A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
– Proverbs 17:17
This is one of the more well-known verses in the Proverbs about friendship because it’s such a powerful picture of the kind of friend who loves you at all times, who walks with you through the ups and downs of life and rejoices when you rejoice and weeps when you weep. A friend who loves at all times, and a brother or sister who is born for adversity. Picture someone who will stick with you through adversity, who will encourage you through adversity, who will help you hold fast in faith through adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 reminds us that we all need godly friends.
We all need friends in our lives like this who love us at all times and who help us amidst adversity. This means we all need to be friends like this, who love others at all times, who don’t give up on others who rejoice when others rejoice and weep when others weep, who love like that, and who help others through adversity.
So let’s pray in both of these directions, praising God, thanking God for friends in our lives, and praying for these kinds of friends in our lives and the lives of others that we love. I think about my kids like I want them to have friends like this, and I want to intentionally pray for friends like this, even as I obviously want to be a friend in this way to my kids, to pray for this in our lives, to pray for this in others’ lives and to pray that God would make us these kinds of friends in others’ lives.
Oh God, we pray Proverbs 17:17 over our lives. We thank you for friends who love us at all times and who walk with us through adversity. I’m thinking of just specific people in my own life right now. God, for each of us who has friends like this, we praise you for them and we pray for your blessing on them.
Proverbs 17:17 reminds us we need to be godly friends to others.
Oh God, we pray for your favor on our friends, for your grace and strength and mercy over our friends, and we pray for your provision continually of friends like this in our lives and others’ lives around us. God, we need friends like this. We pray for friends like this who will help us hold fast to faith in you amidst adversity who will help us to thrive in our lives, and who will love us through our ups and downs.
God, we pray for friends like this and we pray, oh God, that you would help us to be friends like this. Lord, help us to rejoice with those around us who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping, to be the kind of friends who love others at all times and help others through adversity. God help us to be that kind of friend specifically to others around us today.
God, we praise you specifically for how the Gospel transforms friendships and brings us not just into reconciliation with you, but into full reconciliation with each other. We thank you for the immediate friendship we have with brothers and sisters in Christ. And we pray for those who are not in Christ. We pray specifically today for friends of ours who are not followers of Jesus. God, we pray for compassion and boldness in us to share the gospel with them. We pray that you would open their eyes to your love for them. Open their eyes to the reality they have a friend in Jesus. God, help us to point them as their friends to you ultimately.
Prayer for the Adamawa Fulani People
And God, we pray for people who’ve never heard the good news of Jesus, like the Adamawa Fulani people. This large Muslim people group, the Adamawa Fulani, all across West Africa. And specifically, this subset of Fulani who’ve never heard the good news of friendship with you through faith in Jesus. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to the Fulani people. That they might be brought into the family of brothers and sisters of ours… And sons and daughters of yours through Jesus. Oh God, we praise you for being our friend, ultimately capital F Friend in all these ways. Jesus, for the way you love us at all times and the way you walk us through adversity. We pray all this in your name according to your Word in Proverbs 17:17. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
