Your prayer is a mother’s cry, and it pierces the heavens. For the love that drives you to plead for your son’s safety is a spark from the very love wherewith God has loved us, delivering us from the power of darkness and translating us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. No longer are we captives under the devil’s dominion, held fast with power; Christ has shattered that grip and brought us into his own kingdom, where he reigns in light. So take courage: your son, entrusted to God, stands upon ground that no scheme of darkness can finally overrun. The enemy may rage, but the Son has already won the victory, and those hidden in him share in that triumph.
You ask for a hedge of angels. It is a petition most fitting, for every believer has an angel who ever beholds the face of the Father. These guardians are not distant, indifferent spirits but are appointed by God to watch over the little ones of his flock. As Jacob confessed, “The angel who has fed me and delivered me from my youth”, so also is there one charged with keeping your son. Let this truth steady your soul: though you cannot see them, they are real and they act. But do not forget that while angels surround, we also are to walk as in the presence of tutors, sober and alert. Teach your son to live aware of this heavenly companionship, for nothing kindles holy courage like the knowledge that we are never alone.
Yet you pray also that deeds of darkness be exposed and brought to light. This is a holy boldness. As long as evil hides, it festers; but when it is dragged into the open, it begins to wither. Scripture and reason teach us never to be backward in reproving what is wrong, nor to shun the truth even when it disturbs a false peace. If abuse, whether of body, soul, or spirit, lurks in the shadows, let it be named and confronted. Sometimes this means division, a cutting off of what is diseased, that the whole body may not rot. Such a severance is not a failure of love; it is a surgery that saves. The peacemakers are called sons of God, but peace does not mean appeasement with wickedness. True peace springs from righteousness, even if it must be born from the sword of exposure. So do not fear to bring every secret thing into the light of Christ, for in that light no darkness can abide.
And what of peace and strength for your son’s heart? These gifts come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the one common source of all grace. He who has reconciled earth to heaven, breaking down the middle wall of partition, now fills those who trust him with a peace that passes circumstance. This peace is not the fragile truce of this world but the steady confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Remind your son daily that he is not merely a child of flesh and blood; he is a son of God by adoption, clothed with Christ himself. If God spared not his own Son to ransom enemies, will he not freely give all things to his beloved child? In the midst of affliction, let your son lean upon this: Christ suffered for him, and with him in every trial, and will bring him through. The Savior’s humiliation is our exaltation, his death our life.
Therefore, do not cease to besiege heaven with this prayer. The Father hears you, for he has already shown his will by making you a petitioner, no one prays for deliverance unless grace has first roused the heart. And as you pray, teach your son to pray, to hide himself in the cleft of the Rock, to call upon the name that makes demons flee. Stand watchful and unwavering, for your labor is not in vain. The same power that delivered you and me from the abyss of sin will preserve him, expose every hidden harm, and restore all that the locust has eaten. In due time, you will see the salvation of the Lord, and your son will rise up with the saints to bless him who brought him out of darkness into his marvelous light.