PRAY FOR YOUR FRIENDS

• DAY 253
• FAITH FILE: JOB
• SCRIPTURES: JOB 42:10,12

And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Now the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys.

If you’re going to get friends, please don’t get friends like that of Job. They are miserable mourners and comforters, terrible companions. All through the trouble of Job they blamed him most of the time. Imagine being at the worst point in your life and having to deal with people who will kick you while you’re down. That’s the kind of friends they were.

But in our text today, God had sent his friends to go meet him to pray for them. Now that’s a tough thing to do for anyone to do. Aside from them being mean, when you’re going through difficult times in your life, the last thing you remember is your friends. In fact, your life is so busy and so full that you don’t remember to check on people, not to mention pray for them. You are more focused on yourself, your problems, and the terrible pain you are going through. Your focus is more on your own mental health. However, Job actually prayed for his friends and to do that effectively he must have had to forgive them.

Look Beyond You

Beloved, life can be overwhelming but the thing is that if you can look beyond yourself and pray for somebody else, chances are that your own issues will start to become lighter. The Bible says that as Job prayed for his friends that God restored all that he lost more than he even had before. Although this was a direct instruction that was necessary for Job to have recovery, it also works for us. Every time we look beyond ourselves and we don’t focus on our needs, and our issues and we think about others, there’s always a great reward, and often, our issues get resolved.

Why? Because the Bible says that we should consider our friends and our brothers more important than us. We should esteem them above us. But the world wants us to esteem ourselves, our mental health, our social state, and all of that more than we esteem others and that is not Christian. Often we are afraid that when we put people first they will take advantage of us so we don’t want to do anything nice or good for anyone and then we end up losing out.

A Suggestion

If you’ve been praying for a long time and you’re not seeing changes in your life or you’re going through situations that are taking forever, do something unselfish and do it without expecting anything in return. Just go and pray for somebody and make sure your heart is at the place where if you get something in return you’re okay. Because if you do it with an agenda, you’re most likely not going to get a reward. If you do it sincerely and just pray for them from the whole of your heart and forget about your problems and your issues for one moment and intercede for another person, you’re going to see a change in your life.

So permit me to give you an assignment today. Look for somebody that you are going to pray for. Look for somebody that you’re not going to pray about but for. You’re going to pray for their family, for their life, for their salvation, for their devotion to God. Also pray for their ministry, for their business. You’re going to take out time and intercede for them and do that consistently for the whole of this week and let’s see how your heart has changed. It has a way of making your problems seem lighter even to your heart and relieves the level of anxiety that you have to overcome when you pray and intercede for your friends. But beyond that, it also attracts the favor of the Lord in your direction.

Shalom.