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When You’ve Been Praying for Yourself More Than Others · Daily Devotions for Busy Lives

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  Speak: Pablo Diaz had been praying his whole life. He was a
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  minister. Prayer was a job in his habit. But one day, he
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  looked at what he prayed about most, and it was almost all one
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  subject. Him. His worries. His needs. The list ran in a loop,
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  and the loop was pretty much all about him. The truth was,
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  Pablo's prayer focus had gotten narrow. What he did about it
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  changed something he wasn't trying to change. We'll come
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  back to what Pablo did, but first, welcome to Daily
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  Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. Here's something
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  about me I had to look at. When I pray in front of our church on
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  a Sunday, the whole prayer is pretty much other people. The
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  person in the hospital, and that God will bless and use our time
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  together to honor Him. Then, I pray by myself later, and the
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  list gets a whole lot shorter. It's mostly me, and what I'm
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  trying to decide, what I'm worried about, what I've got to
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  do next. And I'm not always praying for others like I And I
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  never set out to do that.
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  The job interview coming up, or the decision we've been turning
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  over for a month. Nothing is wrong with any of that. Jesus
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  taught us to ask for our daily bread, and he meant our daily
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  bread. But here's the thing to watch for. If the whole shape of
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  our prayer life has become you talking to God about you,
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  something starts to shrink. Your field of vision gets about as
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  wide as your own calendar. The Book of Job ends with a scene
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  almost nobody thinks about or talks about. Job 42: 10. When
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  Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes. In
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  fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before. Now let me back
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  you up two verses. 40 chapters of argument are over. His three
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  friends have spent all of it telling Job that his suffering
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  proved there was sin in his life. One of them said it was about
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  his dead And here's what God does with that anger. Verse
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  number 8. He tells those three men to go to Job and he says Job
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  will pray for them. God made Job's prayer on their behalf and
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  won't treat them as they deserve. God made Job the intercessor for
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  the men who had accused him. Job's prayer is the thing
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  standing between his accusers and God's anger and God is the
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  one who set it up that way. So in verse 10 says Job prayed for
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  his friends. Understand that God had already told him to do it.
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  Job was obeying an instruction. Now we have to be careful
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  because verse 10 often gets quoted as though intercession
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  were a leave-er. Pray for people and God doubles your holdings.
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  The text won't support that. And look how it records it. The
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  Hebrew in verse 10 is an expression older translations
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  give as God turned the captivity of Job. It's the same phrase
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  used for bringing exiles back home. Job had been in a kind of
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  captivity for 42 chapters and the hinge came at the point
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  where he was occupied with somebody other than himself. I'd
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  put it this way. Job was still ruined when he started praying
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  for those three men. Nothing had been restored yet. He prayed for
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  his accusers out of a pile of ashes. And that's where
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  everything turned. So here's what we can do with that. And
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  the second part is the one many people skip. Pick the one person
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  that you can pray for and start this week. Pick somebody you
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  haven't been praying for maybe, or somebody who's wronged you.
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  Then watch what it does inside you and quit watching for what
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  you get out of it. That second kind of watching turns
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  intercession back into a transaction, which puts you
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  right back where you started talking to God about you. So
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  Pablo made one deliberate change. He started praying for other
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  people on purpose, people other than himself. And what changed
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  was him. Praying for others stretched his prayer life. It
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  also did something he didn't expect. It put him in touch with
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  his own frailty, and it brought his buried stuff up to the
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  surface where God could deal with it. The man who'd been
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  praying mostly for himself ended up more known by God once he
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  stopped making himself the only subject. He said, "More known by
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  God." That's a strange result from praying about someone else,
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  and it's the one Job got too. The man who prayed for his
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  accusers is the man God called his servant four times in one
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  chapter. Here's today's challenge: Write down somebody's
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  name. Maybe somebody who's wronged you. If you can stand it.
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  And if that's too much this week, somebody you've never thought to
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  pray for. Then pray for that person by name every day for
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  seven days. Out loud and by yourself for one minute. Ask God
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  for good things for them. You know, the kind you'd want for
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  You're here to pray for yourself. And keep a short note of what
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  changes in you over the week. You're the subject of this one.
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  Father, you told three men who had wronged your servant to go
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  and let him pray for them, and you said you would accept that
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  prayer. Thank you that you put Job to work on somebody else
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  while he was still in the ashes. For everybody listening whose
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  prayer list has gotten down to one name, widen it this week.
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  Teach us to ask for good things for people who have cost us
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  something. In Jesus name, Amen. This podcast runs on the
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  generosity of listeners just like you. If Daily Devotions for
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  Busy Lives has encouraged you, would you consider supporting it
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  with a one-time gift or by becoming a monthly supporter?
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  Every contribution helps keeps these devotions coming every
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  week. You can give at
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  dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support . Thank you so much. And thanks
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  for joining me on Daily Devotions for Busy Lives.
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  Remember, Job prayed for the men who accused him, and he did it
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  before anything else in his life had been put back. Pick one name
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  this week and pray for them. Come back next time for more
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  encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth. Until
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  then, God bless and have a great day.