(Powerpoint slides and audience outline available)
Today I continue with part 5 of the challenges of the prayer of Jabez. Today I want to stimulate your thinking about how to make a difference for God, what are some practical steps for the Jabez territory.
Much of this message today was inspired by Ed Young. I saw him speak (by video) at the Visionary Leadership Conference with Bruce Wilkinson that I attended last month in Florida. He’s pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas outside Dallas. Ed Young’s church has 16,000 0n Sunday—started with 150 people in 1990. Either the town has grown a lot since I was there or people are coming from all over the place to the church.
Pleasant little town. I remember a small winery and really good restaurant—had a great Blackberry pie. Nice little shops downtown—we bought this Santa Claus raikes bear on a sled that was so big we had to ship it back home. So Ed from Grapevine, Texas, is the inspiration for much of today’s lesson on the prayer of Jabez.
Some of you know that I enjoy listening to jazz—especially contemporary jazz—what they call Smooth Jazz in the radio world. Regardless of the type of jazz, there is nothing like the smooth sound of jazz. Accomplished jazz musicians can just go with the flow. They can find a beat and hang with it, and it turns out to be some awesome music. There is nothing like the sound of jazz. When you think about it, Jabez could play some serious jazz. He had the uncanny ability to pick up on God’s beat and to follow his flow.
Why? Because Jabez knew how to pray. He knew how to talk to God. He is one of the least known and least recognized persons in all of scripture, and he is sort of camouflaged in one of the least read sections in the entire Bible. I believe that after this series, that is going to change. I think this lesser known guy will become a well-known guy. I think this least read section of scripture might become one of the most well read sections of scripture. Jabez.
To do a quick review, we talked about this prayer that Jabez prayed. The book of Chronicles, to be exact 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, highlights this guy named Jabez. This book, and in particular this section of scripture, will put the most serious Bible student in a daze. It will make anyone tired. Six hundred, count them, genealogies, name after name, after name, after name. You say, “Man, I want something exciting. Give me something cool. Give me something relevant.”
Suddenly, Jabez rises above the rest and God gives him two verses. He prays this life-changing prayer. Let me read it, and you follow along. “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called him Jabez, saying, ‘because I bore him in pain.’” It doesn’t sound that great so far, does it? Let’s go ahead and read his prayer. “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’s it. The prayer of Jabez. He had the uncanny ability to pick up on God’s flow to follow his beat, and Jabez prayed some serious prayers. He played God’s jazz, some jazz that God wants you to play and me to play.
Jabez started out in pretty tough circumstances. The word Jabez means, “pain.” Can you imagine your name being pain? For some reason, his mother had a horrible pregnancy, or for some reason, either his father bolted after his birth or for some reason, maybe Jabez had a physical abnormality, but for some reason, people called him pain. Yet because of his prayer and because of this jazz of Jabez, he morphed his pain into prayer and he rose above the rest and achieved greatness.
God wants greatness for every person’s life. If you pray this prayer and ask, and say, “God, bless me. God, expand my coastlines,” God will do it. He wants to bless your life. He wants to bless my life. The word bless simply means for God to pour out his supernatural favor on your life, on your existence.
Remember, we have got to say, “God, I want your will. I want your agenda. I want your plan for my life.” We can’t come to God and say, “God, give me this. Give me that. Thank you God.” That’s that. “I want you to satisfy my materialistic yearnings.” No. We have got to say, “God, I’m asking and seeking your agenda. I want You to work through me.”
I hope you are following along now. Jabez prayed this prayer, “God bless me. God expand my horizons.” If we do that, God’s hand, Jabez says, will be on our life. Notice the progression. Jabez didn’t walk up and say, “Hey, God, I want your hand on my life.” He said, “God, bless me. God, expand my coastlines.”
If we do that, if we ask for blessings God’s way, as he expands our coastlines, we will be out there in never, never land. We will feel kind of outgunned, out manned, and over our head.
God will have to show up to make this deal happen. Do you ever feel like you are a junior high kid trying to play in the NBA? Do you ever feel like you are in something just over your head?
That is precisely where God wants you.
Something like this happens in the move, “The Legend of Baggar Vance.” Baggar shows up, almost like the voice of God, to help a young golfer, distressed by the events of his life, to find his soul again. Listen to Bagger Vance in this video clip: {show clip—50—52 minutes
"Inside each and every one of us is our one true, authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that is ours and ours alone. Something that can’t be learned ... something that got to be remembered." }
"However, he has given each one of us a special gift according to the generosity of Christ." -Ephes. 4:7 NLT
God wants us to make a difference for him. It begins at the moment you feel like you’re in over your head---just as the young golfer did as he entered a golf tournament. It was at that point Bagger Vance could give him spiritual direction
You may have heard about the two guys from Texas, who went up north to do some ice fishing. They made the long trip but before they did their ice fishing they stopped by a store near the lake for some supplies. They asked the merchant if he had any ice picks and the merchant pointed them out on the shelf. Each of the men grabbed and ice pick and checked out. A short while later they returned and asked the merchant if he had any more ice picks. This time they each got two. A couple hours later they returned and told the merchant, “We’re going to need all the ice picks you have.” The merchant was somewhat shocked at the men’s request and asked, “Do you not have a hole big enough to fish yet?” “Fish” the men replied. “We don’t even have the boat in the water yet.”
When we feel like that—when we seem to think we’re into something that is 2 big for us—that’s when God shows up.
Blessing, and then you have the expansion, and then you have feeling out of control and like I am in over my head, “God you are going to have to show up,” that is the way God designs it.
You ever wonder what it’s like to have to get up here and preach to the people in 2 services every Sunday. I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s scary. I always feel inadequate, outgunned, out manned, over my head. Rarely do I sleep well on Saturday night because I get PMS—that’s pre-message syndrome.
The day it becomes easy or flippant, or nonchalant, is the day I am going to say, “You know what? I’m not doing what God wants me to do.” We have got to understand something. God works in unusual ways. His math is mysterious.
Ed Young tells a story about having dinner with a friend of, a very successful businessman and, a brilliant mathematician. During dinner, he is talking about numbers, percentages, and this and that. He is like way up here in the ozone, and Ed observes, “I am way down here. I am horrible in math.” The reason this guy is so successful is because he can do the numbers. He has that unusual ability to do it.
That’s the way God works. We are like down here. We think this math will do it, that math will do it, our math. God is on another planet. He’s in the ozone.
Isaiah, chapter 55, underscores this: “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
God’s math is mysterious.
I want to share with you, basically, God’s faith formula, God’s formula for your life and mine if you wish to make a difference for God. This formula is against the backdrop of this prayer of Jabez. Once again, we talked about the blessings of God. We talked about God expanding our territory and coastlines. Today, we are simply going to talk about the hand of God. What does it mean when you have the hand of God on your life? What does it mean when you read in Scripture that the hand of God did this or the hand of God did that?
The hand of God is simply this. The hand of God means God’s power, God’s protection and God’s provision on a person’s life. That’s what it means. I don’t know about you, but I want the hand of God on my life. God’s hand will not be on my life, or your life, unless we are blessed, unless we are expanded, and then his hand has got to be there. That’s how we will make a difference for God.
So if you want some practical steps into the Jabez territory and if you want to make a difference for God, going coast-to-coast for God you must understand God’s math.
Here is the first part of God’s faith formula. Are you ready? Blessing + expansion = what? Inadequacy. Sergeant Carter from Gomer Pyle, “I can’t hear you! What?” Inadequacy. Isn’t that strange? I told you it’s mysterious. God’s ways are higher than our ways. He’s doing math on another level. “Inadequacy? Man, you mean I am supposed to feel out manned, outgunned, over my head? You mean I am supposed to feel a little bit fearful, a little bit scared? I am supposed to feel like a junior high kid playing in the NBA trying to guard Vince Carter?” Yes, that is right where God wants you. Much like the young golfer in the movie Bagger vance.
2 Corinthians, chapter 12, and before I read this text let me give you the background right quick. The apostle Paul, I am talking about the man of faith, probably the greatest Christian who ever lived next to Jesus, the apostle Paul had this thorn in his flesh. He had some physical ailment, some problem, most scholars feel. One smart scholar said it was his wife.
He prayed for God to heal him of that thorn repeatedly. Guess what? God didn’t heal him. God didn’t heal him. So here is what Paul writes, as he is not healed. Jesus said, with Paul recording, “My grace is sufficient for you.” In other words, there is never an insufficiency of grace. It is never like, “Okay, there is not enough grace.” God’s grace is always sufficient. “For my power is made perfect in weakness.” (circle those words) You see, Paul accepted his affliction, watch this now, he accepted his affliction as addition. “My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
The hand of God, the power of God, the provision of God. Why? Because of the apostle Paul’s inadequacies, God blessed him and God’s power, the Bible said, “rested on his life.” This word rested --Do you know what it means?
It means to pitch a tent over your life. When I rest in God’s grace, when I rest in God’s power, when his hand is on my life, it’s like you throw a giant tent over you and it just envelopes you. It just covers you up.
Isaiah 54:2: "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
P.T. Forsythe said about pain, “It’s a greater thing to pray for pain’s conversion than pain’s removal.” Powerful stuff. We don’t live by explanations. We live by promises. God has promised us his power and his sufficiency in our inadequacy. Remember Jabez? Jabez dealt with pain. The guy had a horrible time yet God transformed his pain into faithfulness. This occurred because Jabez had a willing heart to talk to God and to follow his beat and to go with his flow. Once again, God’s math is weird.
We would say, “No, man, that’s not the right formula. The right formula is blessing + expansion = autonomy. It equals success. It equals confidence, man, that is what it means, come on now.”
But God says no it doesn’t: blessing + expansion = inadequacy.
Here is the second part of the faith formula: inadequacy + loyalty = responsibility. 2 Chronicles, chapter 16, boy I love this text, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.” God is not looking for superstars. God is not looking for people who are just like, “Whoa, I cannot believe the talent. Man, God sure is lucky to have them on his team.” God is not looking for people like that. He is looking for people who are loyal, who are faithful. People who are loyal and who are faithful.
We have a great staff and leadership at Bethany Church, and the number one thing I look for is loyalty. We are not superstars. We are ordinary people. We are loyal people. That is a Biblical value. How loyal is your heart to God? How faithful are you? Are you saying, “God, you know what? I will do it your way. I will ask and seek your agenda. I’ll allow and I’ll surrender myself to you. I want Your agenda to become mine and Your will to become mine. As far as what I do in my life, God, it’s your way.” When we come to that point, that’s when God will really supernaturally show up.
My prayer for the people of Bethany is the prayer that David prayed for the Israelites: O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you. 1 Chronicles 29:18
Inadequacy + loyalty = responsibility. We have got responsibility. We are out here on the edge being outgunned, out manned. We are inadequate and that gives us a great responsibility. Now, some people say, “Oh, the prayer of Jabez, man, it’s just a beautiful prayer. God will bless me and God will expand my territory and God will keep his hand on me and he will keep me from evil. Don, that is great. It’s kind of a presto chango. Let’s pull the rabbit out of the hat type prayer. I can, you know, paste it on my bathroom mirror, hang it on my rearview mirror. I just pray the little prayer and everything will be cool. I’ll be blessed and I’ll say ‘thank you, God’, that’s really good.’ What a beautiful prayer. What a great Biblical view this is. Man, I like this stuff.”
What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been to? What would you say is one of the most beautiful spots you’ve ever seen on earth—a place where you just take in the view? I can think of several—the Rhine Valley in Germany, the Finger Lakes area in NY, this Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in WV a couple of years ago.
A man who had been to the most beautiful place he thought he had ever seen was talking about this one time on a tour. The guide, who was with the group, overheard them and said, “You know, this is beautiful. But you know what? You can’t eat the view.”
The tourist said, “Come back.” He said, “It’s beautiful up here but you can’t eat the view.” Here is what he was saying. He was saying that this place is a picturesque place, but you can’t just survive on the view. You have got to work, you’ve got to toil, you’ve got to sweat, you’ve got to get involved in some activity to make a living and, yes, you can make a living in this beautiful spot. But you cannot eat the mountains, you cannot eat the trees. You have got to work.
Hey, prayer of Jabez people? You can’t eat the view. You can’t eat the prayer. You can’t say, “God, just bless me. God, expand my territory. God, your hand’s upon me. God, keep me from evil. Okay, that’s it. I’ll just kind of chill.” You can’t do that. There is responsibility.
That brings us to the third aspect of this faith formula. Responsibility + activity = ministry. In Matthew 26:41, here is what Jesus said to his disciples the night before he was crucified. He said, “Pray so that…” I think I skipped a word there. Did you see it? He didn’t just say pray, did he? What did he say? “Watch.” Do you know what the word watch means? Watch. Watch. Use your common sense. Yes, it’s great to pray but you have got to have some activity around it too. You have got to put shoe leather or shoe rubber beneath it. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, the body though, is weak.”
2 Corinthians, chapter 3, says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant.” So we have got responsibility + activity = ministry.
Let me just put it out there where you can get it. When was the last time in your life that you can look back and say, “I know God did that? I mean there is no doubt about it, God did it.” When was the last time that happened? When was the last time, because of God’s blessing and because of his expansion and because of your inadequacy, when was the last time you attempted something so great that God would have to have his hand upon you? When was the last time he came through and you said, “That was God. It was his hand. It was his blessing. It was his provision. It was his protection. I could have not made a difference for God if He had not been there.” When did you get back your authentic swing--like Bagger talked about in the video?
If you don’t know, if you are scratching your head and saying, “Well…I think…I’m not sure.” You better check your spiritual pulse. You could have a blessing blockade somewhere in your life. God wants to bless you. There is no doubt about that. That’s a no-Biblical-brainer. He wants to bless you, but if you are not really receiving these blessings and expansions, if he is not moving in your life in great ways, something is amiss, something is wrong. You have some kind of block somewhere.
Could it be a hurtful habit? Could it be the fact that you have unconfessed sin? Maybe it’s because you are not giving to a local church. The Bible says in Malachi 3, “If we give ten percent to the local storehouse,” which means the local house of worship, “that God would open the windows and the floodgates of heaven, and so many blessings will come our way, we can’t even hold them all.” Could that be it?
I’ll tell you something that really pushes my panic button is thinking about the fact that one day I will see Jesus and meet him face to face and he will say, “Okay, Don, I had all this stuff that I wanted to do in your life, all this blessing stuff. I had all this expansion stuff. I had this hand of God stuff and I wanted to keep you from evil and all that. I wanted you to make a difference for me. But you know what, Don? You didn’t really pray those high-risk, high-yield prayers.”
It all goes back to that. We can’t play games with God. We have got to be serious with him. We’ve got to have those daily conversations with him. We have got to say, “God, I want to turn from my sin and turn to you. I want your blessing. I want your expansion. I want your hand. I want you, God, to keep me from evil.” When, though, was the last time that God showed up in a huge way?
A bunch of fleas were hanging out on a blanket, just jumping up & down having a blast. And then someone came up and put a jar over them… Not knowing what happened they still keep jumping BUT after hitting their heads a few times – they got the message and stopped jumping so high. Though they still jumped they stopped an inch from the top of the jar… After an hour the person removed the jar lid…BUT the fleas never knew the difference, because they had fixed into their minds an imaginary ceiling… Though they could now jump higher they never did because of the imaginary barrier that they had placed in their own minds…
Listen - We need to remember that as a church of Christ the lid is off… we need to think big!
(From a leadership seminar given by Dale Galloway:)
If you pray this Jabez-type prayer, if you go with God’s flow and follow his beat, and do his jazz, his way, here is what will happen to you. You will make such a difference for God that nothing will ever contain you. And God will show up in a big way.
I challenged you to pray this prayer during Lent. Today, I am going to up the anty on your homework. I am going to challenge you today to start a Jabez journal. Keep a diary of when God expands your horizon through blessings, when you feel that feeling of being inadequate, when you do the inadequacy thing, plus the loyalty thing and you have that responsibility. On top of that, you have responsibility plus activity and you are involved in ministry, God will show up. You will feel outgunned, and out manned, like a young golfer playing in a professional tournament for the first time. God will show up just like Bagger vance in the movie. Record how God shows up. Write it down. Let me tell you the genius of doing it: it will build your faith. And then you will begin to make a difference in your life for something that will last for eternity.
Recently I was having a conversation with a Jewish friend of mine and out of the blue she asked, "Do you think I’ll go to heel for not believing in Jesus?" I thought "Oh God, I’m in over my head on this one. I’ve been asking you to enlarge my territory--but I’m not ready for this discussion." I thought a minute and composed myself. I replied, "That’s not up to me--that’s between you and God. But if youa re worried about it I’ll be glad to discuss it." From there she went on asking me about our customs of Holy Week observances, Easter and what all that means. God enlarged my coastline big time that day. I didn’t have to bring it up--she did--and from there I had the opportunity to share my faith experience. God was there--God did it--it was so easy after I got over the initial shock.
When was the last time God showed up in your life in a big way?
One of the great faith builders of my life is going back and looking through all the answered prayer that God has brought my way due to high-risk, high-yield prayers. What would happen if you prayed that prayer for the rest of Lent, or for thirty days, for three months, for a year, for a lifetime, what would happen? We would have so many people here making a difference for God—that we would not add a dozen people to our church but our church will double in size in a year. People will grow and make practical God’s mathematical formula—so much that we can do nothing but get on our knees and worship God.
I am going to ask you to kneel if you’d like this morning and pray the prayer of Jabez. I am going to pray this prayer, and you simply repeat the words after me as I pray, “Oh, God, bless me indeed, enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, in Jesus name, Amen.
Now—go make a difference for God.
