Waist Deep 2018 - March 14

Job 42: 10 After Job prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. (NIV)

What God withholds or denies he repays and restores in ways his servants cannot begin to imagine.*

We should understand that this verse just lists the order of events, not cause and effect. It’s not a promise that we will get rich if we pray for our friends; but to have good friends is to already possess a type of riches, and praying for them produces its own kind of wealth. It is an honor to have friends and to pray for them.

If your relationships are like mine, you have an eclectic collection of friends: people I have known all my life; people I have just met; people that I love to spend time with; and people that make me wonder, “Why in the world am I friends with this person?” Job’s friends sound like they may belong in that last category! Remember how trying and annoying they were? But they stuck by him and he prayed for them anyway. And because Job was merciful, God showed mercy to him. 

  

Sometimes you don’t pick your friends – sometimes they pick you. And sometimes, perhaps, God has arranged the whole thing for the benefit of one of you – or both of you. As someone has observed, “We don’t have to approve of someone’s negative behavior or attitude, but we can try to understand it and deal with it appropriately.”*

Praying for someone is always appropriate behavior. Praying for our friends may not help us win the lottery but God will prosper us in unexpected ways.

We are really doing our business when we are praying for our friends.*