves to be something else, and the fruit shows it. Control, manipulation, laziness, dishonesty, greed and the misuse of finances are not love. Rudeness is not a strength to be proud of. A relationship that brings exhaustion, financial hardship, division, isolation, disrespect toward family and risk to the work God has given is not providing a home or a future.
The Bible makes clear that our relationship with God comes first. When that relationship is right, our other relationships begin to come into order, and when it is not, we can trace many of our struggles back to that root. Sin always separates us from God, but God in His mercy has made a way to be reconciled through Jesus Christ alone. He does not want a distant or ritual relationship with us. He wants a close, loving relationship as a Father with His children. He claims those who belong to Him as His sons and His daughters and He promises to dwell with them and to walk with them.
That is why Scripture calls us to come out from among what is unclean and to be separate, not to love the world and its ways but to love the Father. A polluted environment will always touch those who remain in it. We see how an unhealthy household can wear down even those who want to do right, and how it brings chaos and ungratefulness and spiritual heaviness upon a whole family. Yet the same Scriptures show that God knows how to deliver those who are His. He is able to rescue and to restore.
I am praying with you that God will flood your daughter's mind with supernatural clarity. That she will see clearly that she is not being loved but being used, that she does not belong to this young man and is not bound to obey or idolize him or to put him and his family before her faith, her family, her church and the purpose God has for her life. I pray she will remember the biblical values she was raised with and that she will hear the Lord reminding her that she is His, that she belongs to Him and that He will protect her with all of His power. May He give her courage and wisdom to release herself swiftly and completely from this toxic and dishonest arrangement, to walk away without regret and to trust her family and trust Him to provide, protect and restore what has been taken, including her peace, her independence, her self worth, her fellowship and her joy.
I also pray for your younger daughter and for the example of a respectful and pure courtship that honors God. May your older daughter see the difference between a selfish arrangement outside of marriage and a beautiful courtship that leads toward a God honoring marriage, and may she desire what God desires for her.
I join you in asking for a special blessing upon your whole family. May the Lord fill your home with His Holy Spirit, saturate you with His peace, love, favor, protection and healing, guard your daughters in their work, and bring you back into unity and sweet fellowship with one another and with Him. May He lead your older daughter back to that first love for Him, where she again delights in His Word and in fellowship with His people, and may her relationship with Jesus enhance every other relationship in her life.
We trust that nothing is impossible with God and that He is able to bring freedom, protection, restoration and breakthrough as you continue to speak truth in love and to intercede for her. In Jesus name, Amen.
You are right to see that living together outside of marriage is not marriage in God's eyes. Scripture presents marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman for life, and it reserves sexual union and the sharing of a home as husband and wife for within that covenant. When that design is set aside, what looks like love often proves to be something else, and the fruit shows it. Control, manipulation, laziness, dishonesty, greed and the misuse of finances are not love. Rudeness is not a strength to be proud of. A relationship that brings exhaustion, financial hardship, division, isolation, disrespect toward family and risk to the work God has given is not providing a home or a future.
The Bible makes clear that our relationship with God comes first. When that relationship is right, our other relationships begin to come into order, and when it is not, we can trace many of our struggles back to that root. Sin always separates us from God, but God in His mercy has made a way to be reconciled through Jesus Christ alone. He does not want a distant or ritual relationship with us. He wants a close, loving relationship as a Father with His children. He claims those who belong to Him as His sons and His daughters and He promises to dwell with them and to walk with them.
That is why Scripture calls us to come out from among what is unclean and to be separate, not to love the world and its ways but to love the Father. A polluted environment will always touch those who remain in it. We see how an unhealthy household can wear down even those who want to do right, and how it brings chaos and ungratefulness and spiritual heaviness upon a whole family. Yet the same Scriptures show that God knows how to deliver those who are His. He is able to rescue and to restore.
I am praying with you that God will flood your daughter's mind with supernatural clarity. That she will see clearly that she is not being loved but being used, that she does not belong to this young man and is not bound to obey or idolize him or to put him and his family before her faith, her family, her church and the purpose God has for her life. I pray she will remember the biblical values she was raised with and that she will hear the Lord reminding her that she is His, that she belongs to Him and that He will protect her with all of His power. May He give her courage and wisdom to release herself swiftly and completely from this toxic and dishonest arrangement, to walk away without regret and to trust her family and trust Him to provide, protect and restore what has been taken, including her peace, her independence, her self worth, her fellowship and her joy.
I also pray for your younger daughter and for the example of a respectful and pure courtship that honors God. May your older daughter see the difference between a selfish arrangement outside of marriage and a beautiful courtship that leads toward a God honoring marriage, and may she desire what God desires for her.
I join you in asking for a special blessing upon your whole family. May the Lord fill your home with His Holy Spirit, saturate you with His peace, love, favor, protection and healing, guard your daughters in their work, and bring you back into unity and sweet fellowship with one another and with Him. May He lead your older daughter back to that first love for Him, where she again delights in His Word and in fellowship with His people, and may her relationship with Jesus enhance every other relationship in her life.
We trust that nothing is impossible with God and that He is able to bring freedom, protection, restoration and breakthrough as you continue to speak truth in love and to intercede for her. In Jesus name, Amen.
