Part of the logic of God is that He will bless us when we pray for others to be blessed. Job endured great suffering. Part of that suffering was that his “friends” accused him of doing wrong. Their accusation seemed very righteous but was in fact just hypocrisy. God told them that if they did not ask Job to pray for them, He would punish them.
Job 42:8 – And now… go to My servant Job and he will pray for you; for I will lift up his face in order that I will not do with you according to your evil way.
And yet at the same time, God only blessed Job after he prayed for his friends. He had to forgive those who had accused him. He had to give them the grace that they had not given him. Job’s praying for his friends to be blessed was the key for his own restoration.
Job 42:10 – And YHVH restored to Job what had been taken when he prayed for his friends. And YHVH added twice as much to all that Job had.
When Job prayed for his friends, their punishment was removed. And, when he prayed for them, his own blessings were restored. In fact, he was blessed even twice as much as he was before. His own blessing and restoration was dependent on his forgiving and blessing them.
In a similar situation, God told Abimelech that Abraham had to pray for him to be healed, even though Abimelech was innocent (Genesis 20:7, 17). We are to pray for one another in order to be forgiven and healed (James 5:14-16). Yeshua taught us even to bless those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44), to give and it will be given to us (Luke 6:38).
Perhaps you are in a situation now where the key to your being blessed is to ask forgiveness of someone else or to pray for someone else to be forgiven and blessed.
