You have laid your heart bare before the throne, and that is no small thing. Some prayers come out of us like sighs that have no words, but yours has been shaped by the promises of God themselves. That is the mark of a soul that has learned where its help comes from, and I would have you take courage from the very fact that you pray as you do. The Scriptures have become the timber out of which you build your petitions, and that is a far sturdier thing than the driftwood of our own fears. God hears the voice of His own Word when it comes back to Him carried on the sighs of His children.
You are watching, I think, as a father watches from the shore while his daughter’s little boat has drifted into troubled water. You cannot row out to her; you cannot shout instructions across the waves that she is willing yet to hear. But you have done what love can do: you have sent your cries straight to the Pilot who walks on the sea and who can speak, “Peace, be still,” and make the wind obey Him. Do not think those cries are weak. The prayer that wrestles is the prayer that prevails. When a soul is dear to us and lies in some bondage of deception, we often feel that nothing is happening because we see no change. But prayer is not a lever we see moving, it is a root that is growing in the dark, and one day the shoot breaks through the soil and you see what God has been doing all along.
Let me speak to you of your daughter for a moment, not as one who knows her, but as one who knows the Shepherd under whose crook she still remains. You say she is blinded and bound. That is a hard thing for a parent’s heart to bear. But I want you to remember something: the Spirit of God knows how to make a soul miserable in its sin without crushing it to despair. There is a holy bondage that comes before a true liberty. Before a man or woman will ever prize the great Emancipator, they must feel the fetters. The Spirit takes no delight in our sorrows, but He is too faithful a Physician to let the disease go unfelt. If your daughter is beginning, even now, to taste the bitterness of what she once called sweet, that is not a sign God has abandoned her. It may be the very first work of His hand upon her, opening her eyes in the darkness so that she begins to know she is in the dark.
The chains you speak of, obligation, manipulation, a false weight upon her worth, are real, and they are not to be trifled with. But Christ has come to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. One look from Jesus can do more than a thousand of our arguments. You remember Peter: he had denied his Master with oaths and curses, and he did not even know what he had done. He was asleep in a spiritual slumber, under the spell of the enemy. The cock crowed and he did not hear it. But then the Lord turned and looked upon him, and that look broke him, and in the breaking was his recovery. A single glance from those eyes of love, and Peter went out and wept bitterly, but those tears were the doorway back. So pray confidently that your daughter may meet the eyes of Jesus. He is not far from her. He knows every motion of her heart, even the ones she cannot name. And when He looks, chains that seemed iron become as threads burned through.
You have asked that she might see herself as He sees her, fearfully and wonderfully made, with purpose anointed by Him. That is a request that touches the very heart of the Gospel, for Christ restores that which He did not take away. When a sinner comes to Him, He does not simply patch up the ruins; He makes the soul as though it had never fallen. I do not mean that the scars vanish, or that we forget the lessons learned in the mire. But the standing before God, the acceptance, the place of a beloved child, all this is given back with such freeness and completeness that it is as if the fall had never been. The Father does not hold His restored ones at arm’s length, constantly reminding them of what they did. He puts a ring on their finger and shoes on their feet and calls for the music to begin. That is what you are asking for your girl, and it is exactly what God delights to give.
As for the scheming of others who seek to divide your household and entangle your child, I bid you rest that burden upon the shoulders of Him who has said, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.” The enemy has many devices, but he has not one that can outmaneuver the wisdom of God. You have seen a spider weave a web with great care, stretching its threads this way and that, thinking it has secured its prey. Then the maid comes with a broom, and in a moment the whole elaborate plot is swept aside. So it is with the plans of those who set themselves against the heritage of the Lord’s servants. The Lord knows how to turn their own counsels upside down and to make the mischief they intended serve a purpose they never dreamed. Do not trouble yourself with watching their movements. God frustrates the plots of the enemy often while we sleep, and we wake to find the snare broken and the bird flown free.
The unity and joy you long to see return to your gatherings, the laughter around the table, the sense of a common bond and a shared peace, these are not small things to bring before the Lord. He who sits in the heavens laughs, and He loves to put laughter into the homes of His people once again. You speak of your house as a place that has known a shadow. I would remind you that the Lord is able to make the latter days of a household better than the beginning, just as He did for Job. Keep the door of your home open in spirit, keep the lamp of kindness burning, and let your prayer be a constant incense. Restoration often comes quietly, like the dawn, which does not shout its arrival but gradually fills the whole sky with light.
And now, before I send you on your way, I would commend you and your household, and this dear daughter of yours, into the hands that were pierced for us.
Father, whose mercy is in the heavens and whose faithfulness reaches unto the clouds, look upon this pleading parent, and upon the child who has wandered into a far country. Do the work that no man or woman can do: break every snare, expose every deception, and let the Light of Life shine into that heart. Speak the word, “I am thy salvation,” and let it be heard in the depths. Restore the years that the locust has eaten, and bring back laughter and unity to this family. Hold them together in the bonds of Christ, and let this year be marked not by the schemes of the adversary, but by the miracles of Thy right hand. We cast every burden at Thy feet, trusting not in our own strength, but in the mighty name of Jesus, our Redeemer. Amen.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
