Believe for Greater Things | Part 1

Happy New Year! Can you believe it is the year 2020? Believe it or not, we have arrived at a point on our calendar that was impossible to imagine a few short years ago. Once again, we are in a presidential election year, and it seems as if the divide in this country is getting even greater than ever before.

Let there be no mistake about it, forces of evil are plotting to take this nation down a path of even greater evil than it has ever known. Their desire is to silence the pulpit, and to intimidate the pew to be inactive. More than ever before, we need bold pulpits that will preach truth and call for action among those in the pew. It’s going to be an exciting year! But today, I’m not getting into all that!

Those of you who have read the book of 1 Chronicles know how tedious it can be. The first nine chapters are genealogies, or “the begats.” Many people arrive in the first chapter and just jump right on over to the tenth chapter and pick up with the story of Saul’s death. If you do that, you’ll miss two marvelous verses. Forty-two names into chapter four the author pauses and suddenly we have a powerful two-verse story about a man name Jabez.

Twenty or so years ago, Bruce Wilkinson wrote a little book called, The Prayer of Jabez. Over the years, I avoided preaching this section of Scripture because so many people made that book (which is a wonderful book from what I can remember) into a magic talisman. In the process they turned a beautiful passage of the Bible into little more than a “Hail Mary.” But if we are not careful, we can miss a very important passage that God placed by inspiration in the divine record.

As far as we can tell, Jabez lived in southern Israel after the conquest of Canaan and during the time of the judges. He was born into the tribe of Judah and eventually became the notable head of a clan. Yet his story really begins with his name: