Jabez. A Role Model for Prayer, Part I
I Chronicles 4:9-10, OT, pg 363: “Jabez was more honourable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, I gave birth to him in pain. Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain. And God granted his request.” (NIV)
Dr. Bruce Wilkinson is the founder of the Walk Thru the Bible Seminars which since 1976 has trained more than two million people in God’s Word. In 2000 he published his most famous book THE PRAYER OF JABEZ which Publisher’s Weekly said in 2001 had become “the fastest selling book of all time” [--Source: http://www.brucewilkinson.com/meetbruce.html]. Dr. Wilkinson has been a popular speaker at Promise Keepers rallies across the country challenging more than 400,000 Christian men to live holy lives.
I first read his book THE PRAYER OF JABEZ in early 2001 after the chairperson of our Church Council at Decatur Central United Methodist Church Glenna Apsley used portions of it in her opening devotional for a Council meeting. I have not read the book since that time, but have spent many hours this past week in exegeting and prayerfully studying all that is recorded in Scripture about this obscure, average, man of God in the Old Testament, and in doing so, I want to lift up for us today Jabez as a true role model for us in prayer, especially as we pray for our local Church.
The books of Chronicles are perhaps the most boring books in the entire Bible. Many pages of Chronicles are simply meaningless, repetitious, genealogies of Israel and Judah. President Eisenhower’s Mother once told him that in reading God’s Word he could “skip reading these pages” of genealogies.
Those who do so, however, will most likely never meet Jabez. He suddenly appears and just as quickly disappears in the list of the descendants of Judah; and, since our Messiah and Saviour Jesus Christ is from the Tribe of Judah, perhaps we need to pay closer attention to Judah’s generations much more carefully for various reasons.
When the Lord first led me at the beginning of this week to preach this sermon, I felt He would enable me to cover all bases in only one message. However, it soon became apparent that would not be possible. Therefore, “Jabez, our Role Model in Prayer,” will be at least a two part and possibly three part series. I am convinced beyond all doubt that God wants every one of us, who love Trinity United Methodist Church and want to see us “grow in the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”, and grow numerical as well, make the “Prayer of Jabez” our personal prayer for Trinity United Methodist Church every day.
All we know of Jabez is recorded in I Chronicles 4:9-10, “Jabez was more honourable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain’ Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request.” I find five valuable lessons in the prayer life of Jabez that if each one of us will practice daily in our own prayer lives will bring revival and renewal to our own local Church.
The testimony about Jabez begins by saying, “Jabez was more honourable than his brothers.” The finally affirmation is: “And God granted his request.” We oftentimes become discouraged in our prayer lives thinking God fails to grant our requests, but to effectively communicate with our Heavenly Father and see God truly answer our prayers we must be “honourable disciples.” This does not mean we have to be “super saints.” Jabez was a regular guy, but he was “more honourable than his brothers.”
In other words he was a righteous, holy, God fearing person who made God and his personal relationship with Him his number one priority. We have must a right relationship with Jesus Christ before we can see God’s hand at work in our lives answering our prayers. James 5:16 affirms, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” David could confidently testify to a victorious prayer life in Psalm 66:18-20 in these words:
If I had nursed evil in my heart,
The Lord would not have heard me,
But in truth God has heard me,
He has heeded the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer,
Nor withheld his loving mercy from me.
Once again he could testify in Psalm 84:11:
For the Lord God is both sun and shield;
He will give grace and glory;
No good thing shall the Lord withhold
From those who walk with integrity.
God wants to grant the requests of His people. He does not want to reject our prayers or withhold his loving mercy from us. He wants to give grace and glory as he did to Jabez and David, but to receive all of that, we must be disciples of integrity. We can not “nurse sin in our hearts” and expect God to hear us. Unconfessed sin in our lives is always a roadblock to answered prayer.
To be honourable disciples of integrity, we must live holy, righteous lives and bring any unconfessed sin to the cross of Jesus Christ in true confession and repentance. Then, like Jabez, God can honor our requests. God never withholds good things from anyone who walks before Him as a disciple of integrity, who daily lives a holy, righteous, honourable life with Jesus as their top priority and guide.
Jabez is our role model for prayer both in our personal walk with Jesus and especially in our cooperate ministry as the body of Christ at Trinity United Methodist Church. I call upon each one of us as disciples of Jesus Christ to begin our personal prayer time each day by following the example of our role Jabez. Cry out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that You would bless me, or, Oh, that You would bless Trinity United Methodist Church.”
I hope to finish two books this summer as soon as possible. One is by Dr. David H. Nixon under the title LEADING THE COMEBACK CHURCH: Helping Your Church Rebound from Decline. The other one by Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson is
Comeback churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can Too. Why do I feel compelled by the Holy Spirit to concentrate on these two books? According to an article by James Emery White in the Fall 1996 issue of Leadership Journal, 80 to 85 percent of all U. S. Churches are either “plateaued or declining.” Every mainline denomination has basically been declining since 1965, and as of 1991 70 percent of all Southern Baptist churches were either “plateaued or declining.” [SOURCE: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bcl/areas/shepherding/articles/061907.html].
When we honestly allow the Holy Spirit to search our own spiritual condition at Trinity United Methodist Church, we must agree that our local congregation is part of that 80-85 percent of all Churches!
Each one of us needs to fervently cry out to the God of Israel every day, “Oh, that You would bless Trinity United Methodist Church.” Praying for God to bless us means we earnestly, intensely ask Him to help us, show us His favor, and protect us. Local congregations only become comeback churches as the people in the pews earnestly, intensely plead with God daily to show us His favor, help, and protection. Decline is only reversed as God’s people pray earnestly for His blessing.
Are we faithful in such prayer? James, the brother of our Lord is right on target when in James 4:2 he reminds us, “You do not have, because you do not ask of God.” In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestled with a Heavenly Visitor all night long. Jacob called this Visitor “God.” Genesis 32:30 clearly explains the situation: “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” This is an Old Testament “Theophany,” which simply is “an appearance by God to one of his servants in a visible, human body. It is most likely an appearance of Jesus to Jacob some 1800 years before His birth in Bethlehem. At daybreak, according to Genesis 32:26 Jacob had this conversation with his Heavenly Wrestler, “Then the man said, Let me go, for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’”
Each one of us must wrestle with God in prayer and not let go of Him until, like Jacob, he blesses us, until he helps us, until he protects us, until He shows us His favor as His people, as His Church. God blesses every congregation who wrestles with Him in prayer by granting them dynamic spiritual growth and numerical multiplication.
Numerical growth is a result of true spiritual growth. It is not simply “adding more names to the rolls of the Church.” God’s plan for His Church is still the same in 2007 as it was on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2:46-47, “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” God still adds to His Church daily those “who are being saved.” Have many are being saved across the board in the United Methodist Church today; how many are we personally seeing saved through the ministry of Trinity United Methodist Church?
Let us begin at the altar today as we take this Holy Communion to make the Prayer of Jabez our own. Let each of us at His Table today begin by obediently allowing the Holy Spirit to examine our own conscious. God can never bless any individual or Church who lives before Him with unconfessed sin. He will only grant our prayer requests as we daily live before Him in the power of His Spirit as honourable disciples of Jesus Christ, men and women who are righteous and holy.
If the Holy Spirit points out sin in your life at the Table of Jesus today, confess the sin, leave it at the altar, victory His victory and forgiveness in Jesus by standing on I John 1:7-9, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Then with a pure heart, as honourable, righteous, holy disciples ask Jesus to bless our Church, to show us His favor and empower us to grow spiritual and numerically as He adds to our “numbers those who are being saved,” and, following in the footsteps of Jacob, expect Him to bless us, but unlike Jacob never let Him go.
