Your prayer for your sister has come before us and we join you in carrying it to the throne of grace, where our Lord delights to hear the intercessions of His people for those they love.
We pray with you that the Lord will indeed watch over her and guide her with His counsel, for it is a blessed thing when early in life a soul learns to take God for its Guide. As the Psalmist said, Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. May she bow with submission to the will of God, and so be furnished with unerring guidance, and may she avoid everything that is evil, for that is one of the great principles infused in every heart that takes God for its Guide.
We join you also in the ancient and needful prayer which our Saviour taught us, Lead us not into temptation. Temptation in itself is a thing very dangerous, and though God brings great benefit out of our being tried, it is right for the Christian to pray to be kept from it. We ask the Lord to keep your sister from evil, and to keep her feet from going into temptation. The one who prays Lead us not into temptation and then goes into it speaks falsely before God, so we pray that she may be kept from resorting to places and companions whose moral tone is bad, and from the influence of those who would lead her astray. When you think you are out of the reach of temptation you are in the very midst of it, so we ask for perpetual watchfulness over her.
We pray that the Lord will give her that angelic protection promised to those who walk in His appointed ways, for He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. That promise limits the protection to all our ways, that is, the ways of His choosing and not ways of our own presumption. May she wait upon God to know what she shall do, and lean not upon her own understanding, but trust in His providential guidance at every step. May His hand indeed hold her hand every step of the way, and may His light shine upon her path that she may see clearly and walk surely.
We ask that vain thoughts, those bad lodgers which break the windows and do such mischief within the soul, may not lodge within her, but be sent adrift, and that the Holy Spirit may dwell within her continually, touching her heart and soul, opening her eyes, and giving her that illumination of mind which comes from dwelling near God. We pray that she may know in the depths of her being that she is loved and cared for, not by any merit of her own, but as a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ alone, for all that is of nature's spinning must be unravelled and we must rest only upon Christ.
We pray that she may be covered by the precious blood of Jesus, from the top of her head to the sole of her feet, not as a charm of words but through the power of His atoning sacrifice applied by faith, that she may be cleansed, kept, and made whole spiritually, mentally and physically, and be preserved as one who belongs to the Lord. May she be granted to be a little better day by day, growing in grace, and to live a happy and healthy life in the fear of the Lord, knowing that the Holy Spirit is ever with those who are in Christ.
We will continue to remember her before the Lord, that He who has begun a good work would keep her from falling and guide her unto glory, and that she may know herself to be loved with an everlasting love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
