The Prayer of Jabez
 
 

By Bruce Wilkerson
Keywords: Prayer of Jabez, the Jabez blessing


I don't read a lot of modern day authors and I don't seek them out. I like to go way back to the olde divines for my reading material.

During a lunch time conversation, a friend mentioned something she called the prayer of Jabez. I asked what it was and she told me that it was located in Chronicles. This interested me and I wanted to look up the scripture later. At the end of our lunch, she went to her car and gave me an audio tape of the Bruce Wilkerson's book, "The Prayer of Jabez".

As I listened to The Prayer of Jabez in the wee hours of the morning, I was deeply moved and intrigued because it described the spiritual phenomena that had occurred in my life over the previous year or so. From November of 1999 until the present day, I've almost been astonished at the spiritual blessing in my life. The Prayer of Jabez along with Hannah Whitall Smith's, "A Christian's Secret of a Happy" life helped me understand what happened.

Any Christian who embraces the precepts in The Prayer of Jabez will experience explosive growth. Most people will never understand that book. I've oftentimes felt it was written just for me.

Many are writing against The Prayer of Jabez because papists and other unregenerates are reciting the prayer like an incantation. At the end of the book, Wilkinson encourages folks to pray this exact prayer for 30 days--I didn't do that and I wouldn't tell nobody else to do it like that. The prayer does sometimes come out in my prayers (just like any scripture may come out)--but some people are using the prayer like an incantation. That does not mean the book is bad. Papists, charismatics, and other outrageous people may put their own spin on it, but they do the same thing with the scriptures. They wrest with them to their own destruction. I don't stop reading the word because folks wrest with it. I rebuke those in error and keep labouring in the word and doctrine.

The precepts in this book are NEEDED for EVERY Bible believing Christian. Many "fundamentalists" beliefs are confined to what the "statement of faith" paper says for their church. They don't move and breath in the Holy Ghost. They don't dream dreams, see visions or prophesy--so these things are foreign to them and cast out as abhorrent. They have a dried up "Christian life". Christians put God outside of just about everything. They only think about Him when they go to church, read their 5 minute devotional, or are in trouble. He is oftentimes used as a byword by those who are called by His name. It is high time to break out of that.

The following is what I gleaned from The Prayer of Jabez. Some of it is Bruce Wilkerson, some of it is tracy. It is a little lengthy, you may want to print it out and read it in the tub, on the deck, wherever--with a pen in hand for making notes.


THE PRAYER

The following is an honourable man's prayer--and God answered it.

1 Chronicles 4:9 And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.
4:10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

Let us break down the prayer, line by line and see how it can relate to us.

"OH THAT THOU WOULDEST BLESS ME INDEED"

"AND ENLARGE MY COAST"

AND THAT THINE HAND MIGHT BE WITH ME

Wilkinson called this "The touch of greatness"

AND THAT THOU WOULDEST KEEP ME FROM EVIL THAT IT MAY NOT GRIEVE ME

Wilkinson's says here, "Keeping the legacy safe." Stay away from evil. Resist it from within and from without.

JABEZ WAS MORE HONOURABLE THAN HIS BRETHREN

Wilkinson says here, "Welcome to God's honour roll".

Praise the Lord and amen.




| Eternal Life | Hell is Real | The Gospel According to John |
| My Testimony |Why I Read the Authorized KJV Bible|
| The Hymnal | Messianic Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus Christ |
| Epistle Dedicatory to the Authorized King James of 1611 |


 





Home for hundreds of articles.