We don’t know anything about him other than he was more honorable than his brothers were. But just because Jabez got what he asked for does not make his prayer a model prayer. The Bible says God answered Jabez’s prayer. Shelter me from the world and its troubles. “Let Your hand be with me that I would be safe from evil and its pain.” In other words, build a shield around me.

The greedy depths of our society are laid bare in our desire to have more and more. “Enlarge my territory,” is the second line. Give me something that will make my life better. Me and me alone, is the subject of the prayer. “O that you would bless me indeed,” the prayer begins. The warm reception of The Prayer of Jabez among Christians and non-Christians alike offers a vivid example of our culture’s propensity to make a cult of the self and substitute spiritual experience for an obsessive acquisition of things. There is a darker and more troubling dimension to its success. The Prayer of Jabez is the latest in a series of novelty items popular religion uses to distract itself from weightier matters of faith and practice.īut more than novelty drives the uncanny interest in this tiny book (about 90 pages). The popularity of this book reveals more about the people buying the book than it does about the meaning of the prayer. If we care to use book sales as a measure of truth, then the prayer of Jabez is one of the greatest prayers ever prayed.īut soaring book sales do not establish truth-value. Of course it’s hard to argue with success. These are bold claims to make for a prayer that, up until now, has been virtually unknown. 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.” Jabez, an otherwise unknown biblical character, is only mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 along with a brief prayer attributed to him. A little book about a short prayer is sweeping the nation.Ĭhristian booksellers across the country are reporting record sales of Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez.

Prayer of jabez study pdf