Jabez – 1 Chronicles 4:10 – ‘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.’ (NIV)
The prayer recorded for us in this verse is likely to bring far more questions out than it gives truth – we know next to nothing about Jabez himself, where he has come from, what he does, and in what context he is praying this prayer. We simply know that he seemed to cause his mother a fair bit of pain when he was born, and he is described as ‘more honourable’ than his brothers – other than that we have absolutely no context to put this prayer in, and yet what it does do is teach us a vital truth about our God:
Our God is one who loves to bless His people
That is about the sum total of what this prayer is about – Jabez wants God to bless him – to enlarge his territory, to be with him, and to keep him from harm. Jabez prays for prosperity and God gives it to him – to which we may well respond, ‘but isn’t that selfish?’
The answer is surely that it could well be selfish – Jabez could simply be after a better life for himself so that he can be powerful, comfortable and have a great life, but there’s something about God’s character that tells us that probably wasn’t the case. The one saving grace that you can certainly see in Jabez’s prayer is that he knew that he needed God with him to prosper. He was certain that without God’s presence in his life there would be no prosperity – there would be no blessing, and that is a powerful thing for us to realise. The natural human inclination is to attempt everything by ourselves – we don’t want, or think that we need God with us, and because of our arrogance we so often fall flat on our faces, and even when we seem to succeed, we’ll soon found that our seeming prosperity will vanish into thin-air. Jabez knew that he needed God’s help, and we can probably also conclude that Jabez’s desire wasn’t simply to benefit himself, but that his life would please and honour the God who prospered him. At the end of the day there is absolutely nothing wrong with prosperity in this life, but the key question we need to ask ourselves if we recieve it is this: ‘how are we using our prosperity for God’s glory, and for the good of others?’
The Bible tells us that to whom much is given, much is required – if we cling selfishly to what God gives us then one day it will be ripped away from us and we will end up far poorer than we started, but if we are willing to give aswe are prospered then we will find that God is no mans debtor, and He will prove to us that He is a God that loves to bless His people, ultimately one day we will receive heaven for eternity and what greater blessing could there possibly be?
There is just one more thing to add to this picture – Jesus gives us a slightly different picture of what blessing means for us in this world:
‘Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’ Matthew 5:11-12
As Christians we need to understand that material blessings ultimately are pretty meaningless – and we must always recognise that God never promises to make us rich. Otherwise we will be caught in all kinds of problems expecting God to give us everything we want. Real and lasting blessing is simply to this – to know, love, and to walk in relationship with the God who loved us and gave Himself for us, and it’s often in suffering that we are drawn closer to Him and transformed that our lives would more fully reflect His glory in this world.