For this month’s edition of Prayer Corner, we would like to share with you an article written by a sister in Christ on Prayer for a Friend.

February ’23: Prayer for a Friend

For the greater part of the pandemic, I prayed for a friend who, after surgery, was first in pain and then when the pain had subsided struggling with fairly permanent changes. This verse often came to mind, “For He wounds, but He also binds up; He injures, but His hands also heal” (Job 5:18). When I prayed, I often entrusted to God that He would bind up and that His hands would heal. God has a plan for this friend’s life. It is written, “Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen” (Isaiah 14:24).
 
What do you do when what is and what happens do not align with what you would have hoped? He says, be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). Sometimes there are no pat answers. We live in a broken world after all. Seeing that we have free will and that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9), I think you will understand how each of us, even as part of the body, tears down but builds as well (Ecclesiastes 3:3).
 
There is still hope. It is written in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “We are being renewed day by day.” As we practise the spiritual disciplines and our minds are saturated by the Word day and night, we will find the strength to move forward and the courage to walk by the Spirit. Sometimes what is required is trust in His steadfast love. I will cling to this promise, “Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:10). So, we rejoice always and wait for the day when He will call us home.