“Asking God to Bless Me!”
--Preview of the Jabez Territory
(The Challenges of the Prayer of Jabez
Part 1 of 6)
(Much of this message was developed from Bruce Wilkinson’s presentation on Visionary Leadership at the “Walk Thru Life with Purpose” Conference in Largo, FL, Feb. 5-7, 2002.)
[I have power point slides and a congregational outline that accompany this message. If you want a copy of the presentation and outline, I’ll be glad to mail you a CD for a contribution to my church’s worship fund and to cover shipping--$10. Email don_hawks@hotmail.com or visit web page http://home.rica.net/bethanyum/ ]
There’s a story of boy in store wanting his mother to buy chocolate chip cookies
She refused after several attempts by her son and finally, he shouted:
"In the name of Jesus, I’m asking you to buy A box of chocolate chip cookies!"
Other customers in the store ended up buying him 25 boxes to take home.
What if I told you that the Number 1 best-selling book in the United States of America according to both U. S. A. Today and the New York Times is a religious book based on a two-verse prayer found in the obscure Old Testament book of I Chronicles? That would be surprising! It is certainly demonstrates the spiritual hunger people today have in their hearts. The Prayer of Jabez by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson has sold approximately 8 million copies. It is a short book which can be read in a couple of hours. And it is an exposition of these two verses in the book of I Chronicles:
"Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ’Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ’Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested." (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) (NKJV)
How many of you have read the book, The Prayer of Jabez? It is the fastest selling book of all time, according to news reports. Do you have any ideas why? What do you think? (Give time for responses)
When I read the book last year, much of what Bruce Wilkinson had to say drew me in-impressed me enough that I decided to attend a conference he led last week on Visionary Leadership as related to the concept in this book on asking God to enlarge your territory. After attending the conference and being in Bruce’s presence I am even more convinced that he was on to something when he discovered the power in this prayer, which up until he made it popular received little attention.
To help give us focus during this season of Lent in our church calendar I asked our church nurture dept to consider a churchwide study on this topic. Lent is the traditional time that we prepare ourselves to celebrate Easter. Lent is observed as a time of confessing our sin, asking God to remove sin from our lives so that we can more clearly understand the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. I believe this church wide focus using the Jabez Prayer as a guide will help us achieve that goal.
Read this verse out loud with me: "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested.
I Chronicles 4 begins with a genealogy of people whose names you can hardly pronounce. 44 torturous names into this list, the writer halts. And he writes, "Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ’Because I bore him in pain.’"
If this portion of the Bible were preserved on videotape, the camera would be scanning through a parade of people, but on the 44th person it would stop, zoom in for a close-up of this one man and then continue scanning. It is like a prospector sifting grains of sand and suddenly stopping for a pearl. What is there about this man Jabez and the prayer he prayed that we should remember him 2500 years after his death?
Can you imagine a 21st century, high-tech mom, thumbing through a name-your-baby book at Books-a-Million and going, "I know what I will name my brand new bouncing baby boy: Pain." What a pain, what a pain, what a pain. That’s a great name.
Back in Biblical times, your name meant something. When someone articulated your name, they knew what it meant. Jabez had to overcome a negative label.
Maybe someone has slapped a label on your life, maybe a parent, maybe a coach, maybe a teacher, maybe a friend or maybe a co-worker. Maybe they called you a no-count, an idiot, uncoordinated, ugly, someone who will never make it or never amount to anything. Maybe you have been living under this label and reading it so much that you believe it. God is saying to you, "Do what Jabez did. Transform your pain into prayer. Don’t think you don’t matter. Don’t think you can’t make it. Don’t think you don’t have the ability." God wants to do extraordinary things through an ordinary you and you and you, and he will if we simply take some cues from Jabez.
Here is a person who did not begin life with a silver spoon in his mouth. Every time Jabez’ name was spoken, someone thought, "There goes a born loser." But Jabez was not a loser. Or else his name would not appear in this genealogy. And certainly he would not be picked out by the writer of Chronicles for special attention.
Well this series is meant to help you overcome any bad name you’ve acquired. And that will be dealt with in a more personal way during the SS hour as watch the videotape presentation of Bruce Wilkinson discussing the prayer-so I urge you to be here for that each week.
What I plan to do is help you to apply what this prayer challenges us to do as a church family-and your role and mine in that challenge. Now if you are new to the church family, I think this will help you-even if you’re still deciding whether you want to become a member of our family-because this will let you in on what you’re in for-how God might bless you if you decide to stay with us.
God wants you to be a part of his church family and you’ll even have greater understanding of what it means in this prayer to ask God to enlarge your territory. So hear me out-whether you’re a long time member, a newer member, or you’re an attender who is still trying to decide about membership, or a first time guest today. Do you want to be greatly blessed by God? Then hear the challenge this prayer presents for our church
So we call this church family Bethany. What’s in a name? Great potential. Look at what happened in the place called Bethany in the Bible in Jesus’ time.
Known primarily in the Gospels as the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, ancient Bethany occupied an important place in the life of Jesus. Jesus often found Himself staying in Bethany at the home of his closest friends as He ministered in Jerusalem
The primary event in the New Testament taking place in Bethany involved the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11-12). This magnificent miracle by Jesus demonstrated His authority, prepared for His resurrection, and was even magnified through the name of His friend, Lazarus.
Another significant event in Jesus’ life occurred in Bethany at the home of Simon the Leper (Matt. 26:6; Mark 14:3). Late on the Tuesday night of Jesus’ last week, a woman (recognized as Mary in John 12:3) gave Jesus His "burial anointment." Coming to Jesus in the sight of all, she brought a costly alabaster vial of perfume and emptied its contents upon Jesus’ head ("feet" in John 12:3).
Besides a number of smaller references to Bethany, one final event took place there. Bethany provided the location for Jesus’ final blessing to His disciples and His subsequent parting. This encounter made up the final scene of ascension in Luke’s Gospel (24:50-53).
What does prayer mean to you? Are you willing to keep pleading with our heavenly father until you receive a blessing-like the boy who begged his mother for the cookies at the grocery store?
(Show VIDEOCLIP--"Do You Pray?")
We have taken the word, "blessing" and kind of messed it up. We say, "Oh, bless your soul. Bless this mess." We ask God to bless our families, bless our church, and bless the food. We have just decaffeinated it, haven’t we? You know I love coffee. I can only tolerate about one cup of real coffee a day so rest of the day I have to go to the decaf junk. It’s not as good as the real stuff to me That’s what we have done to the word "bless." We have decaffeinated it. We have stripped it of its caffeine, of its octane.
Do you know what it means when you ask God to bless you? It means this, and you might want to write this down. "God, grant me your supernatural favor. God, give me your fantastic favor." That is what it means when we say, "God, bless me." Notice something now. So we don’t get all of this messed up and skewed, we don’t try to say, "Hey, God, I want this and I want that and, God, you better give it to me." No, no. "God, that YOU would bless me, indeed. That YOU would bless me, indeed." Blessings are there for our asking.
Proverbs 10:22, talks about blessings. It says, "The Lord’s blessing," not my blessing, "the Lord’s blessing, is our greatest wealth." There is no way that I could be a blessing to you or you could be a blessing to me, until God has first blessed you or first blessed me with spiritual blessings. READ WITH ME--"The Lord’s blessing is our greatest wealth. All our work adds nothing to it."
Keeping in mind what the name Bethany could imply for our church (Jesus’ blessing)-look again at Jabez’ prayer. What is Jabez asking God in this prayer? He is begging God to do huge things---and this is my prayer for Bethany. I want God to do huge things at Bethany. Jabez uses a verb in the Hebrew for blessing me which is of the most extreme tense-hence would you bless me indeed! So my prayer for Bethany to God is-oh that you would bless this church indeed and enlarge her territory. Great you say-that’s my prayer too!!
Oh really? Is it really? You better wait before you agree to that. Before you make that your prayer you better understand the terms of this prayer.
"Territory" means an area of LAND, a bigger piece of ground. Jabez is asking God to do something for him-give him a bigger piece of ground (Write these down)
"Border" means the dividing line that SEPARATES, that means having to grow. How much do you really want this church to grow?
"Enlarge" means to abundantly INCREASE - wide- so what percentage of growth are you asking God for in our church?
Most churches grow to a point-then get stuck-they plateau out or start dropping off-I’ve seen tnis time after time in the 15 years that I have worked as a church consultant with various denominations. That’s because most churches operate under the law of addition. But what will happen if a church operates differently---works under the laws of multiplication? Or what Wilkinson calls the law of EXPONENTIAL growth. The church will take off!
Now what kind of growth-both numerically and spiritually-do you want for Bethany?
Read this verse with me--Then God blessed them, saying, “Let the fish multiply and fill the oceans. Let the birds increase and fill the earth.” Genesis 1:22 (NLT)
NOTICE the commands from God here (emphasized)----
God is not asking for addition, God wants multiplication--- if you put it on a chart--- it would take off at a rapid rate-it is utterably unexplainable
We are to go coastal with God. We are to say, "God, expand my coastline. Expand my territory." We are to do that.
"DON, wait a minute. You mean to tell me I should ask God for a bigger business?" Yes. "You mean I should ask God for my client base to grow?" Yes. "You mean I should ask God for more leadership and influence and power?" It is saying, "God, I know it’s all from you. I want you to take my one and only life here and expand my territory."
So do you want just healthy addition or exponential growth for our church? What do you think? This is what Jabez prayed for. He looked at his circumstances and said, "God I want more than this. Lord, I want more from you beCause I want to do more from you."
Jabez was a man of soil as most all people were in his day. He understood that the extent of his land holdings would put a limit on what he could do for God; he could only have so many livestock. To increase his out put, he needed more opportunity.
Can you imagine a warehouse manager being upset if an employee said, "Sir, I want to do more to make this place really hum for the owner?" Hey parents, would you get irritated if your child asked, "What can I do to help you?" (You might faint). In the same way when you ask for greater opportunity for God, He is delighted.
God is waiting for each of you to grab hold of a greater vision for our church-and plead with him for it to come true. I believe-studying this prayer and hear Bruce Wilkinson talk about visionary leadership has convinced me of it. We need more opportunity, we need to see the opportunities surrounding us in our community that we have already overlooked.
Now this kind of thinking may be foreign to some of you-but as I have studied this text and other passages in the Bible I am learning that it is OK to make personal requests of God. It is OK to ask God to bless Bethany so that we can find out what God is blessing. It is all right to ask God to bless your business, your work in the Old Testament way of thinking. In an honorable way, with integrity-certainly not the Enron way of doing things.Maybe we have tended to become "Superspiritual"---we have removed our faith from the marketplace.
Some CEO’s reported their perception that the church is not interested in where I live. So the challenge for us to place the Lord in our everyday lives, in the home, in the market place.
So if we are going to make the Lord’s ministry our business at Bethany, if we are going to ask him to enlarge our territory and put him back in the marketplace like they did in OT times, we need to understand the distinctives of the Jabez territory as we start this Lenten journey:The territory is not focused on property but PEOPLE-my business is ministry-your business is ministry (share journal entry made a t conference). You do the ministry; I’ll shepherd the ministry.
The territory is not focused on money but MINISTRY-all financial resources we have are directed to that end.
The territory is not self-initiated but SPIRIT-DIRECTED-Notice Jabez’ prayer is general, God intiated and open-ended
The territory is not focused on comfort but CHANGE-and that means that if you pray this prayer your life will be disrupted, things at this church will be disrupted-so fasten your seat belt and hold-on for the ride. What happens will be out of your control, my control. This journey is going to be challenging, it will be fearful at times. I’ll talk more in the upcoming weeks of you getting pushed to the edge of your comfort zone.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement experienced this as he began to think outside of the box. It was not an easy journey for him as he preached outside in the open air. He was tormented spiritually, he gave up on America and went back to England and was going to quit preaching. People spit in his face and threw sticks and stones at him as he preached in the open air. But he was able in the end to send people back to America and finally say "The world is my parish." No great movement, no enlarging of territory comes without the loss of comfort and the appearnce of change. Which leads me to my next point
5. The territory is not limited but LIMITLESS-God wants all of it-God wants all of the world. Jesus said go into all the world. I believe it is the will of God that our church grows rapidly because that means more opportunities for God to reach more people. I believe I church should at least double by this time next year at a minimum-if we truly pray this prayer.
This is not the health and wealth gospel. That is basically saying that if we have enough faith, we can corner God and he will have to give us our materialistic desires. Now, God does bless us materialistically. That’s part of the blessing. If that happens for you, good. But we can’t limit God and say, "God, I want my blessings over here in my account, in my portfolio. If we are going to pray like Jabez prayed, we have got to say, "God, I give myself to you, warts and all. The total package is yours, God. You work in and through me. I want my agenda to be your agenda; your agenda is my agenda. You do your stuff through me. You bless me the way you want me to be blessed, not the way I want to be blessed. God, I want your favor, not what I think my favor should be."
When we get to that point, like Jabez did, you better watch out. You just better hold on, because you will not believe the blessings. Sometimes, they are relational. Sometimes, they are spiritual. Sometimes, they are physical. Sometimes, they are financial. Sometimes they are a combination.
In Matthew 7:7, here is what Jesus said, "Ask and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Do you know what the word ASK means? Ask means always seeking knowledge. Anytime we ask the Lord something, we will always seek knowledge. True knowledge only comes from God.
When was the last time you hit your knees and said, "God, I want my agenda to be your agenda. I want your will to be mine. I want you to work through me. I give my life to you, warts and all, the total package. You work in me. You bless me. God, bless me, indeed. Bless my family, bless my career, bless everything I touch God." When was the last time you did that? Hear these verses from Psalm 37:
Trust in the LORD and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.Psalm 37:3-4 (NLT)
God will give this church more and more-it will be unbelievable
Do you believe the territory given to Bethany is without limits? Remember last week I said your attitude is only limited by you altitude?
Answer this question-write down your response on your outline:
The secret of true abundance in my church is to want what God wants. What are 2 wonderful things God wants for my church? Remember this. It really doesn’t matter where you’ve come from. It only matters where you’re headed and who goes with you. Even if you’re named "Pain," with God’s help, you can make something great, big, huge out of your life. So what does God want to do through you in this church?
And respond to this question:
What attitude do I display that might be limiting what God wants to give my church or what God could do through me within this church family?
As you ponder those questions, I’ll close with these thoughts: God is in the expanding business. He is a coast-to-coast God who wants us to pray those high-risk prayers, those blessing type prayers. He wants us toask because, when we do it, look what will happen, not only in our church, but also with our families, with our friends, and with our careers.
There is no telling now what God is doing behind the scenes right now in every person’s life, but we will never see the results of it until we get serious and obedient as Jabez did.
So, really, to sum up this entire message today, if you talk about Jabez, if you boil down what he did, you can do it in two words: Jabez prayed. Jabez prayed.
Right now, we are going to pray. Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes. I’m going to challenge you to pray this prayer, the prayer of Jabez, for the next 40 days of Lent. Right now, we are going to pray together. I will go through one line, and then you repeat that line as we pray together:
PRAYER:
Dear God, bless me indeed, enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil.
Bless me and unleash your blessings on others. Make me a blessing to others. Thank you, God, for the results of this prayer in advance. In Jesus Name, Amen.
