INTRODUCTION:

This morning, I want to share with you some thoughts which have come about as a result of reading a book entitled "The Prayer of Jabez". It's a small book by Bruce Wilkinson, only 93 pages long.

Our scripture this morning comes from a rather obscure place in the Bible – I Chronicles chapter 4. It is a bit of a challenge for scripture reading because you will notice that it is a record of all the genealogies in the first nine chapters of I Chronicles.

Chapter 1 starts by giving the genealogy from Adam to Abraham. Then you get a list of all the descendants of Abraham. Have you ever watched the different award shows – the Oscars, the Grammys and so on. Did you notice that every acceptance speech is exactly the same. It's goes something like this: "I like to thank my Momma, and my Daddy, and everyone in the world one by one."

OK, so maybe it's not quite that bad. But you get the sense that that's what the writer of I Chronicles is doing – listing every single person who's ever lived on the face of the earth– one by one. Chapter 4, for example.

 "The sons of Judah were Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, and Shobal. And Reaiah the son of Shobal begot Jahath, and Jahath begot Ahumai and Lahad. These were the families of the Zorathites. These were the sons of the father of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash; and the name of their sister was Hazelelponi." (1 Chronicles 4:1-3)

Are you getting sleepy yet? That's only three verses. That goes on for nine chapters! Over 500 different people are listed here. So and so was the father of so and so, and so and so was the father of so and so. Let's be honest. If you're a genealogy fan, there might be something here to interest you … but to the average Bible reader, this long list of family names you can barely pronounce is about as interesting as counting the dots on a ceiling. If you're reading through your Bible and you come to this section, my guess is that you have a tendency to just skip right over it.

But, if you do that, you'll miss two very important verses. Because, right in the middle of this long list of names, without warning, we are introduced to a man named Jabez.

I suspect you've never heard of Jabez. His name doesn't quite ring a bell with you. He's a rather mysterious character because while he's listed in this chapter along with the family of Judah, we're never told who his father was. He just sort of appears. And then he just soft of disappears. In fact, these are the only two verses in all the Bible that Jabez is even mentioned.

But he stands out here like a shining star in this long list of anonymous characters. And it is significant that Jabez is remembered not for some outstanding achievement. He wasn't a great prophet or preacher. He wasn't a wise ruler over a great nation. He wasn't famous for his accomplishments on the battlefield. He was remembered for two things -- because he  was honorable and because of his prayer! Of all the 500 people listed in these nine chapters, Jabez is the only one who is given special attention, and it's because of the prayer that he prayed.

Before we take a look at that prayer, I want us to notice something about his name because, as is the case with so many Bible characters, his name was significant. The word "Jabez" by Hebrew definition means "sorrow maker, or source of misery." This was the label placed upon the infant child because of the pain his mother experienced in giving birth.

A lot of research has been done in recent years on the effect that names have on our children. Dr. James Bruning, a psychology professor at Ohio University, did a study, and found that girls with feminine names like Emma and Winifred would be more successful if they pursued traditionally female occupations like nurse and hairstylist, while boys with names like Boris and Bruno were expected to succeed in traditionally male careers, such as plumber and truck driver.

I wonder what kind of occupation Dr. Bruning would recommend for somebody named "the guy who causes pain"? Dentist maybe? May be an IRS agent?

As I said, names are significant in the Bible. There's Jacob, the "supplanter" or "grabber" or "one who tricks", and of course, that what he did. He tricked his brother out of his birthright, grabbed it away from him. Then there was Solomon whose name means "peaceful", and of course he was. He was known as the peaceful king. And there was Jesus, whose name means "God saves", and of course, that's exactly what happened. God brought salvation through his life, his death, and his resurrection.

Imagine living under this stigma, by being constantly reminded with every mention of your name, that you are a "sorrow maker." "So what do you suppose life had in store for a guy whose name meant "one who causes pain?" What was his mother thinking? Didn't somebody offer to give her a copy of a book of baby names? Surely one of the other ten thousand possible names would have been kinder.

In Genesis 3:16, God said to Eve and all women following her, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." Those of you are mothers can endorse the truthfulness of that promise. And maybe some of you are thinking you should have named your child Jabez.

May be this is  a reasonable explanation that his mother delivered him in great pain and she never let him forget it. She named him Jabez so that he would always remember what he had done to his poor mother. Have  heard from those mother who is  like Jabez's mother, who loved to repeat the story of how much pain her child had caused her in birth. And she always liked to tell that story when her child was there, along with a crowd of folks. I know of mother who is confronted with lack of discipline of the child response you do not know the trouble I go through pregnancy so therefore is reluctant to discipline their child.

So when people said to Jabez, "What a pain!" they were just calling him by name. Don't you know it had to hurt every time he heard his name said out loud? Can you imagine what it was like for him to be in school? The teacher goes down the role. Joab, "Jehovah is God" – here! Isaiah – "Jehovah is salvation"– here! Penuel, "the face of God" – here! Jabez, "the guy who causes pain" – here!

Or imagine the childhood dynamics when he was 5 years old and out playing in the fields when his mother would call out: "You who cause me pain, you source of grief, it's time for dinner!" You can just picture the children around him imitate his mother, "Hey, Loser! Your Momma's calling."

What kind of future do you think somebody like that would have? In spite of all that, Jabez overcame the obstacles created by his upbringing.  Jabez would not bow to this this testimony and allow it to dictate his destiny, but rather he earnestly prayed, " LORD BLESS ME. ENLARGE ME. LET YOUR HAND BE UPON ME. KEEP ME FROM HARM." And God granted him his request..

The scripture says that Jabez called on the name of the God of Israel. The word "called" is the Hebrew word: QARAW, which literally means "TO ACCOST OR SIEZE." We can only conclude that Jabez sought God with an uncommon desperation and tenacity of faith, and in fact his prayers actually "siezed" the throne of grace. God was moved to answer him!

I want to ask you, "How desperate are you to arise above the negative words of others concerning your life, and the self afflicting thoughts of your own mind?"

 "How hungry are you for God's blessing in your life?" I urge you, "SIEZE AND ACCOST" the living God in your prayer and worship life, and cry out to God like Jabez did. God will answer you speedily.

When the psalmist penned the words, "As the deer pants for water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God" (Ps. 42:1), he was not writing out of a casual desire, but out of dying necessity. Oh Lord make us desperate for you!

No wonder the Bible says in verse 9 that he was an honorable man — more honorable than the rest of his brothers. Something happened in this man's life … something that took him from pain to glory.

Here is a practical truth from the Bible that our past doesn't have to be an indication of our future. Sometimes you hear it said, "Nothing can change the past", and that's true. But what doesn't have to be true is for the future to follow the direction of the past. That's why there's hope for a bumbling, loud-mouthed fisherman named Simon to become a solid rock named Peter who boldly proclaims the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's why a guy like Saul who grew up with his heart fully set on keeping the traditions of his Jewish fathers could become the apostle Paul who had a full understanding of God's grace found in Jesus Christ.

Psychologists call it "breaking the cycle." The Bible calls it conversion – the ability to change. If I don't have any hope of being any closer to God than I am right now, then I might as well pack it all up, because I would be absolutely and totally depressed. But we do have the ability to both alter our perception of the past and also change the direction of our future.

So what made the difference in the life of Jabez?  How did the breaking cycle begin? How did transformation take place? A man who at one point who was known as the one who causes pain … to become a man remembered as being more honorable than his brothers? The answer is found in his prayer life.

Jabez is distinctly remembered, not for what he did, but for what he prayed. Jabez called on the One who could, who would and who wanted to make the difference in his life. Jabez is a man who prayed with confidence, who had the attitude expressed by John in I John 5:14-15, "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him."

And so Jabez prayed. His prayer consisted of four brief requests. "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 4:10).

I want us to look in some detail at these four parts of Jabez' prayer and encourage you to incorporate these four things into your own prayer life. One preacher came up with an acrostic to help remember these four parts. You may find it useful to use it. He called this the B.E.S.T. prayer. B-E-S-T. Jabez prayed for God to Bless him, to Expand his territory, to Stay with him, and to Take evil away.

This morning, we're just going to have time to look at the first of these four, and we'll look at the rest of them next Sunday morning.

I. BLESS ME

"And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, 'Oh, that You would bless me indeed…'" (I Chronicles 4:10a)

The word "bless" is perhaps a word we use so much that we don't really appreciate what it means. We pray for God to bless the sick, and bless our family, and bless the church, bless the missionaries, and bless the food we're about to eat. And then, if someone sneezes, we say, "God bless you!" It ranks right up there with, "Have a nice day!"

But to bless in the biblical sense means to ask for God to impart his favor. When we ask for God's blessing, we're asking for something he can do for us that we can't do for ourselves. We're saying, "God, take care of me. Provide for me. Protect me."

The word "indeed" in Hebrew is very emphatic. It's like adding five exclamation points, or writing the request in capital letters and underlining it. God, please bless me. And what I really mean is, bless me a lot!

I have to confess that I have really struggled with this aspect of the prayer, and I suspect that there's a part of you as well that says, "Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right." It sounds downright selfish. God, forget about everybody else. Give me some stuff. Bless me. It seems at best impolite and at worst greedy to ask God for a lot of blessings.

If you go to an older, mature Christian, someone you really respect for their great spirituality, and you ask them, "What should I pray for?", you might expect them to say, "Give thanks to God" or "confess your sins", but you wouldn't expect them to say, "Well, first of all, you need to ask God to bless you greatly."

It spank of the attitude we've seen so much in the religious world. The "health and wealth" theology which says, "God wants you to be rich. So when you pray, just ask him for what you want. No, don't even ask. Demand that God give it to you. You want a Mercedes tell God to give you one. You want a new house, tell God to give you one." I don't know about you, but that kind of attitude absolutely makes me sick. And the first time I saw this prayer of Jabez, "Oh, that You would bless me indeed", it made me pause a bit.

Jabez uses the pronouns "me," "my" and "I" five times in just one verse. And, at first glance, it looks like a very selfish prayer. It sounds like the famous prayer of the man who prayed: "Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more."

But I want to suggest to you that while Jabez' prayer is very personal, it's not selfish. Jabez is not being selfish because he is praying for things God wants him to have. God heard his prayer and answered his prayer, so there obviously was nothing inappropriate about it, so I decided to explore scripture a bit. Where else in the scriptures does anyone ask God to bless them?

I turned first to the psalms just simply because there are so many prayers offered up in the psalms. While those specific words aren't used, I found that a lot of David's prayers in the psalms are nothing more than requests for God to bless him. In Psalm 17, for example:

 "I have called upon You, for You will hear me, O God; Incline Your ear to me, and hear my speech. Show Your marvelous lovingkindness by Your right hand….Keep me as the apple of Your eye." (Psalm 17:6-7a,8a).

What is that if it's not a prayer for God to bless David? And the psalms are filled with literally dozens of such statements.

Then I thought about Jacob. Remember that after Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of the birthright, and then deceived his father to get the blessing, he ran away. He got married, raised a family and then decided to go home. He was afraid of what Esau would do when he got there, but he headed home anyway.

And then, along the way, in Genesis 32, we find Jacob off to himself, where he has an experience with God. "When Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day." Ah, but this was no ordinary man! "Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, 'Let Me go, for the day breaks.' But he said, 'I will not let You go unless You bless me!'" (Genesis 32:24-26)

Here Jacob is wrestling with a representative of God, possibly even in some way God himself, and what does Jacob do? He has the audacity to say, "I want a blessing! I want you to bless me and I'm not going to let you go until you do!" And what does God say, "You foolish man! What a terrible thing to say!" No, Jacob receives the blessing he asks for: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed….And he blessed him there." (Genesis 32:28,29b)

From that point on, Jacob entered the promised land and he prospered so that his descendants blessed the whole world with unbelievable spiritual blessings. Because through Jacob and his offspring, the Messiah came into the world. God wants to bless us, but we have to want the blessing.

I want you to notice something important. With Jacob, as with Jabez, there is a request to receive God's blessing, but beyond that nothing specific was requested. It wasn't, "God, bless me with a new car", "God, bless me with a higher income", or "God, bless me with perfect health". Jacob, like Jabez, left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when and how he would receive them.

Sometimes I find myself in a mindset where I tell God, "Here's what I really need in my life. I've got it all figured out. I want this to work out that way, this to work out that way, and in the end here's what needs to happen." I think a much more biblical approach, though, is to say, "God, you know what's best for me. You know what I need. I trust you completely to provide that for me and I just ask you to give me your blessing this day, to share with me everything that you have in store for me."

In I Corinthians 2:9, Paul said, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."

Paul is talking specifically in that chapter about the gospel of Jesus Christ which no one understood fully for centuries, but what he says in true in a larger sense – we can't even begin to imagine all that God has in mind for us.

Bruce Wilkinson tells a tale about a man named Mr. Jones who dies and goes to heaven. Peter is there waiting at the pearly gates to give him a tour. Amidst the golden streets, the beautiful mansions and choirs of angels, Mr. Jones notices an old building. It looks like a warehouse – no windows, only one door. He asks Peter about it and Peter says, "You really don't want to see what's in there."

But Mr. Jones does want to see what's in this building, so he goes in and it turns out that this huge building is filled with row after row of shelves, stacked from the floor to the ceiling, each of them filled with white boxes tied with red ribbons.

Mr. Jones says to Peter, "All these boxes all have names on them. Do I have one?"

Reluctantly, Peter says, "Yes, but I don't think you really want to see it." But it's too late. Mr. Jones goes running down the "J" aisle trying to find his box. Peter catches up to him just as he's taking the red ribbon off the box. Mr. Jones looks inside and it's filled with all kinds of wonderful blessings.He asks Peter, "What's the significance of this?" And Peter says, "Those are all the blessings that God wanted to give you while you were on the earth, but you never asked for them."

Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."

James wrote in James 4:2b-3, "Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures."

There are a couple of truths there. One is that we need to ask for God's blessing. The other has to do with the reason for asking. James says that selfish prayers will not be answered. If you want God to bless you just so you'll have more and more, then don't expect to receive a thing. God doesn't answer selfish prayers. But God answered the prayer of Jabez.

Maybe Jabez remembered his ancestor Abraham, when the Lord said to him: "I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great, and you shill be a blessing" (Genesis 12:2). God said to Abraham, "I will bless you so that you can bless others."

That's why Jabez sought the blessing of God, so that he might be a blessing to the world around him. That's evident from the rest of his prayer which we're going to take a look at next week.

The Bible makes it clear that our whole reason for existence is to be a blessing to God and a blessing to the world around us. That's it. You're not here to see how much you can collect. You're not here to live in total comfort and pleasure. Your purpose for existence is to be a blessing to the world around you. And so, the more God blesses us, the more responsibility we have to do something with it, not just sit on it.

I have found this past week that praying for God to bless me has done several things. More than anything else, I find that it constantly reminds me that God is the one who blesses me. Sometimes we get like Israelites in the land of Canaan. God warned them
"Lest -- when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied;…then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth." (Deuteronomy 8:12-13, 17-18)

When we pray for God to bless us, it reminds us that God is the only one through whom every blessing comes. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights…" (James 1:17). When you ask God to bless and then you see what he does for you day after day, it makes you so very appreciative.

There was no question in Jabez's heart who does the blessing … he was looking in only one direction … to God. Seeking God's blessing in the purest sense is wanting nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for us. When we seek God's blessing as the ultimate value in life, we are throwing ourselves entirely into God's will and his purpose for us. All our other needs become secondary to what we really want –which is to become wholly immersed in what God is trying to do in us, through us, and around us for his glory. It is to pray, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Not my will but thine be done." Father, fill my life with you have in mind for me.

NEXT WEEK , we'll pick up at this point at look at the three remaining parts of Jabez' prayer.