Most mornings I wake up sometime after 4:00 feeling the urgency to pray for a prodigal. Most of the time it is the same prodigal, and this morning was no exception.

However, this morning, I also felt the need to pray for all prodigals this prayer: Deliver them from evil (from The Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:13, Luke 11:4).

Doesn’t that just say it all?

I couldn’t sleep for quite a while, but apparently I dosed back off, because the next thing I know I am awakening from a dream.

In this dream, I see a prodigal walking by a sink of dirty dishes piled really high in a sink to add one more dirty dish. Let me describe this stack to you. It was probably three feet above the top of the sink, so the next dirty dish had to be placed just right so that the whole thing wouldn’t topple, but those dirty dishes were stacked just right and tight.

In my dream, this prodigal had another person walking alongside.

When I woke up, I knew instantly that those dirty dishes represented sins in the life of the prodigal, and that he/she had accomplices/companions in sin walking alongside him/her.

Again, I felt the need to pray: Deliver them from evil. They both need deliverance from evil.

A person can stack the sins one on top of the other, but eventually that precarious stack will topple. The Bible tells us in Numbers 32:23, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (KJV).

So many times, sins will bring a disaster in the lives of prodigals before they turn to the Lord, and that is really hard for a pray-er to watch.

The good news is, however, that we can pray: Deliver them from evil. And God will answer that prayer.

He is answering our prayers, working to bring them back to Himself, and He is ready to forgive those sins the moment they are confessed, no matter how large a stack is. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, NKJV).

Keep praying, Deliver them from evil.

God is answering!