Bless me indeed

2

Posted by Gareth Matthews | Posted on 23-01-2006

Category : Bible

I heard a great talk this weekend by the pastor of my church which concerned a little known character buried near the start of 1 Chronicles. Amongst the lists of family trees, Jabez pops up and is singled out by the writer along with his two sentence prayer and God’s approval of it.

So what is so special about Jabez? His prayer goes something like this…

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.

I find praying prayers like this really hard – I think because I would often rather the attention be on someone else rather than me, even when talking to God. But I think there is something here that I need to get hold of. As a worship leader I believe that it is pretty hard to lead people in worship if worship is something I don’t know anything about. In the same way I think it is pretty hard to be a blessing to others if we do not ask for and experience God’s blessing on our lives.

Now when I talk about asking God to bless us I do not mean it in the ‘pray for it and God will give it to you’, name it and claim it style. How God blesses us is completely up to Him – and to be honest that is His department and I’d rather leave Him to it. However I think this is a whole attitude thing – if we really are serious about blessing other people then we need to ask God for His blessing on our lives. I believe it is an active part of being spitiually healthy – which is a great gift we can give to the people around us.

I think the main point I am trying to convey is that it is not selfish or wrong to prayer for blessing on our lives when the motive for it is to bless other people from it. A little bit of Jabez in my prayer life? I’ll let you know how it goes…

As an aside – does anyone actually know where Jabez comes from? If you read 1 Chronicles 4, Jabez is first mentioned in verse 9 quite separately from the family tree lists! I am sure he must be related to someone in 1 Chronicles 4 – have I just missed it?

Comments (2)

Rob Borley said on 23-01-2006

Well, according to Henry and his wonderful commentary

It is not said whose son he was, nor does it appear in what age he lived; but, it should seem, he was the founder of one of the families of Aharhel, mentioned 1Ch 4:8.

There is a stack of info that goes on from here but you will just have to read it yourself.
Rob Borley said on 23-01-2006

You are dead right about asking for blessing.

After all Paul says “By prayer and petition bring your requests to the Lord”

When our heart is right, God loves to bless us. Thankfully though, as Bono so eloquently put it.

“Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily” *smile*

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