Mention the biblical name of Jabez, and you get one of two responses: an enthusiastic “Oh, yes, I know all about him,” or a blank stare followed by “Never heard of him.”
Today, the numbers of people who know about Jabez are multiplying faster than a calculator.
Jabez, a Hebrew name meaning “pain,” asked God to bless him, and God did, according to 1 Chronicles 4:9–10, the only passage in the Bible in which Jabez is mentioned. Huntsville banker Greg Perkins calls the prayer “the pearl hidden in the oyster shell of the most boring part of the Bible.”
But Jabez has become so popular that the first known book about him, “The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life,” is the No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book on “Publisher’s Weekly,” Amazon.com and USA Today lists.
Jabez also topped the list of best-selling hardback books in LifeWay Christian Stores in May, continuing in first place for the fifth consecutive month.
The 92-page book has sold more than 3 million copies since being published by Multnomah Publishers 15 months ago.
“It is definitely a phenomenon,” said David Collins, manager of the LifeWay Christian bookstore in Huntsville. Collins gave his 40 employees copies of the book as Christmas gifts. He said his store has sold 2,600 copies since November.
Sue Morgan, assistant manager of the LifeWay store, said many people who buy the book for themselves return to purchase it for others.
“We’ve had a number of churches doing it as a type of Bible study or series,” she said. Morgan said other items featuring “The Prayer of Jabez,” such as plaques and cups, are also big sellers.
Author Bruce Wilkinson, founder and president of Walk Thru the Bible Ministries in Atlanta, said he is “shocked”at the success of his book.
“We can’t claim any credit or brilliance,” Wilkinson told The Dallas Morning News in a recent article. “It’s just God deciding Jabez prayed this prayer thousands of years ago, and maybe now it’s time to get it answered.”
Wilkinson said he started praying the prayer of Jabez 30 years ago as a senior at Dallas Theological Seminary and has talked about it for years. But it wasn’t until he published his ideas in a book that Jabez skyrocketed in popularity.
The publisher is planning other versions of the Jabez books geared to women, teens and children, along with a journal, Bible study and video series.
The book has already outsold individual books such as the popular “Left Behind” series, according to Lewis Martin, manager of the Family Christian Bookstore in Huntsville.
“It is definitely one of the top-selling Christian books in the last 25 years,” Martin said.
“The Prayer of Jabez” was the first book of the BreakThrough Series, which consists of “The Prayer of Jabez Devotional,” “The Prayer of Jabez Bible Study” and Wilkinson’s newest book, “Secrets of the Vine.”
Murray Wilton, pastor of Southside Baptist Church, Huntsville, said he prayed the prayer of Jabez for about three years after someone pointed out the obscure passage to him.
Wilton has had a one-minute radio message ministry.
About three years ago, he said, he had become discouraged with his radio ministry.
“I was really questioning whether I was having any impact because I wasn’t getting a lot of feedback,” he said. “When I started praying the Prayer of Jabez, I began hearing from people all over north Alabama and southern Tennessee. I believe with all my heart the Lord has used that radio spot to enlarge my territory.”
“Enlarge my territory” is part of Jabez’s prayer.
Murray said while other books have been written on prayer, he’s amazed at the interest Jabez has generated. “We have never seen people as keen about their prayer life,” he said. “People are seeing that God really answers prayer.”
LifeWay customer Sharon Shanlever, a member of Calvary Baptist Church, Scottsboro, said she first heard about Jabez on a Christian radio program a couple of months ago. She was purchasing two books — one as a gift to herself for Mother’s Day, and the other to give to a friend.
“After I heard about it on the radio, I looked it up and it made me want to buy the book,”she said.
For Perkins, a vice president at Compass Bank, the book has given his life new meaning.
“At first I thought it was a very selfish prayer, but as I read it, I realized that God wants to bless us more than we ever ask. It doesn’t have to be monetary assets. It can be health, or peace of mind, or any number of things. This is a prayer God liked and if He liked it, we ought to be praying it.”
But he cautions people about praying the prayer.
“If you aren’t ready to trust God to hold your hand, you will fall flat on your face,” he said. “Trust is the most important part of the prayer.” For more information, visit www.prayerofjabez.com. (RNS)
Wilkerson’s book urges readers to ‘reach for extraordinatry’
Several theological questions about God’s blessings to his children are being raised in the popular “The Prayer of Jabez” by Bruce Wilkinson.
In the book, Wilkinson urges readers to “reach for an extraordinary life” by praying the prayer of Jabez daily.
He has prayed the prayer of Jabez every day for 30 years, he writes, and has found it to produce wonderful results in his life and ministry.
“The Jabez prayer distills God’s powerful will for your future,” Wilkinson said.
The book breaks the prayer of 1 Chronicles 4:10 into four parts. The first is “that you would bless me indeed.”
“God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend,” Wilkinson writes. He explains that praying for God’s blessings for yourself “is not the self-centered act it might appear, but a supremely spiritual one and exactly the kind of request our Father longs to hear.”
To “bless,” according to Wilkinson, 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 for ourselves.”
Although by praying the prayer of Jabez, “your life will become marked by miracles,” Wilkinson urges readers not to see the prayer as a means to get specific things. Jabez, he notes, “left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when and how” they would be received.
To illustrate the importance of asking for God’s blessing, Wilkinson tells a fable about a man named “Mr. Jones,” who dies and goes to heaven, where he discovers a ribbon-tied box with his name on it. Inside the box, he learns, are “all the blessings God wanted to give him while he was on earth, but Mr. Jones had never asked.”
Wilkinson explained, “Even though there is no limit to God’s goodness, if you didn’t ask him for a blessing yesterday, you didn’t get all that you were supposed to have. That’s the catch — if you don’t ask for his blessing, you forfeit those that come to you only when you ask.”
The second part of the prayer is to “enlarge my territory.”
This means to “ask God to enlarge your life so you can make a greater impact for him,” Wilkinson said. “When you start asking in earnest — begging — for more influence and responsibility with which to honor him, God will bring opportunities and people into your path.”
The third part of the prayer is “that your hand would be with me.”
This emphasizes the Christian’s dependence upon God and inability to do God’s work in human power alone, Wilkinson explained. “The hand of the Lord is so seldom experienced by even mature Christians that they don’t miss it and don’t ask for it. They hardly know it exists.”
Finally, the prayer asks “that you would keep me from evil.”
This is a prayer not to face temptation, Wilkinson said. “Most of us face too many temptations — and therefore sin too often — because we don’t ask God to lead us away from temptation,” he added.
In conclusion, Wilkinson asserts that God does have favorites. “Equal access to God does not add up to equal reward. … Simply put, God favors those who ask.” (ABP)
Is material gain a spiritual blessing? The prayer of Jabez or the prayer of Jesus
A little book about a short prayer is sweeping the nation, with Christian booksellers across the country reporting record sales of Bruce Wilkinson’s “The Prayer of Jabez,” (Multnomah Publishers).
Jabez, an otherwise unknown biblical character, is mentioned only in 1 Chronicles 4:9–10, along with a brief prayer attributed to him.
The prayer, according to Wilkinson, “contains the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God.” It is a prayer, Wilkinson asserts, “God always answers.”
These are bold claims to make for such an obscure prayer. This sort of praise is usually reserved for the Bible as a whole rather than just a short passage.
Of course it is hard to argue with success. If we want to equate book sales with truth value, then “The Prayer of Jabez” is one of the greatest prayers ever prayed.
But book soaring book sales do not establish truth value. The popularity of this book reveals more about the people buying the book than it does about the purpose and nature of prayer.
The warm reception of the “Prayer of Jabez” among Christians and non-Christians alike provides a profound example of our culture’s commitment to material gain as a measure of spiritual blessing.
“O that you would bless me indeed,” the prayer begins. Me, and me alone, is the subject of the prayer. Give me something that will make my life better.
“Enlarge my territory,” is the second line. Give me more of what I already have. Give me more of what I don’t have. The greedy character of our society is laid bare in this “give me more” plea.
“Let Your hand be with me that I would be safe from evil and its pain.” In other words, build a shield around me. Protect me. Shelter me from the world and its troubles. Give me all I want and need, and don’t let a world of need around me encroach on what is mine. And don’t let me feel any pain. Let me coast through life without a worry or care. I’ve asked for it God, now give it to me.
The Bible says God answered Jabez’s prayer. Good for Jabez. But just because Jabez got what he asked for does not make his prayer a model prayer. We don’t know anything about him other than he was better than his brothers. That snippet of information does not qualify Jabez as a prayer guru for the rest of us. In Christian circles that job has been reserved for Jesus.
In fact, it is striking to place the prayer of Jabez along side the prayer of Jesus. The shallow selfishness of the prayer of Jabez becomes obvious when compared to the real thing.
Instead of “bless me,” the prayer of Jesus begins “Our Father.” The prayer of Jesus is not about me and mine. Jesus’ prayer is about the possibility of “us.” The “our Father” is an invitation to recognize we are part of a community of human beings.
Instead of “enlarge my territory,” the prayer of Jesus asks for God’s kingdom to come, for God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
In the message of Jesus, the hope of the kingdom of God was about justice and fairness. His prayer is not about getting more for me. The prayer of Jesus calls forth an image of a world where there is food for all, and shelter for all.
The prayer of Jesus does not promise riches to the petitioner. Instead we are taught to pray for our bread daily. The prayer of Jesus recognizes that we share a common dependency on the resources of this planet. Stockpiling bread might make us feel safe, but it often impoverishes our neighbors. Piling up bread for tomorrow and the next day may make practical survival sense for me and mine, but it destroys the hope of a community where sharing ensures the survival of everyone.
Interestingly, both prayers end with a plea about evil, but the tone and tenor could not be more different. The prayer of Jabez wants God to place a protecting hand around him. Protect me and mine. Don’t let anyone get what I’ve got.
The prayer of Jesus asks that we not to be overcome by the temptation to become unforgiving and uncaring. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us.” In other words, as we travel through this life together, we occasionally hurt each other, or take advantage of each other. The Prayer of Jabez would have us hide behind a safe wall that protects me from all of you. The prayer of Jesus would have us take down the walls that separate us so we can live together as a human family.
Wilkinson’s book suggests that we pray the prayer of Jabez every day. Blessings will be ours, he says. Maybe. I seem to remember something about rain on the just and the unjust.
If we are looking for a prayer to pray everyday, a prayer that will really make a difference in our lives and in our world, I recommend the prayer of Jesus over the prayer of Jabez.
The prayer of Jabez feeds into our craving for private gain, safety and security. It promises God’s blessings simply for the asking with no further responsibility to God or anyone else.
The prayer of Jesus challenges us to engage one another as brothers and sisters in one family. To live together sharing resources and dealing with each other mercifully.
The prayer of Jabez leaves us with the cold isolation of material gain and privatized faith.
The prayer of Jesus creates the hope of community and the promise of enough for everyone.
The prayer of Jabez begins with “me” and ends with “me.” That doesn’t leave much room for anyone else. The prayer of Jesus begins with “our” and ends with “forgiveness.” In between is all the stuff we need to build and sustain our common lives.
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