God Knows!

The Prayer of Jabez suggests a radically different practice in prayer than I have been using. Instead of concentrating on asking God for specific benefits, Jabez leaves the choice of the blessings to God. I am excited by that perspective. Would you agree with me that God knows what we need? If we ask him to bless us, without identifying a specific blessing, we place no limits on his generosity. He can give us everything we need and additional blessings as well.

A Prayer begins . . .

Heavenly Father, oh, that you would bless us indeed and enlarge our territories. Let your hand be with us. Keep us from evil that we may not cause pain.

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Two selected book quotations begin . . .

Tap Supernatural Power

Bruce Wilkinson, The Prayer of Jabez, Breaking Through to The Blessed Life, Multnomah Publishers, 2001, pp. 23, 24. Part of the Break Through Series    SoAmazing.com

Category: Christian Living, Prayer
Keywords: blessing, supernatural, prayer, The Prayer of Jabez, Prayer of Jabez, Jabez, blessings, Christians, God, Bible, Wilkinson, Bruce Wilkinson, Multnomah Publishers,

"Before we can ask for God's blessing with confidence, we need a clear understanding of what the word means. We hear 'bless' or 'blessing' intoned from every pulpit. We ask God to bless the missionaries, the kids, and the food we're about to eat. It's something Grandma says when she hears you sneeze.

No wonder the meaning of blessing gets watered down to something vague and innocuous like 'Have a nice day.' No wonder so many Christians aren't as desperate as Jabez was to receive it!

To bless in the biblical sense means to ask for or to impart supernatural favor. When we ask for God's blessing, we're not asking for more of what we could get for ourselves. We're crying out for the wonderful, unlimited goodness that only God has the power to know about or give to us. This kind of richness is what the writer was referring to in Proverbs. 'The Lord's blessing is our greatest wealth, all our work adds nothing to it' (Proverbs 10:22, TLB).

Notice a radical aspect of Jabez's request for blessing, He left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when, and how Jabez would receive them. This kind of radical trust in God's good intentions toward us has nothing in common with the popular gospel that you should ask God for a Cadillac, a six-figure income, or some other material sign that you have found a way to cash in on your connection with Him. Instead, the Jabez blessing focuses like a laser on our wanting for ourselves nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for us.

When we seek God's blessing as the ultimate value in life, we are throwing ourselves entirely into the river of His will and power and purposes for us. All our other needs become secondary to what we really want--which is to become wholly immersed in what God is trying to do in us, through us, and around us for His glory."

SoAmazing Review: Wilkinson explains what is truly different about Jabez's prayer. If you want nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for you, read this book.

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Depraved Capacity

David Anderson and Brent Zuercher, Letters Across The Divide, Baker Books, 2001, pp. 41, 47.    SoAmazing.com

Category: Christian Living, Contemporary Issues.     Keywords: civil war, ethnic violence, ethnicity, race, racial reconciliation, melting pot, Christ, Baker Books, Anderson, David Anderson, Zuercher, Brent Zuercher

Brent to David

"I have a difficult time believing the theory that says America is approaching another civil war; however, it is hard to deny that the propensity toward ethnic violence in America is increasing each year. This leads me to ask, Where are the peacemakers? How come there are so few peacemakers, either white or black? Lastly, how can we reverse the trend and be peacemakers and attain racial reconciliation?"

David to Brent

"The bottom line is this: You and I must guard our hearts from being pulled in by our fleshly desire to believe that any group of people are violent, evil, or untrustworthy. This is just not true. All men and women have the same depraved capacity for evil. Only Christ can bring hope in this regard."

SoAmazing Review: The great American melting pot has been extremely unkind to so many. David and Brent take a personal look at some of the challenges.

Buy Letters Across The Divide Now!   Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Christianbook.

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