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By clicking on this link, you will be re-directed to a wonderful blog with Lent-based devotions centering around the discipline of prayer.
Today’s devotional was on the Prayer of Jabez, which I have often seen taken out of context and manipulated for personal gain.
Enjoy this proper handling of the Prayer of Jabez and be encouraged to live freely for God without limit or restriction, and find strength in His grace and truth.
Jabez’s prayer, found in 1 Chronicles 4:10, is a daring model of a prayer that we can pray for ourselves as well as for others. Bruce Wilkinson’s book, The Prayer of Jabez, has done much to popularize this prayer in the evangelical world today.
When we sincerely ask for ourselves the very things God wants for us, he is ready to answer. The fact that God “granted his request” confirms that Jabez’s prayer was sincere and in line with God’s will.
Jabez was a man who believed in prayer. His life was changed through prayer. He asked for four things. His first prayer was, “Oh, that you would bless me.” God delights in blessing us, but He wants to do it in response to our asking. That’s the way God chooses to work. So when Jabez prayed, “Oh, that you would bless me,” God was pleased with that prayer and sent His blessing.
Second, Jabez prayed, “.and enlarge my territory.” At first this may sound like a greedy desire for material prosperity. But if it had been, I don’t think God would have granted it. People who pray wrongly motivated prayers do not get “yes” answers (James 4:3). In Jabez’s case, this was a prayer for the restoration of his lost inheritance, which God had promised for all His people. For us to pray for “enlarged territory” probably means praying for the opportunity to break out of whatever is limiting us from being free to live entirely within God’s promises for us. That’s always a good prayer.
Third, Jabez prayed, “Let your hand be with me.” God’s hand represents His ability to strengthen and His readiness to act on behalf of His loved ones. Jabez was saying, “Lord, as you enlarge my territory and give me opportunity to serve you, I can’t do that in my own strength, so please help me.” This is the prayer of a humble person who knows that his strength is in the Lord.
Fourth, Jabez prayed, “.and keep me from harm.” The greatest source of harm in this world is Satan. This part of Jabez’s prayer is similar to the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).
The passage ends with the astounding declaration, “And God granted his request.” God did this because He was pleased with Jabez’s prayer. He will also be pleased if you pray such a prayer for yourself. You see, God wants to bless you; God wants to enlarge your opportunities for service; God wants to strengthen you; God wants to protect you from evil. But He wants to do all these things in response to your asking.
My wife is a full-time high school science teacher, and I work as a substitute teacher in addition to being a seminary student and a youth pastor.
Needless to say, my wife and I have constant interaction with youth.
So let me say this: our youth and our school systems need as much prayer as you can muster.
The casual observer says there is no reason to worry; every generation of parents looks to their child’s social group with horror and disdain.
As far as parents were concerned, the roaring 20′s were wrought with rebellious teens dancing and drinking, the 60′s were full of hippies strung out on LSD, the 70′s were consumed by disco and bell-bottoms, the 80′s saw the birth of MTV, and the 90′s were defined by the grunge and post-grunge movement.
And each generation of parents simply looked at their kids and shook their heads.
Yet each time, the youth came out seemingly unscathed and well-equipped to lead the country into the future.
And so the casual observer would look at the apparent horrors of today’s youth and assume the same will happen: the qualified will mature, grow out of their adolescence, and become adept business professionals, capable of assimilating into the business world, starting a family, and providing the backbone of the country.
I, however, am not so optimistic.
There is one thing that separates today’s youth from generations in times past, and that is postmodernity.
Throughout the early and middle years of this century, modernity was still in full-swing, meaning that objective truth existed somewhere and was capable of being attained. Putting aside the notion of our Judeo-Christian worldview for a second, at the very least everybody agreed that truth existed.
There was a common underpinning of society to which everybody could agree and relate.
There was a single common denominator which leveled the playing field and everybody strove for.
However, the 80′s and 90′s began to feel the very first effects of postmodernity – relativism, plurality, extreme tolerance – and those youth grew into today’s leaders.
And so that segment of the population are now becoming parents, and while they may only mildly influence their children with the faintest hints of postmodernity, their children are seeped in it.
At school and through the media, pluralism and relativism are the war-cries of the culture today.
The baby boomers were influenced by their parents – the so-called Greatest Generation – and worked harder for the American Dream than any who had come before them. They were influenced by their parents and strove to enjoy the freedom their parents had earned. However, that influence has deteriorated over the years.
And today’s youth, rather than being influenced by the Greatest Generation, are influenced by the Tolerant Generation.
Our culture as a whole encourages and teaches the plurality of truth and the acceptance of all; not realizing that in accepting all it affirms none, cutting its own feet out from under it.
The education system, cultural trends, societal norms, moral systems…these are all institutions once desperate for truth that are now held hostage by the culturally dependent nature of truth and the fall of the mighty mettanarrative in favor of the context-driven micronarrative.
And so while there was always a failsafe to fall back on for generations preceding ours – the assumed existence of ultimate truth to guide and direct our efforts – today that does not exist.
So now what are we left with?
The words of the great Puritan Thomas Watson ring in my heart:
Truth is ancient; it’s gray hairs make it venerable; it comes form Him who is the ancient of days.
God is truth, and all truth is His.
Society is turning away from truth as further evidence of its turning its back on God.
As Oswald Chambers would say, society has itself on the throne of its heart and not God.
We need not be surprised and we need not be discouraged:
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
– Galatians 6:9
God is good and God is faithful, and God will provide through this season.
Affirm God and glorify His name, and truth will abound.
Seek truth honestly and humbly, and God will reveal Himself to you.
And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true
– 2 Samuel 7:28
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth
– John 4:24
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
– John 14:6
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
– Jeremiah 29:13
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry
-Matthew 4:1-2
The Greek verb here (nesteuo) refers to the voluntary act of abstaining from food.
Jesus left for the desert in submission to the guiding of the Holy Spirit for a time of prayerful preparation.
Jesus’ public ministry was marked by solemn times of solitary prayer, where He might go and be still before His Father and commune with Him. This instance in Matthew 4 is the first and most extreme example of this. Following the commencement of His earthly ministry and preceding the temptation by the Evil One in the wilderness, Jesus retreats for the purposes of meditation, contemplation, and purposed focus on God.
Christ’s fast was an example of humility – just as He stepped out of His heavenly throne room to take up an abode on this planet, so did He for 40 days forsake food and water as a means to focus Himself on the desires and purposes God had for Him here.
He later replies to the Evil One,”It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God,” quoting Deut. 8:3, and pointing us to the true sustenance of our existence.
Not food, not water, not temporal joys and pleasures, but the very Word of God is that which fills us, inspires us, and keeps us for His purposes.
We are told in Acts 17:28, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”
Christ is making no mistake here in clearly displaying this reality.
