Note: some of the illustrations in this series are not acknowledged - this is due to the loss of my notes, not out of a desire to deny the sources. Thank you!
The Prayer of Jabez #2
“Oh, That You Would Bless Me…”
1 Chronicles 4:9-10
Introduction - Review
This morning we are going to continue exploring the prayer of Jabez, that Old Testament pray-er who asked God for big things.
Before we get into the message, I want to take just a few moments to review what we covered last weeks.
Jabez’s name means pain, and so Jabez had to overcome what could have been a life of bitterness to become a man of noble character. More noble than all his brothers, in fact.
He lived during the time of the judges, after Joshua had died, and while the Israelites were trying to expel the Canaanites from the land.
We mentioned that this prayer is not a tool of the name it and claim it, health and wealth gospel, but rather the plea of a man who was asking God to act to help him fulfill the work God had for him.
Rather than a demanding of God, it was an admitting of Jabez’s powerlessness, and a reliance of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had originally received the promise that Jabez was actually part of – the blessing of many descendants.
Before we go on, let’s take another look at the prayer, and I would ask that you read aloud with me. The prayer is printed at the top of your sermon outline.
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, "I gave birth to him in pain." 10 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.
Today we are going to focus on the phrase, “Oh, that you would bless me.”
I want to say here that I am leaning heavily on the book, The Prayer of Jabez, by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, for help in developing this and the following messages. In fact, some of what you hear will be directly from the book, though I’m hoping that my own masterful sermon-making will mask when that is!
My purpose this morning is to encourage you to not only ask for God’s blessing, but to do so with and air of expectation and faith in the mighty God of Scripture.
And in doing that, I want to do things just a little differently. You guys all know the game show “Jeopardy,” right? You are given the answer, and you need to come up with the question.
Well, today we are going to play that as we get through our outline. I want to point out three things regarding asking for the blessings of God. So let’s move on, shall we? The first answer is…
I. Yes. – question: Is it right to ask God for blessings?
In helping us get a grasp of that, I want to look at three things about blessings. The first is…
A. Definition of blessing.
I think it is a good idea to get a handle on this blessing business, so we don’t come away with the wrong idea.
Before we can ask for God’s blessing with confidence, we need a clear understanding of what the word means.
We hear “bless” or “blessing” intoned from every pulpit. We ask God to bless the missionaries, the kids, and the food we are about to eat. It’s something Grandma says when she hears you sneeze.
No wonder the meaning of blessing gets watered down to something vague and meaningless like “Have a nice day.”
No wonder so many Christians aren’t as desperate as Jabez was to receive it! Are you desperate to receive the blessings of God?
Oh God, make it so in MY life, I beg!
To bless in the Biblical sense means to ask for or to impart supernatural favor.
When we ask for God’s blessing, we’re not asking for more of what we could get ourselves.
We’re crying out for the wonderful, unlimited goodness that only God has the power to know about or give to us.
This kind of richness is what the writer was referring to in Proverbs when he said, “The Lord’s blessing is our greatest wealth; all our work adds nothing to it.” (10:22 – TLB)
Get past the clichés of “blessing.” Get into the heart of the matter.
But one of the things to keep in mind is that we need…
B. The correct attitude.
I want to point out something about Jabez’s prayer. He left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when, and how Jabez would receive them.
This kind of radical trust in God’s good intentions toward us has nothing in common with the popular gospel that you should ask God for a Cadillac, a six-figure, or some other material sign that you have found a way to cash in on your connection with Him.
Instead, the Jabez blessing focuses like a laser on our wanting for ourselves nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for us.
And when asking for God’s blessing we should also pray for Him to take His rightful place as Lord in our work, recreation, and family life.
This is not a selfish prayer. How do I know? God doesn’t answer selfish prayers. Listen to James 4:3.
When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
Now I think that sometimes God answers foolish prayers, because we have to learn the hard way.
But selfish prayers are not very high on God’s priority list, let me tell you.
Let’s move on the third part of this section, and that is that…
C. Blessings enhance our relationship with God.
When we are basking in the wonderful riches of God, taking in His Word, allowing His Holy Spirit to mold us and shape us, we become more in tune with our Heavenly Father.
We begin to enjoy Him more, and begin to think and act like Him more. And the side benefit of that is that we more accurately reflect Him to a world that’s dying to know Him, literally.
Allow God to bless you richly so you can enjoy Him all the more!
Our next answer is…
II. So we can give them away. – question: Aside from blessing us personally, why should we ask for blessing?
God gives us blessings, but they are not for us to hoard, keeping a tight fist around the things God opened His hand to give us.
This helps us get past the selfishness aspect of praying for blessing.
We talked a bit about the right attitude; this is in addition to that. We need to consider others when asking for and receiving blessings.
There are two main types of blessings that we can share with others. The first is…
A. Spiritual gifts.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to list all the spiritual gifts from Scripture, but let me read a small passage about the purpose of spiritual gifts.
This is Romans 12:3-8 –
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
Here’s the point: our spiritual gifts our not for your personal benefit, they are for the benefit of the body of Christ.
You will enjoy using those gifts, by the way. In fact, one of the best ways to see if you possess a particular spiritual gift is whether or not you enjoy exercising that gift.
For instance, I absolutely love telling people about Jesus. However, I am not real high on the serving gifts. I serve, because whether I possess the gift or not, we are all called to serve in some capacity in the body of Christ, but my joy factor is not busting through the roof during some of those times.
One area of blessing is spiritual gifts. Another area is…
B. Material possessions.
You were afraid I’d get to that, weren’t you?
If God has blessed you materially, you have an obligation to share some of that with the Body of Christ.
And I don’t just mean your tithe. If God has been liberal with you, He expects liberality from you.
Not foolish throwing of your resources, but the considered and prayerful channeling of your resources to help advance the kingdom of God.
Don’t worry – I’m not about to announce some large building program or anything.
But let me give you a couple examples of things.
First, we have a small benevolence fund that we have for attenders of our church. Let me emphasize the word small here.
It needs to grow, so that in the event someone from our church needs some help, we can give it.
For those outside the church, we refer them to the Salvation Army, and our church supports them financially.
But we need to bring up our fund, so that we can be of help to our people as well.
Second, as we grow, we will have needs. Eventually, we will need to replace the carpets, the chairs, the hymnals, and all sorts of stuff.
And that takes money. If God has blessed you financially, ask Him to show you where He would have you give, after you tithe.
He may direct you to give to missions, or to the Salvation Army directly, or to some outreach project of the church.
It doesn’t matter.
The point here is that the blessings of God are meant to be shared, and this leads us to the last answer in our game today…
III. 3 main groups – question: Who needs to be blessed?
There are lots of people needing a blessing from God, but I want to focus on just three this morning. The first group is…
A. Each of us.
I think I can safely speak for everybody here today when I say that each of us can use a fresh blessing from God, amen?
If you don’t think you do, let me tell you friend, you’re fooling yourself.
I need it everyday. But let me be real honest with you here. I don’t ask for it often enough. Not nearly enough.
I am asking God to remind me daily of my need for His blessing in my life, because quite frankly, folks, without it I will be nothing but a squeaky windbag, spouting who knows what, without much if any real impact.
I need His blessing, and so do you.
The second group needing His blessing is…
B. This Church.
Didn’t you just cover that when you said each of us needs His blessing?
Not really. While it’s true that we each need His blessing, we need to ask God to bless Aberdeen Wesleyan Church.
We are hoping to impact a pretty large area for Christ. I realize that we won’t reach everybody, but God wants us to reach as many as possible, trusting Him to use other churches and Christian groups to reach others.
But I like to think that we can reach more people for Christ than any other church in the area, with the help of God.
That’s mighty big thinking, Preacher!
I know, but my God’s mighty big, amen!
And we need His blessing, so we can see where and how He wants us to work.
We need His blessings on our efforts to share the gospel; we need His blessings as we continue to transform our church into a fellowship that is visitor-friendly and biblically sound.
We need His blessings as we ask God to bring people to us who are willing and able to work to advance the kingdom of God.
This church needs His blessing.
The next group that needs his blessing is…
C. The Body of Christ in this area.
Remember a message I gave a while back about the fact that while this church is part of the Body of Christ, it’s not the only part?
We need other churches if we hope to reach the area for Christ.
And we need to pray that God would bless those churches.
Did you know that in lots of churches, pastors are burned out and discouraged? They need the blessing of God.
I can tell you that there are people in many churches who are discouraged because they don’t seem to see any fruit from their efforts to bring the gospel to people, and they need the blessing of God.
There are people in some churches who want to reach out, but the leadership of that church is standing in the way. Those churches need the blessing of God.
And as the body of Christ works together to shine the love of Jesus, we need the blessing of God to give us success.
The body of Christ needs the blessing of God.
Well, let’s wrap this up, shall we?
Conclusion
In his book, Dr. Wilkinson relates the fable about a Mr. Jones who dies and goes to heaven. Peter is at the gates waiting for him to give him a tour.
Mr. Jones sees the splendor of the golden streets, beautiful mansions, and angel choirs.
And as the tour continues, he notices an odd-looking building, curiously out of place in the beauty. It is enormous warehouse, with no windows and only one door.
Mr. Jones tells Peter he wants to look inside, but Peter hesitates, saying, “You really don’t want to see what’s in there.”
The tour goes along, but Mr. Jones’ mind keeps wandering back to that warehouse.
He keeps bugging Peter, and so Peter takes him back to the warehouse.
Upon entering the building, Mr. Jones notices that the building is filled with row after row of shelves, floor to ceiling, each neatly stacked with white boxes tied in red ribbons.
He also notices that each box has a name on it, so he turns to Peter and asks, “Do I have one?”
Peter replies, “Yes, you do, but…” But Mr. Jones is already dashing toward the “J” aisle to find his box.
Peter follows, shaking his head. He catches up with Mr. Jones just as he’s slipping the red ribbon off his box and popping the lid.
Looking inside, Jones has a moment of instant recognition, and then he lets out a deep sigh like the ones Peter has heard so many times before.
Because there in Mr. Jones’ white box are all the blessings that God wanted to give to him while he was on earth…but Mr. Jones had never asked.
Jesus says in Matthew 7 to ask and it will be given. James says we do not have because we do not ask.
Is it right to ask God for blessing? Folks, if you want the blessing of God, you need to ask. He wants to bless you. Ask Him to do it. With the right attitude, and with the idea that you will bless others with the blessings God has given you.
And just watch Him work.
Lowell is going to come up here and lead us in that wonderful hymn, “Count Your Blessings.”
And while you are singing that, be praying that God would bless you beyond measure. Not so you can be selfish, but so that your relationship with Him can be enhanced, and that you might be a blessing to others.
Please stand with me as I pray.
