For nearly three years, Pastor Jim Cymbala and his wife, Carol, lived every parent’s nightmare. Their oldest daughter, Chrissy, had once been a joyful, faithful teenager. But somewhere along the way she began drifting. First from her parents, then from church, and eventually from God. By the time she turned eighteen, she had left home completely and was living with a boyfriend. Many nights Jim and Carol didn’t even know where she was.

Jim tried everything he knew to do. He pleaded with her. He reasoned with her. He warned her. He argued. He even tried using money to influence her decisions. Nothing worked. Every attempt seemed to push her farther away.

On Sunday mornings, before preaching to thousands of people at Brooklyn Tabernacle, Jim would often drive to church alone, crying the entire twenty-five-minute trip. “God,” he would pray, “how am I supposed to help everyone else today when my own heart is breaking?” At the same time, Carol was battling her own discouragement. She feared losing not only Chrissy but their other children as well.

While praying one day, Jim sensed the Lord telling him to stop trying to fix the situation himself. No more frantic phone calls. No more attempts to control the outcome. He was simply to trust God and pray. It wasn’t giving up. It was letting go. From that point forward, Jim and Carol committed themselves to persistent prayer. Even when discouraging news reached them, they continued believing God would bring their daughter home.

Months passed. Then one Tuesday evening, during Brooklyn Tabernacle’s weekly prayer meeting, a woman in the congregation sent Jim a note. She wrote that she felt the church should stop everything and pray specifically for Chrissy. Jim hesitated. He rarely spoke publicly about his family’s pain. But he sensed the prompting was from God.

He stood before the congregation and briefly explained that his daughter was far from the Lord. Then he invited the church to pray. Thousands of people joined hands across the sanctuary. As they cried out to God together, the room filled with extraordinary passion. Jim later said it reminded him of a labor room—filled with the groaning and determination that accompanies the birth of new life. Driving home that night, Jim turned to Carol and quietly said, “It’s over.”

Thirty-two hours later, on Thursday morning, Jim was shaving when Carol burst into the room. “Go downstairs,” she said. “Chrissy’s here.” Jim hurried down the stairs and found his daughter collapsed on the kitchen floor, sobbing.

When she saw her father, she wrapped herself around his legs and cried. “Daddy,” she asked, “who was praying for me Tuesday night?” Jim stared at her in amazement.

She explained that in the middle of Tuesday night God had awakened her with a vivid picture of the path her life was taking. She saw herself heading toward destruction and was overwhelmed with conviction. Yet in that same moment she experienced the love of God drawing her back. Without knowing anything about the prayer meeting, she had encountered the God her parents had been pleading with for years.

Chrissy returned home that day. In time, she enrolled in Bible college, later married a pastor, and began serving Christ faithfully. Looking back, Jim Cymbala often says that the breakthrough didn’t come because he found the right words or the right strategy. It came because God’s people refused to stop praying.