Newsblog: The book, The Prayer of Jabez , has been on the bestseller lists for weeks and shows no sign of letting up. The prayer reads:
And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” So God granted him what he requested. I Chronicles 4:10
I’ve not read the book, but I spent about an hour tonight reading about it on various web sites. It seems very similar to the “Make me an instrument of your peace” prayer of St. Francis. But the words are different enough to make it intriguing. I like it for several reasons.
- Bless me. No fair for me to tell God exactly how to do that, of course. “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” isn’t cool. But once you put yourself in “asking” mode, it changes your outlook on life. No matter what happens, it’s either a blessing or an opportunity for a lesson to be learned… and that’s a blessing.
- Enlarge my territory. This puts you in a mode of reaching out to others. Going out of your way. There are no doubt a hundred or more instances each day of how I could reach out to people in small ways, but once I pray this prayer, I’m much more likely to notice the opportunities and do something about it.
- Oh that your hand would be with me. Same as “Make me an instrument of your peace” and “thy will be done.” It relegates My Agenda to second place.
- Oh that you would keep me from evil. We pretty much know what our bad tendencies are. So by asking for help to resist, our awareness of these tendencies is heightened and that’s often enough to keep us on the straight and narrow.
Some of the testimonials are inspirational but some are disturbing, because people are praying false prayers and it’s likely going to cause more problems for them.
So would you pray this prayer?