Whatever Happened to the Prayer of Jabez?

If you were a child of the 1990s (like me), then you were probably able to identify by the various fads a ballpark date. Likewise, if I’d mentioned bellbottoms, disco balls, and sideburns, you’d have known it was a reference to the 1970s. Fads have a way of helping us identify time periods because they come and go quickly. If fads stuck around, they wouldn’t be very good identity markers.

Is it good or bad that we can do the same thing with Christian sub-cultures? If I tell you that our weary time-traveler stumbled upon a person wearing a Lord’s Gym t-shirt, chewing on some Testa-mints, and thumbing through the Prayer of Jabez, would you be able to identify it as the early 2000s?

I suppose some of the fads that we go through in churches and society at large are rather innocuous. But what happens if a book like The Prayer of Jabez is marketed as a prayer that will change your life? If this was supposed to become a “treasured, lifelong habit,” why do none of the people under twenty know about this prayer, or this book, or the “life-changing impact” it can have?

What Is the Prayer of Jabez?

The original prayer of Jabez is found in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. It’s a little statement tucked away in a frequently unread portion of Scripture. It’s in a long list of genealogical records, easy to skip over:

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying: "I gave birth to him in pain." Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying: "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory! Let Your hand be with me, and keep me from the evil one." And God granted his request.

But when most people make a reference to The Prayer of Jabez, they are talking about the book, The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life. This was a book published in 2000 and written by Bruce Wilkinson. It became the book of the year in 2001 and inspired many spin-offs such as the Prayer of Jabez Study Bible, devotionals, children’s books, a Prayer of Jabez Worship Experience, and a host of other things.

In the book, Wilkinson spoke of his experience with using this prayer in his own life. He uses the four petitions of the biblical prayer to reiterate his key message that God wants to “release His miraculous power in your life now. And for all eternity, He will lavish on you His honor and delight.” According to Wilkinson, the four petitions are:

"Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that I may be free from pain" (Page 7)

My aim here isn’t to critique Wilkinson’s book. That has already been done numerous times in the years immediately after the book. My aim is to simply say what happens when something like this comes and goes within a couple of years.

Photo Credit: ©Sparrowstock 

When a Fad Disappears

A few years ago, my children made two requests for presents—fidget spinners. They weren’t that expensive, but they came in many shapes and sizes. I was also working with the kids at church at the time, and it seemed that almost every kid had a fidget spinner. It was all the rage.

What would have happened if our church decided to capitalize on this fidget spinner craze? Imagine that we spent thousands of dollars purchasing fidget spinners. We decorated the walls. We held events centered around fidget spinning. We changed the name of our children’s ministry, wrote Bible studies, and everything about us became the fidget-spinning youth group.

My illustration is silly—thankfully, no church that I am aware of went all-in on the fidget spinner craze. But what would that church look like today? They’d have boxes of fidget spinners and a mostly irrelevant message.

Now let me add a layer to this. What if we had connected Scripture and the name of God to fidget spinners? What happens when God’s Word becomes a fad? And then that fad starts to wear out? It begins to call into question something like Isaiah 40:8,

The grass may wither, and the flowers will fade, but the Word of God will stand forever.

Simply put, if something like the prayer of Jabez was meant to be used as it was used in the early 2000s, then it likely wouldn’t be in the dust-bin of evangelical subculture. But here’s what really matter—that text does have meaning. And that message was muted by a fad.

What Does the Prayer of Jabez Mean?

To understand the meaning of the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles, it is important to remember that 1 Chronicles is the final book in the Hebrew Bible. It might seem like an incredibly boring book to us—with all the genealogies of names we cannot pronounce—but it was making a vital statement to the post-exilic community. It reminded them of their past and pointed them toward the future. It was about seeing beauty emerge from ashes.

That leads us to an important question. Certainly, at least some of the people in this genealogy were like Jabez and prayed and trusted in God. Why don’t they get a little snippet? I would submit to you that it is because Jabez’s prayer is uniquely helpful to the exilic community. His name is equated with suffering—but he is praying that his story will be different than the supposed destiny of his name. He didn’t want to cause pain, he wanted to be a source of blessing.

Jabez’s situation is parallel to that of the post-exilic community. Because of their rebellion, their name had become a byword, a curse, a thing that people hissed at. That is what Jeremiah said would happen because of their rebellion. And as they endured the exile and all of the shame attached to that, it became part of their identity. But now they were back in the land, and they needed hope. They needed something like Jabez’s prayer to encourage them.

I really appreciate how Richard Pratt also sees this connection:

Jabez’s prayer related directly to the needs of the Chronicler’s original readers in at least three ways. First, the Chronicler’s readers had experienced much pain during and after the exile. They certainly would have identified with Jabez’s desire. Second, Jabez’s prayer touched on the issue of expanding the territories of post-exilic Judah… Third, the Chronicler pointed to Jabez as an example of an appropriate way to gain relief from the problems of suffering and territorial expansion. Jabez prayed, ‘Let your hand be with me’ (4:10). In the Chronicler’s vocabulary for God to be ‘with’ someone was for him to aid them in their struggles and to fight for them…Sincere prayers to God for his help were essential for the post-exilic community to receive these kinds of blessings.”

The Prayer of Jabez, then, is likely related to the need to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. Just as Jabez (whose name means suffering) seems to have turned beauty out of ashes, so also the exilic community is looking towards the same promise. 

And that is a message that is always relevant. We need to understand this prayer even today. Not so that we can pray for materialistic blessings—but so that we will know that God comes through on His promises. He builds beauty out of ashes and the only name that actually defines us is the one given to us by Almighty God.

Even if the Prayer of Jabez the book is no longer relevant, the prayer of Jabez in the Word of God is still very much relevant today.

Sources:
Richard L. Pratt Jr., 1 and 2 Chronicles: A Mentor Commentary, Mentor Commentaries (Fearn, Tain, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2006), 100.

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