If your best friend was struggling financially and you had access to inexhaustible funds, would you give them enough money to keep their head above water?

If you had a remedy that could cure your friend’s incurable disease, would you share it?

If you had a book that saved your marriage from the divorce court, would you share it with friends struggling with their marriage?

I suspect most of us would scream at the top of our lungs: YES!

Of course, we’ll help our friends with anything we know will help. And yet, there is something that helps that we don’t use. It’s available to each of us, but remains nicely wrapped in a box.

Prayer. Prayer works. Prayer can bring healing. Prayer brings healing not only in physical illness, but also in spiritual illness. It helps relationships that are sick. It helps with financial conditions. It makes everything healthy.

This is the instruction: ¹⁶… pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. As simple as that. No books filled with knowledge. Just pray.

My friend Viv (not his real name) from the Eastern Cape told this about his wife’s praying:

Paul says: Pray without ceasing. Sounds like the disciples also understood this when they asked: Lord teach us to pray, and the beautiful “Our Father” was born. I agree, what are miracles to us are actually commonplace to God. Prayer and active faith remain formidable instruments.

My wife even prays for a parking space when she drives to the bank. Then she says: Do you see how God and I work together with the old man in his bright pullover and no front teeth? Almost pompous, she then nods toward the open parking bay.

Lately, I’ve been her taxi driver, and she just comes along all relaxed and says: “There’s space!” And even though I’m sitting in the car waiting, she still gives him a tip. “Wife, why do you pay if I look after the car?”

“Because he’s helped me a lot in the past. Besides, we’re friends.”

This is the result of an active prayer life, I think. As my cousin André would say: Not important. You must know where the real focus is.

If it still works for a parking space today, why wouldn’t it heal your ill friends?

We just have to believe. We just have to believe in prayer and keep praying for our friends’ healing. Perhaps some’s faith is ill, and they struggle to pray. Keep believing and pray for them to start believing. Prayer still works!

Scripture
James 5:13-20

Reflection
Do you believe in prayer?
Do you pray?
Do you pray for your friends and others?

Prayer
Father, I believe in prayer. I believe that prayer still works today. Today, I pray for … and I ask everything in Jesus’ Name. Amen.