 July 2006 Rhema Word...
From Guest
Contributor, Ray Puen
The Prayer of Jebez
-- © EquipNow Ministries 2001
--
Note from Raquel: If you
think you know all about this little prayer, read
on and be changed by the Living Word of God...
ever changing and giving us a fresh
prospective...
O
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. 1
Chron. 4: 10
That
I May Not Cause Pain
The
popular book The Prayer of Jabez provides
for this lesson a different angle on prayer.
Jabez
may occupy only 2 verses in all of scripture but
no longer is he obscure, thanks to the
best-selling book by Bruce Wilkinson. I was
meditating on one portion of Jabez’ prayer
and realized that it touches on this course on
prayer, and especially as you prepare to move on
to the next course - Spiritual Warfare.
Please
turn to 1 Chron. 4:9-10. Consider this alternate
rendering of this prayer. The last portion of the
prayer says "that I may not cause
pain." Meditate on this line a moment and
wonder why it belongs in this prayer. I believe
that the key to unlocking it is in the earlier
statement that Jabez was more honorable than his
brothers (1 Chron. 4:9). That's why we'll make
the last line our introduction to the prayer.
The
clue to understanding the line "more
honorable than his brothers" is neither in
"honorable" nor "brothers."
It is implied by its placement squarely in the
middle of a genealogical list. Everyone listed
was the father of someone - until we get to
Jabez. His father isn't mentioned. It says
instead that his mother bore him in pain!
What
was that pain? We don't know exactly, but we can
make an educated extrapolation from the rest of
the chapter and from our understanding that
family blessings were passed down through the
father.
This
would allow us to consider that Jabez' father was
not honorable. He may have done something to have
caused his family shame ("pain"). We
don't need to know what that might have been. It
is enough that his father's name had been omitted
and that it was left up to the next generation to
live down that shame. There were provisions for
that, but it would take great effort to
reestablish the family name.
To
this effort, the brothers apparently had no
desire to do. They were content to accept their
lot in life and perhaps disperse elsewhere. Not
Jabez. Oh no. He was staying put and enduring the
difficulty that accompanies this kind of
situation. He was determined that this iniquity
(generational curse: we’ll define this in
Spiritual Warfare) would be broken right now in
his generation. No passing on of this family
stronghold through his line. His desire may have
been to earn by h is own life example a
reputation worthy of reestablishing the family
escutcheon.
Did
his father cause pain? Perhaps to the community.
That automatically meant perhaps to the family
name, too. So with Jabez' decision, his prayer
included this most poignant plea. "Lord, I
want to do something about my family name. This
onus is a lifelong difficulty for me. Please have
mercy on me and bless me so that I can accomplish
this goal."
He expressed it in one phrase - "that I
may not cause pain."
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