" '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.' "
~ 1 Chronicles 4:9-10
What a beautiful prayer...and an even more wonderful response from God!
This little passage, tucked away in the Bible, is often overlooked. However, these few sentences reveal a profound account of a seemingly simple man named Jabez. What he did and how he prayed transformed his life from ordinary to extraordinary!
This prayer really strikes a cord in my own heart, for I too desire to live a life abundant with blessings, as he did!
Several years ago I decided to pray this prayer for my own life. I had no idea just how God would answer this request to "expand and bless my territories". With such an open ended prayer the sky was literally the limit!
At the time I prayed this prayer I had been teaching 3rd grade for a few years. In the beginning of the following year I realized that my eyes had been opened more widely to my ministry as a teacher.
I had always known that I was there to serve the children the best that I could each day, what I had never even realized was my equally important ministry for the parents. I then, more than ever, was really excited to partner hand in hand with these parents as we together walked along side their children.
I may have done this before but the difference this time was that I longed to embrace them, befriend them and work together with them each day. My territory had immediately expanded right before my eyes! And, what a blessing they were to me!
I was so thankful that my prayer had been answered! I had no idea that the "next installment" of the answered prayer was coming at the end of the following year. I naively thought it was a "one time thing"!
My husband was asked to relocate to an office across the country. So that's just what we did. We said goodbye to his family and home state and left without knowing anyone on the other side.
Several weeks after we had moved, I specifically remember coming home from a wonderful time spent with a new found friend, (now considered of my best friends). I felt as if I had known her my entire life! I once again had my eyes opened to realize that my territory was still expanding...quite literally this time!
In the matter of a month, we had met over 20 new neighbors up and down our street and had already found a church to call home. Both of these groups quickly became like family to us.
Relationships this deep and meaningful don't usually happen this quickly, and I knew that God's sweet hand was in this for us as well. It felt as if He had carefully sprinkled kind and caring people all across our pathway every where we turned. It was a beautiful time in our lives, indeed.
Almost to the day, 2 short years later, we were asked to move back across the country again. I clearly remember telling my dearest neighbor friend there about this move. I was overwhelmed with sadness and was not ready to leave yet. After all, we were just getting established there.
At that point, once again, the Lord helped me to realize that although the time was too short, (in my mind), our territory that had been expanded will always be there for us...perhaps not the actual land but the relationships. This blessing would not end when we left. This reality helped ease the painful goodbyes that we had to make with our many sweet church friends and neighbors.
As we moved into our new neighborhood, where we preside now, I felt that this could possibly be another expansion of territories and prayed once again that God would do just that...as only He can.
Last July, God once again expanded our territory, however this time it was in the form of changing our "boundaries" instead. My husband and I grew very convicted of our poor spending habits and decided to ask God for wisdom in this specific area. He came back with a very clear answer. We needed to create a very precise and tight budget. This budget would hold us accountable to EVERY dollar that was spent. Our new boundaries were established.
Indeed, God was true to His Word! Once again! It is so difficult and the cuts in our spending ran deep, but we felt even more blessed with what we did have! We worked hard to stay within our means and do what He had called us to do. The result was astounding! We experienced the most amazing sense of freedom we'd witnessed in our 8 years of marriage!! Even though on paper our boundaries appeared to me much smaller, it was quite the opposite! Ironic! All I can say is that God works in mysterious ways!
We somehow had enough money left over to not only make our car payment, we made a double payment and were able to pay off our car a month early!! This freed up more money the next month to help pay off the credit card debt! After a few months of using the money that would have gone to a car payment, (and making an effort to live within our means), we were able to completely be debt-free of all credit card debt!
This may not seem like a lot, but to us, by tightening our "boundaries", we were freed up to then be able to adopt another Compassion International child (I mention this fact because this precious child lives ACROSS the world from us, in a different territory!)! Money MUCH better spent than wherever it was going before!
After reflecting once again in the past few days, I really believe God's at it again! This time with our new neighborhood! We had a total of 8 adults and 8 kids over on Saturday night for dinner. These wonderful friends were all from down the street.
The most beautiful thing about these neighbors is that we knew all of them from different settings years ago, but when we bought our house we did not know that any of them would be living down the street from us! It really is a blessing to us -- who knew that it would be right inside our territory?!
After seeing the Lord graciously answer my prayer SO many times to "expand my territory" in the course of 5 years, I stand in awe of His faithfulness -- and, He is STILL at work! Praise the Lord for that! The neat thing is that God never answers in the same way twice! He keeps us on our toes, wondering what could possibly happen next!!
With this said, this prayer can be prayed by anyone ready to humble themselves and realize that the God of the universe would like to personally shower blessings upon and enlarge territories! All God asks is that you truly believe in Him and have faith that He can and will do just as He did for Jabez.
Here's the simple prayer once again: "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!"
~ 1 Chronicles 4:9-10
Remember, "So God granted him what he requested."...all because he believed!
One thing that I love is that these blessings that God graciously bestows upon us are not for us to keep...they are to bless others. And in turn, they bless God! And the other noteworthy thing is this: "that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain."
Did you catch that?! It does not say, "keep me from being caused pain", it's that I may not cause pain. I LOVE that portion of the prayer equally as much!
I understand that one could argue that all the aforementioned situations were simply good things that I attributed it to God. This could very well be. However, I am choosing to believe that God has helped orchestrate this events and used them to bless me and my family in order to, Lord willing, help pass the blessing to someone else.
I also believe there are many more of these sweet blessings that have happened in the past 5 years that I will never even realize...but what I now do know is that this is not the end of God's promise...it appears to be only the beginning!
May God's grace, peace and blessings be yours.
~ If anyone does decide to join in this prayer, I would LOVE to hear stories of how God answers this prayer for you! Also, an idea: make a note to yourself of the date that you asked the Lord for this...that helps when looking back years from now to see just how the Lord blessed you specifically with this prayer.
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