It's been to be here again, especially to
share with Doug and with Jackie.
Doug and I, as he has mentioned, started,
at least I started my ministry life back
in 1964, yeah, in New York City.
And he was just commenting that back in
those days I was shy and nervous, never
did any public speaking, totally bound up in
myself.
And God has done a wonderful work of
grace and changed all that.
Last thing I ever want to do is
go into the ministry.
It's good to be with Jackie again, being
over there several times to visit, even went
into the Wall City, even went into her
bedroom, living room, apartment, you may not remember
I think you'd been away on a trip
and they had redone it, I think, in
her favorite color.
That entire room was pink.
I mean, the pinkest, the pinkest carpet you
have ever seen.
Not just, you know, not just a pink
tint, but downright pink.
You know, the walls were pink, isn't that
right?
Everything about it.
I've taken showers in the camp that she
was talking about where all the men, you
know, would get their songs and so on.
It never worked for me, but at least
I got clean.
And one thing I really do appreciate about
Jackie, and most of you don't know, she
has a huge ministry over there of multiple
buildings and so on and so forth.
And she has not evolved up to the
CEO level where she's got this fancy office
and a swivel chair and she sort of
directs operations.
She still stays at the very grassroots of
that whole ministry.
They have rooms where the kids will come
in, addicts will come in, sign in a
book.
I forget how many days it is, but
anyway, they've got to attend so many of
those meetings before they're admitted to the program.
And it's right at the very door of
that ministry, right at the grassroots.
And some of those rooms you'd hardly put
your car in.
And yet those men will come in there
and she's hands-on right at level one.
And I don't know who sits in the
swivel chair, even if there is one, but
I've always appreciated more the fact that, again,
she comes without any demands.
One of my pet peeves in the ministry,
and I'd better stop in a moment, otherwise
I'll get going, is this whole idea of
entitlement.
Men that write books about how to know
God, and they've got an endless list of
demands if you want them to come to
your church.
Endless list.
I require X amount of dollars.
I require this sort of accommodation.
I require this type of food.
I require, I was in a big church
about a year ago in New Jersey, huge
church where a particular ministry had wanted to
use the facilities.
And they turned them down a couple of
times, well-known men.
And the PR men said, listen, you're turning
down the greatest preacher since the Apostle Paul.
You guys don't know what you're doing, you
know, and refusing the offer to have this
man come.
But one of his demands was a certain
brand of water that he had to have
in his motel room.
You know, not just ordinary bottled water.
That wasn't good enough for this man.
Can you imagine Paul in prison or Jesus
demanding his Perrier, you know?
I don't know if it was Perrier.
I'm not here to advertise brands of water.
But, you know, I mean, it's unbelievable what
goes on in the body of Christ today.
It really is.
And it's so wonderful to know that there
are people like this that will go and
just believe God.
And anyway, better get off that.
Bless you.
I've got so many messages going around in
my head.
I said to my wife, I don't know
what to preach on.
It's a dilemma, isn't it?
I know some of you came and this
has been a shock for some of you,
this conference, especially last night.
You know, you didn't have any sort of
framework for what went on and maybe some
of you are confused.
I hope not.
Just get into the Word of God and
let God bring the revelation, understanding man has
messed up things.
My father used to quote, I think it
was Spurgeon, that says that the Bible has
suffered more from its exponents than its opponents.
And we have been taught a whole bunch
of baloney, you know, that God doesn't do
these things anymore and so on and so
forth.
And that whole dispensational teaching began right in
the very beginning by the devil himself.
Has God really meant what he said?
No, he hasn't.
Don't worry about it.
I mean, it was that's the very roots
of dispensationalism.
Demonic word, doubting God's ability to do what
he said he would do.
And then it was perfected by 10 Israelites,
years later, when God told them to go
in and possess the land and they could
subdue it and take over and all the
giants.
And they came back and said, no, he
can't.
We'll get butchered if we go in there.
And it cost them 40 years.
God penalized them one year for every day
of disobedience and disbelief.
Forty years that generation wandered because 10 men
chose to dispensationalize God.
And we've been doing it ever since.
You know, God's impotent.
You know, this is his season of impotency.
He's getting old.
You know, can't function the way he used
to.
Poor old God.
You know, his hands are being tied.
His mouth is being taped.
He can't speak.
He can't act.
He can't, you know, what a tragedy.
One of the most terrible words in the
Old Testament, they limited the Holy One of
Israel.
They limited the Holy One of Israel.
And some of you guys know what a
limiter is on a car.
You can have a, whatever, a Corvette capable
of 160, 80 miles an hour, I guess.
I've never had one if somebody wants to
know.
But you can put a limiter on that
thing and it won't go more than 25
miles an hour.
Even though it's got the capacity and the
capability with all those horsepowers of doing that
incredible speed.
You can limit it.
And we have limited the Holy One of
Israel.
Just because man can't figure out God.
And so, in order to figure out God,
we've sort of put him in a box
and a dispensation.
And anyway, that's not my message.
One of the things I have always enjoyed
about the Word of God are the characters
in it.
Brother Jim was saying he's got a friend
who's got a yacht, a boat of some
sort, and occasionally likes to go up there
to Vancouver, one of my wife's favorite places,
or Victoria on Vancouver Island, and pull into
the harbor there and just people, you know,
look at people, observe people.
And I like to do that with the
Word of God.
Observe people.
You know, God has got an amazing variety,
doesn't he, of people that are used.
I smelly old fishermen, you know, shepherds, all
types of individuals.
I mean, it's amazing.
And, you know, some of these individuals, we
have chapter after chapter after chapter about their
lives.
Entire books, the book of Ruth about Ruth,
you know, Samuel, largely about the prophet Samuel.
We've got stories about Moses from the moment
he was born, as a little baby there,
you know, he was a godly little guy
and good looking and so on.
Right to 120 years later, you can trace
his life to when he climbed up on
Mount whatever it was, Nebo or something, you
know, drop dead.
You can look at the life of David,
all the little cameos about David's life.
And you can look at the life of
Paul and see him, you know, persecuting the
church and then the great apostle and all
the things about his life.
And then there are other times when God
will just take somebody's life and reduce it
down to a few verses.
And I want to look at this and
I shouldn't have to apologize, but I guess
I will, because I haven't ministered on this
for a long time.
But if you turn with me to 1
Chronicles chapter 4, and the reason is because
now it's become a famous bestseller, The Prayer
of Jabez.
And I purposely have not read that book,
lest somebody accuse me of, you know, saying,
I know where you got that from.
Well, I got this from the original.
The original really is better anyway.
And if you buy it, you get a
whole bunch of extra stuff with it.
But the Bible says in Romans chapter 15,
that all these things that were written a
fore time were written for our instruction, that
through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might
have hope.
I guess you could say hope is another
word for mercy in one sense, that we
might have hope.
Take away the hopelessness and give us hope.
Imagine what the Word of God would be
like if every single chapter was nothing but
perfect.
I have a friend, Winky Prattney, and he
has a saying.
He's written numerous books.
He's a brilliant man.
And he says, the Bible is full of
mistakes.
And people look like, how did this guy
get invited to this conference?
You know, we're evangelicals.
We believe in, you know, inerrant Word of
God.
And here's a man, you know, how did
he let him in?
You know, bind him hand and foot and
cast him into outer darkness.
But he says, I believe the Word of
God is full of mistakes.
It began with Eve's mistake, followed by Adam's
mistake, followed by Noah's mistake.
You know, he got drunk and uncovered himself,
followed, you know.
And the Bible is full of mistakes.
Because through the encouragement of the scriptures, we
might have hope.
Imagine if you started your devotional life reading
Genesis at the beginning of the year, and
every single page, perfect, perfect, faultless, blameless.
Every single individual, not a flaw, never sinned,
never got discouraged, never felt like taking their
life, never committed adultery, never put their foot
in their mouth, never disobeyed.
You know, wouldn't that be encouraging?
You'd come away so encouraged, wouldn't you?
I mean, your devotions would just go to
a whole new level.
I finally found somebody just like me.
Through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might
have hope.
And this book really is a before and
after book.
It's full of before and after stories.
That's what I love about it.
Of how God reaches down, as the psalmist
said, he lifted me also out of a
horrible pit, and out of the miry clay,
and he set my feet also on a
solid rock.
And he's put a new song in my
mouth as well.
And all the way through, again, God's Word,
you've got this before and after picture.
Now, this man's life, and it's the only
time he's ever mentioned in the Word of
God that I know of, is condensed to
two verses, 1 Chronicles 4, 9 and 10.
And we have to do what I think
it was Larry Christiansen used to teach.
He says, when you read the Word of
God, he says, you have to, first of
all, read it.
And then he says, you inch your way
through the Word of God.
And after you inch your way through the
Word of God, you half inch your way
through the Word of God.
And after you half inch your way through
the Word of God, you quarter inch your
way through the Word of God.
What he meant was this, that you can
sit down and, you know, gulp down vast
quantities of the Word of God.
You can read through the Book of Romans
before you leave for work and say, I
had my devotions, I read the Book of
Romans, you know, in order to achieve your
goal of getting through the Bible in one
year.
So, when the evangelist said, how many have
you ever read through, you know, you can
put your hand up and make everybody else
around you feel embarrassed, you know.
But you haven't really read the Bible through
until you inch your way through.
And what the Bible calls meditation.
Meditation is the, somebody said, is like a
cow chewing its cud.
It will be out there in the pasture
gulping down vast quantities of grass.
And then after a while it sits down
and however it all works, but out of
one of its four stomachs, you know, it
regurgitates that and then it masticates what it's
already eaten.
And it chews on it, chews on it,
chews on it, chews on it.
Chewing the cud is meditation.
And getting out of it everything you can.
I have here in my Bible, a little
cold, if I can find it quickly, that
Martin Luther, here it is.
Martin Luther, it says, used to teach his
children to read the Bible in the following
way.
First, he says, you read it through one
book.
First, you read through one book carefully.
Then you study it chapter by chapter.
Then verse by verse.
And lastly, word by word, he said.
It's like a person shaking a fruit tree.
First shaking the tree, gathering up the fruit
which falls to the ground.
And then shaking each branch and afterwards each
twig of the branch.
And last of all, carefully looking under each
leaf to see that no fruit remains.
In this way, in no other, he says,
shall we find the hidden treasures that are
in the Bible.
So, because we've only got two verses, we
can quarter inch our way through or eighth
inch our way through.
And there's nine things we want to look
at here in the life of Jabez.
The first thing, he was a man that
was honored above his brethren.
He was a man that was honored above
his brethren.
This is the after picture.
We will go to the before in a
moment.
Here is a man who, when he came
into a room, heads turned.
Imagine if Billy Graham snuck in the back
door right now and somebody caught him, there
would be a ripple effect that would go
through, you know, people not.
Look, he just had to begin to turn.
Somebody else would hear.
I mean, this is the sort of individual
that Jabez was.
He was more honorable than all his brethren.
In fact, his brethren are never mentioned.
He stood head and shoulders above his peers.
And yet he was not born with a
silver spoon in his mouth, if we can
use that expression.
He's not the son of a famous priest.
He's not the son of a famous king.
He hasn't done any mighty exploits or anything
else.
And yet here he is, a man that
was a spiritual giant, standing again, respected, admired.
People looked at him and said, you know,
I'd love to be like that man.
There's something about Jabez that there's everything about
him.
That's what I want to be.
You know, we don't have too many honorable
men anymore, do we?
Or women.
You know, the great heroes of faith were
the John Wesleys, were the David Livingstones, were
the men that are honorable men that we
look up to, we admire, we esteem.
We say, boy, if I could only know
God the way that man knows God.
This is the sort of individual that Jabez
was.
Now, listen, this is not an opinion poll.
There wasn't a survey that was done in
the local town where he lived and said,
you know, who would you say is one
of the greatest guys in town?
This is God's opinion.
This is the Word of God.
This is God saying something about Jabez.
He was more honorable than his brethren.
And all we can do again is look
at the Word of God and say, what
was it about Jabez that made him the
man of God that he was?
First of all, in 1 Samuel chapter 2
verse 30, the Bible says, he that honors
me, I will honor.
See, the Bible really explains itself.
If you get into it a little bit,
he that honors me, I will honor.
And so, there was something about Jabez that
the reason he was the man that he
was is because God was first foremost in
his life.
He honored God.
He recognized God.
Proverbs 15 verse 33, humility comes before honor.
So, we know something else about Jabez.
He wasn't going around and sort of strutting
and saying, you know, I'm better than you
are now.
It was a dignity about this man.
There was just a, there was a caliber
about his life.
He was a man of honor.
In fact, that word honor really is the
word Kabbalah.
It's the word we get glory from.
And it's that idea of this man is
a man of substance.
He's a man of weight.
That's the word glory.
It's got that concept of weight to it.
You know, you go into a supermarket or
go into a store somewhere and there's a
clearance table and all sorts of little knickknacks.
And, you know, you look at one and
it's marked down from, you know, $75 to
$15 or something.
And you pick it up and you say,
how do you feel this?
And it's the fact that, boy, this really
is, I mean, this is incredible.
You know, it's not styrofoam, but, you know,
it's, and it's the weight.
It's the, it's the fact that the substance
to it that says, boy, this is incredible
value, $15, feel that thing.
This is sort of individual again that this
man was.
1 Samuel 2, sorry, 1 Chronicles 29, riches
and honor come from the Lord.
You see, it was God that placed his
weight, his substance, his glory, his honor upon
this man.
Jabez was more honorable than his brethren.
He stood out in the crowd.
Again, he was the one that people wanted
to be like.
It caused heads to turn again.
The second thing, he was a man that
was afflicted from birth.
This is the other side of the story
now.
His mother, the Bible says, named him Jabez
because I bore him with pain.
Can you imagine any mother in her right
mind giving birth as that baby came out
of the womb?
Maybe that baby by the midwives or whatever
handed that little priceless jewel, that little boy,
and she put it to the breast, and
what are you going to call him?
Pain.
One translation, at least one root meaning is
a shovel of mire, a shovel of dirt,
dung.
What a way to begin life, to have
a mother that brands you as a shovel
of mire, dirt.
You are a pain.
What would possess a woman to do that?
Oh, all we can do is surmise that
maybe she already had a whole little tribe
of her own, eight or nine, ten children,
not uncommon in those days.
She finds that she's pregnant again.
Maybe a couple of weeks after finding out
she's pregnant, her husband dies, maybe some sort
of accident.
Here she is now all alone with all
these little mouths to feed and nobody to
talk to, no moral support, nobody to, at
the end of the day, share with, nobody
to bear her burden.
And the last thing in the world that
she wants is another mouth to feed, another
area of responsibility.
And all the way through the rest of
that pregnancy, she is sort of cursing, if
you like, inside.
And when that baby's born, she takes out
all that venom, and all that bitterness, and
all that anger, and all that pent-up
emotion, and she says, you're a pain.
Not a very good beginning, especially if we
look at that in the context of the
culture of the Old Testament, where names were
so significant.
You see, names in the Old Testament, or
the Bible for that matter, were more not
like nicknames.
You see, a nickname really tells you a
lot more about the person than his name.
You know, if I had a friend, his
name is John, and I say, listen, I'd
like you to meet my friend John this
afternoon.
He wouldn't say anything.
If I say, listen, my friend Big Red
is going to be here this afternoon.
You know, imagine, you think of, you know,
some great big Irish guy with flaming red
hair, or something, you know, whatever.
Oh, Shorty, my friend Shorty is going to
be here this afternoon.
You know, I mean, nicknames.
My nickname in Bible school was Bones.
You know, I put on about, hate to
tell you, I put on at least 50
pounds since I was married.
I wrestled in high school, 128 pounds, and
I'm sure I've shrunk an inch since then.
So, I was skinny, really skinny.
You know, I just about rattled when I
walked.
The Bones was a, you know, it really
described me a lot better than David.
And that, you know, and so here, they
would, they would look at a child many
times, and prophetically, or you know, try and
study the nature, or put a, you know,
their desire into that name.
And here he is, branded.
Sticks and stones will break your bones, but
names, they don't hurt you.
Oh yeah.
You know, some of us have got stigmas,
and I'm sure all of us here have
carried things all our life, where we've been
branded in one way or the other.
And there's a stigma that this man had
to carry, every time his brothers called him,
Payne, get in here, you know.
If they played baseball in those days, you
know, I'll take Jim, I'll take John, you
know, Mary, you know, Payne.
I mean, he couldn't get away from it,
all day long, every day of his life,
Payne, Payne, Payne, Payne, Payne, Payne, Payne.
Can you imagine what that does?
I share that, because some of you have
got stigmas.
Oh, those things, the skeletons in the closet
that the enemy loves to, sort of, you
know, bring into the present, and dangle there.
What about that divorce?
What about that abortion?
What about that criminal record?
What about this?
What about that?
And we can't seem to get past that
thing.
And the enemy's so good at doing that,
isn't he?
Branding us, and keeping us, sort of, bound
in our own prison house of insecurity, or
fear, or rejection, or whatever it is.
And there we are, and we just can't
seem to break out of it.
And we look at ourselves, everybody else is
up here, but I'm way down here.
That's the sort of individual.
What an amazing transformation, from a Payne to,
he was more honorable than all these brethren.
That's the grace of God.
That's the mercy of God.
That's hope.
And, you know, as I read through the
Word of God, and study these lives, and
I love character studies, God does take the
foolish things, and the weak things, and the
base things, and the despised things, and the
things that are not, to confound the mighty.
That no flesh will glory in his presence.
Isn't that right?
He specializes.
In fact, as Doug was saying, the only
reason, you know, he doesn't take genius, as
well as that statement, is he can't use
them.
You made some statement the other day.
But God takes the foolish things.
And some of you, I know, are here
this morning, and you're thinking, you know, I
could never do this, or I could never
do that.
I could never be a Jackie Ponger.
I could never be a Doug Bedert.
I could never be a David Rainhill.
I could never run a ministry.
I could never, you know, whatever it is.
And I want you to know, you are
a prime candidate for God to get ahold
of.
Nancy and I met in Bible school, a
very small Bible school.
We only had 35 in our class, and
every month, at least, teams were selected from
the Bible school to go out, and to
sing, and to preach, and to give testimony,
and so on.
And I understood why they never asked me
to sing.
I told you before, you know, I'm a
prison singer.
Behind a few bars, I'm missing the key.
But you know, in three years of Bible
college, and only 35 students, I was never
once asked to go on the team.
Never once.
Now, I know I can sing, so I
could excuse it.
But never share a never do anything.
We had some bright kids in our class.
And yet, most of those students, very few
of them, are in sort of full-time
active ministry, at least a lot of them.
God takes the foolish things.
You see, I brought home F's on my
report card in school.
It's true.
I had two brothers that were brilliant, earned
PhD.
My younger brother, world-renowned in his field.
Older brother, equally as bright.
I was one that brought home the F's
on more than one occasion.
But you know, God specializes, doesn't He, in
taking the weak things, that He might bring
confusion and confound the mighty.
One of my all-time favorite portions of
Scripture is here in Hebrews.
Let me read it to you.
What more shall I say?
The time would fail me if I were
to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David,
Samuel, the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms,
performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the
mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword, became mighty
in war, and put foreign armies to flight.
What a great list.
After all, Hebrews 11, the list of all
these super saints, these heroes of faith.
And you know, I've read that so many
times when I was first born again.
And I put these guys on a pedestal.
I mean, these were the sort of, you
know, God's seal, so to speak.
These were the, you know, the elite of
the elite.
These were the ones that had all the
special training, like our special forces over there
in Iraq, you know, going ahead of everybody
else.
And they've got all the gear and all
the equipment.
Well, these were the spiritual seals, if you
like.
After all, they were subduing kingdoms, obtaining promises,
shut the mouths of lions, quenching the power
of fire, became mighty in war, put entire
foreign armies to flight.
And you know, we read that and we
put them all up on a pedestal and
we think, you know, well, you know, I
could never even dream of even getting close
to anything that these men did.
But you know, I left out one little
phrase that changes everything.
Let me read it again now and put
the phrase in.
What more shall I say?
And he lists the names, who by faith
conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises,
shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power
of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,
listened from weakness, were made strong, became mighty
in war, put foreign armies to flight.
They all had one common denominator.
They were just like you and me, from
weakness.
God chooses the weak things.
Gideon, God calms the Midianites who have totally
destroyed the land.
Here he is, maybe like the widow with
a few little bits of grain left, going
to bake his last loaf of bread before
he dies.
I don't know.
And he's in the wine press and all
of a sudden the captain of the host,
or the angel of the Lord rather, comes
to him and, Gideon, you're a mighty man
of valor.
Oh, now you can imagine if the whole
conversation were there, you know, it would say,
come on, don't play jokes.
Are you the Lord?
Come on, you know, don't play jokes with
me.
Don't you know there are 12 tribes in
Israel and some of those tribes are real
prominent tribes like Judah and so on and
so forth.
You know, I am from the least tribe
and then out of all the families that
make up that tribe, my particular, you know,
family name is that the least in the
whole tribe and then I'm the least in
my father's house.
In other words, God, you know, don't make
fun of me.
You know, you've gone right to the very
bottom of the barrel and you're trying to
tell me I'm going to be a great
man.
And God says, go and this is your
strength.
When I am weak, then I'm strong.
When I honestly begin to embrace my weakness,
that's the first stage of beginning to embrace
God's ability.
He was sufficient for these things, but our
adequacy is from God.
Then you've got Barak.
Barak was the commander-in-chief of the
Israeli army.
He was a Schwarzkopf of his day or
Schwarzenegger, whatever, you know.
And the Bible says the glory of a
woman or a woman's glory is her hair.
We won't go there.
But the Bible says a man's glory is
his strength.
The glory of a young man is his
strength.
And here is a man, military man, the
head of the entire Israeli army that will
not go out to battle without a woman
going with him.
I thank God for you ladies, but when
it comes to fighting, you don't drag your
sister into the playground and says, this guy's
picking up on me, you know.
And that lady was Deborah.
Samson, oh, this has to be the misfit,
you know.
If you've got a children's Bible like I
did when I grew up, you know, here
is this guy like a Dallas Cowboy linebacker
or something, you know, six foot six, you
ripple, you know, huge muscles and a, you
know, 60-inch chest or whatever.
And you see Delilah's dilemma was, I don't
get it.
How come you're so strong?
Imagine here she is sprawled out, you know,
cradled in the, you know, a 32-inch
bicep or something, you know.
And her hair locks there and this huge
chest and she's just sprawled out, you know,
admiring Samson and saying, you know, I don't
get it.
How come you're so strong?
Well, it's a stupid question.
But she said, I don't get it.
And he says, cut my hair and I
will become weak like other men.
Just a little runt of a guy that
God put his grace upon.
Jephthah, possibly the most rejected man in the
Bible outside of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He was a bastard.
Imagine being a bastard in the Old Testament.
Talk about rejection, that was the ultimate rejection,
ban to whatever it was, how many generations
and so on and so forth.
Rejected by all the elders of Gilead, rejected
by his own brethren, the Bible says, and
so on.
And God takes a bastard, puts his anointing
upon him, makes him one of the judges
of Israel.
Talk about mercy.
Wow, from weakness.
David, oh, there are Orthodox Jews to this
day that believe that David was illegitimate and
sinned.
And my mother conceived me.
And when the prophet comes to town to
anoint a successor to Saul, and mother's been
working all day and father's there getting the
table set and so on, because the great
prophet Samuel is coming to town.
All the kids have been notified, all seven
of them, minus one.
And they sit down to the meal and
they're enjoying.
Here's the prophet, the ears of everybody tingle
with, you know, and he opens his mouth
and and after dinner he says, you know,
one of you guys is the next king.
It's got to be this guy, and tall,
dark, handsome, you know, regalness about him.
God says, no.
Man looks on the outward appearance, I look
at the heart.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Jesse, something's wrong.
Is this your whole family?
Well, yeah, they're still the youngest.
And that word in the Hebrew means the
least in every sense of the word, in
quality as well as quantity.
Not worth bringing in.
Can you imagine the, how you would feel,
again, let's take Billy Graham, wonderful man of
God, if he were to come here to
town and you, all your siblings are notified
and you're not.
And you live right in the immediate area.
Your parents have never told you Billy Graham's
coming to your house.
And your brothers and sisters are all there.
They've been told in advance so they can
get babysitters and plan the evening and so
on.
And you're not even told about it.
Talk about rejection from weakness, made strong.
Samuel, little boy, the voice of God was
silent in those days.
God couldn't find a listening ear amongst all
the clergy, Hopni and Phineas and Eli.
And so God whispers something to a little,
maybe 12-year-old boy, and everybody's abuzz
the next morning.
God's speaking again from weakness, but made strong.
I share that because some of you need
some hope, some encouragement.
Some of you, the enemy has taken again
and sort of written you off.
And you believe that lie and said, not
me.
So here he was, he was afflicted from
birth.
And some of you again can say, well,
you know, I've got stigmas again, lack of
education, lack of this, lack of that and
so on.
The next thing about Eli, uh, Jabez was,
he was a man who faced a choice.
Now it doesn't say it in so many
words, but obviously there was a decision.
There was a turning point in his life.
He could either succumb to his circumstances or
he could overcome.
He could say, I'm not going to wallow
in self-pity and all of this the
rest of my life.
He could allow again his circumstances to sort
of dictate the way he was going to
be for the next 20 years or he
could overcome.
He could look back or he could look
ahead.
And there are times, aren't there, when we
have to make a decision like Paul, forgetting
those things which are behind, I press on.
Can you imagine if the enemy had wanted
to have a heyday, what he could have
done with Paul?
You are responsible for persecuting the church.
You closed down X number of home groups.
You shut so many people in prison and
you are responsible for the death of Stephen
because he was the one that ultimately gave
permission for the first martyr.
They put their coats at the foot of
Saul.
He had authority from the religious leaders to
do what he was doing.
He was the one that says, go ahead,
cast the stone.
And can you imagine God saying, listen, I
want to use you, Paul.
Oh, not me.
Lord, I'm too bad a sinner.
You know, Lord, I killed Stephen, a man
full of faith in the Holy Ghost.
Lord, I persecuted the church.
I did that, you know, forgetting all those
things which are behind.
I press on.
And there comes times when we've got to
make decisions.
Moses came to a time when he had
to make a decision.
Either I'm going to be the next Pharaoh
or I'm going to suffer affliction with the
people of God.
He made a decision.
Decisions are important, aren't they?
And some of us live under constant condemnation.
God wants to change that.
I'll never forget.
I think it was Jack Hayford's brother.
I can't remember his name to give him
credit, but I believe that's who it was
who talked about the difference between condemnation and
conviction.
He said, condemnation is when the devil reaches
into your past and he takes something from
your past and he brings it into the
present.
And he sort of just constantly dangles it
there to stifle any hope for the future.
You know, how could God use you?
You've killed a person.
You've raped a woman.
You've done this.
You've done that, you know.
And he just dangles it there constantly.
And you don't feel that I could never
be a man of God.
I could never be a missionary or academic,
you know.
And he says conviction is when the Spirit
of God reaches into the past and he
brings something from the past into the present
because it's never been dealt with in order
to free you so you have a future.
And he says, listen, I want this thing
under the blood.
I want this thing dealt with because I
want to give you hope.
And the enemy wants to just stifle us
moving on and advancing in the things of
God.
God wants us to enter into all that
he has for us regardless of our background
because as we've heard so beautifully this morning
we're all products of his mercy and his
grace and his forgiveness, his cleansing.
There's not one that is innocent before God.
The Bible says he's made us all guilty
before God.
We've all been on death row.
Every single one of us because the wages
of sin is death.
Every single person.
I don't care how spiritual I was raised
in church all my life, son of a
wonderful man of God, but I was on
death row.
You know the kingdom of God is so
different than the worldly kingdom because if you
admit you have done something wrong, that's the
worst possible thing.
They'll throw the book at you.
Yeah, I did it.
I killed a person, officer.
I'm responsible.
Well, you've got rights.
Yeah, I know I'm going to waive my
rights.
I killed a person.
Boy, that's the end of you.
But you know the way you get out
of death row is admit that you were
wrong.
Isn't God's kingdom funny?
Yes, Lord, I did sin.
I did do that.
Okay, you're free.
I didn't do that, Lord.
I'm not a sinner.
Okay, stay in prison.
What a weird set of rules, isn't it?
The kingdom of God.
It's sort of different.
So he was a man that faced a
choice, and yet having made that choice, he
was powerless to do anything about it.
Have you ever decided, boy, if only I
could, you know, and yet I can't.
I want to, but I can't.
Jabez knew something.
God changes things, and it brings us the
next thing.
Number four, he was a man of prayer,
and Jabez called on the God of Israel.
Prayer not only changes things, not only changes
circumstances, prayer changes people.
Jabez begins to pray, and I love his
prayer here.
Jabez called on the God of Israel.
Why does it say, why doesn't it just
say, Jabez called on God?
That would have been sufficient, wouldn't it?
Jabez called on God.
Well, maybe the writer was trying to differentiate
between this God, and the God of the
Canaanite, and the God of the Amorite, and
the God, so he called on the God
of Israel.
Maybe.
I don't think so.
I think Jabez was doing what the Bible
says.
Through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might
have hope, and I think he looked through
the Word of God to find somebody like
himself, and he found somebody by the name
of Jacob.
He says, you know, Jacob's like me, sort
of streetwise, street smart, had to live by
his own cunning and conniving, and you know,
always trying to get an angle, and an
edge on things, and you know, and I've
had to do that in order to make
it, with my sort of background, my rejection,
and so on.
I've had to, you know, sort of outgun,
and out come everybody else, and you know,
and, and then he read one day that
this cunning, scheming, deceitful Jacob had an encounter
with God, and God says, no longer are
you going to be called Jacob, but Israel,
and he said, God, if you can do
that for this man, you can do that.
God, if you can change the heart of
that conniving, cunning, scheming, lying, scheming man, you
can do that for me.
God of Jacob, Israel.
That's what we need to do.
Some of you need to call on the
God of David, because of your adultery.
See what I mean?
We need to find somebody, and say, God,
you did it for this man, and you
know respect your persons, and you're the same
yesterday, today, and forever, and you did it
for this woman.
You can do it for me.
I've disobeyed you.
Lord, you gave Jonah a second chance.
What about me?
Lord, I denied you many times.
You gave Peter a second chance.
What about me?
Oh, maybe it wasn't that way.
Maybe it was Jabez Kol, and the God
of Israel, meaning the nation of Israel, because
you see, Israel was a nation in bondage,
in slavery, and talk about pain.
Israel knew pain.
Every single day, they were beaten by the
taskmasters.
In fact, the Psalmist said, it says, I've
relieved your shoulder of the burden, and in
the margin, it says literally, I've relieved your
shoulder of the brick load.
You see, that entire generation, from the moment
they could carry bricks, they were carrying bricks.
I think Jackie talked about a little boy
that was, you know, carrying bricks.
You had a nation of brick carriers, and
they were stooped.
He's my glory and the lifter of my
head.
He lifts the heavy burden.
I relieved your shoulder of the brick load,
and they knew the taskmaster's whip, hour after
hour after hour.
They suffered incredibly.
In fact, when God said to Moses, I've
seen your affliction, I've seen your suffering, what
was the other word?
Anyway, those three words, if you look at
them in the Hebrew, one seems to be
oppression, one seems to be spiritual, one seems
to be emotional, and one seems to be
physical.
I've seen your oppression.
There was a heaviness.
There was a darkness.
There was a bondage.
You could, you could walk into Egypt and
feel the tangible presence of evil.
They were operating in one of the most
demonic realms.
Why?
Because when Moses came and threw his rod
down, Pharaoh says, that's nothing.
Hey, you guys, show him we can do
that.
I mean, you know, they weren't, it wasn't
sly at hand.
They were tapping into the demonic realm.
In fact, the Passover, God said, and this
night I will show my supremacy over all
the lords of Egypt.
And that was fulfilled in Calvary when he
stripped principalities and powers and made an open
show of them.
Every type was fulfilled.
I will show my supremacy, high and lifted
up, far above all principalities and powers and
every name that is named.
And so he says, I've seen your oppression.
He said, I've seen your affliction.
I forget which one it is now.
But one is sort of an emotional type
thing.
Can you imagine the pain that Egypt felt,
the women, the men as well, as a
command was given to take little babies, go
into any home, anytime you hear a whimper
or a cry, take that little one and
throw it into the Nile?
Can you imagine what a mother must have
felt to have that baby, you know, screaming
there as it bobbed two or three times
and then went?
Can you imagine what that must have been
like?
The torment on the mind, the emotional must
have been greater than the physical.
Can you imagine taskmaster coming along one day
and seeing your daughter who's beginning to develop
now into a young woman?
And he says, honey, you're coming home with
me.
And that mother tormented night after night, knowing
that that girl has been used sexually just
to satisfy the needs of that taskmaster and
tormented maybe more than the girl herself.
Can you imagine the pain that Israel went
through?
That's why the Bible calls it the iron
furnace of affliction.
God of Israel, if you can take a
nation out of their pain, you can take
me out.
You can deliver me back.
If you can set an entire nation free
and be their glory and the lifter of
the head, you can do it for me.
Call unto me and I will answer you.
Jabez calls on the God of Israel.
Number five, he was a man who coveted
God's blessing.
How much you long for the blessing of
God?
Oh, sometimes the sort of reticent, we don't
feel worthy.
You know, it was God that took the
initiative.
He said to Moses, hey Moses, I want
you to do something for me.
I want you to, you know, blow the
trumpet, shofar, whatever, get the people.
He said, I want you to lift up
your hand.
I want you to bless them.
Lord, bless them and keep them.
Lord, make his face to smile upon them.
That was God doing that.
That wasn't Moses sort of, God, you know,
could we get a little blessing once in
a while, twisting his arm, you know.
God, come on, please.
Well, this is God.
This is the nature of God to bless,
isn't it?
It's his nature.
El Shaddai, the breast.
That's that word.
Shad is a woman's breast.
God is the breasted one, the place of
blessing, of bounty, of nourishment, of security.
And he wants to hold us to his
breast.
He wants to bless us.
That word bless means to endure with power
for success.
Oh, not just physical or financial prosperity.
I think that's in the bottom of God's
list in one sense.
I wish you to prosper even as your
soul prospers.
You know, if we prospered the way our
soul prospered, most of us wouldn't have to
declare bankruptcy.
But God wants to bless us.
He's a God of blessing.
He's always going way beyond what is necessary,
isn't he?
You know, five thousand there that are hungry.
They've been with him for a few days
and he says to his disciples, hey, give
them something to eat.
They said, Lord, we don't have the money
and town's a long way off and you
know all the excuses.
And the little boy says, I've got a
few loaves of fish.
I said, what's that among so many?
A crazy kid.
He just said, bring it here.
And he began to break it.
And he fed five thousand men aside from
women and children, twenty thousand, thirty thousand.
And it says they all ate.
And it took the edge off of that.
They all ate and were satisfied.
They hadn't eaten for a few days.
They were starving.
God is always lavish, isn't he?
He's lavish.
The thing that brought the prodigal back to
the father's house.
Bread enough and a spare.
Dad's always got extra.
Aren't you glad you can never drain the
resources of God's grace and mercy?
There's always extra.
There's always mercy and a spare.
There's always grace and a spare.
There's always hope and a spare.
There's always forgiveness and a spare.
Oh, I like that about God, don't you?
He's coveting God's blessings.
Some of you need to covet the blessing
of God.
You're almost afraid.
You know, we get this mentality, well, Lord,
like the prodigal, Lord, I'll pay you back.
I'll earn my way.
You know, I know I've been a bad
boy, but Lord, I'll prove to you that,
you know, I'll get up every morning at
five o'clock and I'll have my devotions
and I'll prove to you I'm worthy to
be called your son and hopefully one of
these days, you know, you will actually see
my effort and you'll say, well done.
And before he did a single thing, the
father's killing the fatty calf, putting the best
robe on him and everything that was anti
-a slave, shoes on his feet, a ring,
restored authority.
You see, the ring in those days had
an insignia on it, Jim Scotland, with his
family crest.
I mean, it literally was there and you
pushed it in that wax and it was
the same as having a credit card.
Today it would say, hey son, here's my
visa.
The guy still stinks of the pig pen.
He hasn't even had a shower yet and
the father's giving him a credit card.
It's crazy.
The band comes in, the music, the dancing,
God wants to bless you.
And it's not wrong to say, Lord, bless
me.
He took every curse and he's blessed us
with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus in
heavenly places.
Every spiritual blessing is available and we don't
ask him, do we?
All right, the next thing, number six, he
was a man who desired enlargement.
He wasn't satisfied with what he had.
Oh, that would bless me.
Notice, bless me indeed.
Not just a blessing and enlarge my border.
Some of you need to ask God, enlarge
me, enlarge my spiritual capacity.
The sons of the prophets came to Elisha,
wasn't it?
And they said, listen, the place we're dwelling
is too small for us.
It's too confining.
Go with us so that we can build
a bigger place.
Some of you spiritually need to launch out.
You've been confined.
You've been living on just a small portion,
if you like, of what God has for
you.
They say, Lord, enlarge my capacity, enlarge my
faith.
I want to go from faith to faith,
from victory to victory.
I want an enlargement, Lord.
I want an enlargement in the whole faith
realm so that I can operate in the
gifts of the Spirit, as Jackie was talking
about last night.
Not for my namesake, Lord, not so I
can put out a magazine with my picture
on it, but for the body of Christ,
for the suffering and the broken, where I
can have a word of knowledge and a
word of wisdom and healing and word of
encouragement.
No wonder the devil invented dispensationalism to deprive
the body of Christ from the blessing of
God.
It's not for today.
You can't be healed.
God doesn't have a word of knowledge for
you, word of wisdom for you, word of
encouragement for you.
Oh, I can't think of any greater thing
the devil could have concocted.
Desire enlargement.
Some of you, your faith is too small.
Your prayer life is too small.
Your sense of expectation is too small.
Remember Caleb, old man, 80 years of age,
but he tasted something when he was 40
years of age.
And when the doors opened, when the wall
came down, so to speak, and they were
able to go into the promised land.
Here is this old man.
He says, give me that mountain.
You know, if I had been 80 years
of age, I'd say, give me that valley.
Put me on the first floor.
I don't like climbing upstairs.
Caleb, give me that mountain.
I've dreamed of that mountain for 40 years.
Talk about enlargement.
Lord, enlarge my border, enlarge my boundaries.
His daughter comes along and says, give me
some land too.
I mean, she's just like the old man.
God wants to enlarge us.
Solomon, there began to enlarge.
The Bible says Solomon brought to God a
thousand burnt offerings.
Only one was required.
And the Bible says the very next verse,
and that night God came to Solomon and
said, ask whatever you will and I'll give
it to you.
One upmanship.
You see, you could never out give God.
You can give him a thousand burnt offerings.
He comes along with a total blank check
and says, okay, whatever you want.
Let me digress for a moment while I'm
on that.
One of my favorite stories is Mike Bickle
in Kansas City was reading that one day
and in his devotions, and he said, Lord,
wouldn't it be wonderful?
He said, I don't know what I would
do if you came to me in the
middle of the night like you did to
Solomon.
I said, Lord, Mike, whatever you want, I'll
give you.
And then God took him into the New
Testament.
Whatever you ask in my name, you can
have.
You have not because you ask not.
And he said to Mike, he said, you
know, Mike, he said, I left that promise
in the word of God for every generation
as a revealer of the hearts of men.
And he said, this generation came along and
they asked for prosperity.
Think about it.
This generation came along and they asked for
prosperity because out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaks.
He said they didn't ask for revival.
They didn't ask for the nations of their
inheritance.
Make me rich, Lord.
You promised whatever I asked.
What an indictment against our generation.
We need to cry out for spiritual enlargement.
Lord, enlarge my borders.
I'm not satisfied.
Lord, I've tasted and I've seen that the
Lord is good, but I want more.
You know, you go to Baskin Robbins and,
you know, 36 varieties and you've never seen
one of them and say, well, what's that
taste like?
And, you know, they take that little spoon
that, you know, yeah.
Boy, that's good.
I'll have one of those.
You know, I think God's like that.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
But some of us are still nibbling at
the little spoon.
And we say, Lord, I want to, I
want to, you know, a double comb or
triple.
A triple comb.
He desired enlargement.
Number seven, he was a man who longed
for God's presence.
Lord, not only bless me and enlarge my
border, but that your hand might be with
me.
Oh, this is beautiful.
Lord, I want a consciousness day by day
that you're there.
Lord, wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, the
hand of God, the blessing of God, the
presence of God is there.
I want to wake up in the morning,
Lord, knowing your hand is there.
You see, this isn't about prosperity.
This isn't just, you know, some, no.
We'll understand at the end of this.
This is a man that wants God.
And he wants all that God has for
him.
He wants God's blessing, God's enlargement, God's honor.
He wants, he wants God, this man.
And the biggest thing, God, I want your
presence.
I want to know.
I want to feel your hand day by
day.
Don't ever leave me, Lord.
Like David said, Lord, take not your Holy
Spirit away from me.
My father used to say the reason David
said that was because he used to go
into a presence of Saul when he was
going crazy.
And it was a tormenting spirit.
And he used to just go wild and
berserk.
And David knew that the brunt, if you
like, of that spear, at least he dodged
it a few times as the king got
so mad.
And he pulled that thing back and flung
it at David.
And David ducked and the thing stuck in
the wall behind him.
But he also knew a time when he
prophesied along with the prophets, where the mantle
and the Spirit of God rested upon Saul.
And so God gave him every single advantage
a man could have.
And then he saw him when the Spirit
of God was off him, going deranged in
his mind, angry.
And David, after his sin with Bathsheba, God,
whatever you do, whatever you do, God, don't
take your Holy Spirit.
Lord, I want your presence.
I want to feel that closeness.
I want to be your friend.
I want us to walk together.
I want to be led by your Spirit.
Lord, I want that consciousness that you're there.
Number eight.
He was a man who desired holiness.
Put your hand on me, Lord, and keep
me from evil.
Jesus said, when you pray, pray deliver us
from evil.
Here's a man that longs again for the
holiness of God, the fear of God.
See, the fear of God is to hate
evil.
You know, when you hate something, you don't
touch it.
The temptation disappears.
You know, if I hate chocolate ice cream,
my wife loves chocolate ice cream, and I'm
not a big fan of it.
I'd rather have almost anything else.
But she likes the real deep, you know,
fudgy, you know, super saturated chocolate ice cream.
And you know, it's never a temptation to
me when I open the refrigerator, because I
don't like it.
And the fear of the Lord is to
hate evil.
When you hate something, hey, it doesn't bother
me.
And if there's one thing needed in the
house of God, it's the fear of God.
I will never forget my wife and I
in 1966 set sail from Teen Challenge in
a freighter from New York City.
We sailed all the way down the east
coast of America through the Panama Canal and
all the way to New Zealand, 30 days
from New York to New Zealand, 21 days
without ever stopping and seeing land.
A little freighter, nine passengers.
We had a baby three months old, our
daughter Lisa.
When we got to New Zealand, we lived
on an island called the Great Barrier Island
off the coast of New Zealand, about 30,
sorry, about 30 miles off the coast, about
seven miles long.
And I forget how, seven miles wide, maybe,
and 30 miles long, something like that.
And there's no electricity, no modern conveniences and
so on.
But a man who was now going to
be with the Lord ran that.
And it was sort of like a Teen
Challenge.
Basically, it was helping alcoholics.
And they used to come out.
Obviously, they couldn't swim back, so they were
sort of struck.
It was sort of a spiritual alcatraz.
Anyway, we based ourselves there in the early
days of Youth with a Mission.
And the very first camp meeting we had,
because people used to come over and they'd
pitch a big marquee and New Zealanders loved
to rough it.
And they had all these camps and, I
mean, all these tents around.
And the very first message I heard was
an entire message on the fear of God
by a man by the name of Milton
Smith.
And I honestly can say to you, I
haven't heard a message on the fear of
God before that or since, an entire message.
And at the end of that message, I
made my way forward to a group of
people there.
Lauren Cunningham from Youth with a Mission was
there.
Joy Dawson.
John Dawson was running around with a fishing
rod.
He was a little boy in those days.
And a couple of other men that you
wouldn't recognize their names.
And I asked them if they would come
into a little room that this man had
as an office.
It was, it wasn't more than six feet
by seven feet.
Just down there, just almost on the water's
edge.
Rough old, you know, like a tool shed.
And I said, listen, I don't know if
this is right or wrong, but I want
you to pray for me.
And I want you to pray that the
fear of God will come into my life.
Because I said, I know sin is wrong,
but I don't hate it.
And I knelt down that day.
And those individuals gathered around, Joy Dawson and
Lauren and others, put their hands on my
head and prayed.
And over the years, I've renewed that cry.
It will keep me from evil.
Just like Joseph away from home, away from
his family, the elders, the church, the board,
and everything else.
And there's a beautiful girl making herself available.
She's taking the initiative, pressing him every single
day.
Come on, lie with me.
Come on, we could have a good time.
How can I sin against God and do
that thing?
Before I was saved, I didn't get saved
till I was 18.
I was in high school.
We moved from England when I was 14.
My parents immigrated.
We lived in Minnesota.
My father settled on a Bible school campus,
but we went to the local high school.
And I was, you know, a red-blooded
Englishman, just like a red-blooded American, tempted
just like everybody else.
In those days, there weren't too many hard
drugs, but marijuana.
And sexual opportunities, and drinking, and smoking, and
all of those things.
And, you know, I was tempted, like I
said, just like everybody else.
But the one thing that kept me was
a fear of my dad.
And it wasn't a fear of my dad
that he could beat me up.
He'd had a serious accident.
I could outrun him.
I could, you know.
But it was such a reverence and respect
for what my dad represented.
His whole message was revival, holiness.
And I remember thinking, you know, if my
dad knew I was smoking, if my dad
saw me drinking, if my dad saw me
in some sort of immoral situation, it would
literally break his heart.
And I love my dad so much that
during the years prior to my conversion, the
thing that kept me from sin was a
fear of my dad.
Now that I'm saved, I've got another dad.
And I want to honor what he represents
and not break his heart.
And so here is a man to keep
me, Lord, from evil.
The Bible says, with a hunger and thirst
for righteousness.
Without holiness, no man will see the Lord.
And Jabez somehow embodies all of this in
this one little prayer.
One more.
Here's a man who desired wholeness.
You see, there's two ways of translating this
last little bit.
That thou wouldst keep me from evil or
you would deliver me from harm, that it
may not pain me.
Here he was broken.
Lord, I've been hurt so much.
I've been rejected so much.
Lord, keep me from that.
Keep me from this harm that it doesn't
hurt me anymore, Lord.
I can't.
In other words, he understood God is the
one that binds up the brokenhearted.
God is the one that gives the oil
of joy for gladness.
God is the one that says, listen, I
offer an exchange life.
I know what you've been through.
I know what you've suffered.
I know the abuse.
I know that uncle that got you involved
in homosexuality.
I know that, you know, whatever it is,
I know what you've been through.
I know the pain.
Your wife's left me or left you now
because of your sin and, you know, and
all the guilt and the pain of that
thing.
And say, God, take away the pain.
Just make me whole, Lord.
I want to be normal like everybody else.
This is Jacob.
Give me the oil of joy.
Give me beauty for ashes.
Lord, come and bind up Humpty Dumpty, that
he's all smashed and all the king's horses
can't put him back together.
But Lord, you bind up the brokenhearted.
And so he's praying here, God, make me
whole.
You see, the gospel is not just cleansing
from sin.
Jesus said, no, the spirit of the Lord
is upon me, not only to preach the
gospel, but to open prison doors, to bind
lives of being shattered and ruined and bring
them back into wholeness.
It's a total package, if you like.
Some of you need to experience that.
Say, Lord, your grace, your mercy is sufficient
to take this wounded warrior, bring healing, bring
restoration, where I can look somebody in the
eye without having to drop my head, so
to speak.
Where I'm on a level equal with everybody
else, because the cross is level ground.
Where you're not a second-rate sort of
citizen, but you're a child of the king.
You're not a distant cousin.
God doesn't have distant cousins.
He's only got sons and daughters.
And then the last thing, as we close,
God granted him what he requested.
Now, you see, the last little phrase tells
me as much about God as any little
phrase in the whole Bible, doesn't it?
I mean, that's the cameo of God.
Right there is the cameo of God.
God wants to bless you.
God wants to enlarge you.
God wants to answer your prayer.
God wants to put his hand on you.
God wants to keep you from evil.
God wants to make you whole, because God
said, listen, I don't answer prayer when the
motives are wrong.
You have not because, you know, you're double
-minded, your motives are wrong, and so on
and so forth.
See, if this was not a prayer in
accordance with the will of God, God would
have never answered it.
And so we know that it is, because
God answered it.
And through the encouragement of the scriptures, we
might have that.
God wants you to walk knowing his presence.
He wants to deliver you totally, completely, absolutely
from evil.
He wants to make you whole.
He wants to enlarge your borders.
He wants to bless you.
He wants to make you an honorable man
or woman.
Wow.
Well, Lord, the last bit, you know, I
mean, I'll take the blessing, but me being
somebody that people would turn and look up
to, me, with my background, are you kidding?
God answered his request.
And I love this little prayer.
And again, through the encouragement of the scriptures,
God's here to give you hope.
I don't know you, but you know yourself.
God knows you.
But I do know God a little bit.
And he's the God that longs to answer
prayer.
He's the God that longs to lift the
beggar from the dunghill and make him a
prince with God.
He loves to take the Jabezes, bring them
up there, and bestow his honor, his weight,
substance, make them men and women of substance,
caliber of men and women, men of integrity,
women of integrity, men and women of honor.
God specializes in doing that.
Let's bow and pray.
Father, we're so grateful that you're the same
yesterday, today, and forever.
Lord, with you, there's no variableness.
There's no shadow of turning.
But Lord, your ability to change lives has
not diminished one single iota.
I am the Lord, and I change not.
Lord, you're still in the business of answering
prayer.
It's still in the business, Lord, of rescuing
the perishing, transforming, changing lives.
Father, touch lives.
Lord, we've heard about your grace.
We've heard about your mercy.
Father, even now, just put your hand into
that broken heart and begin to reconstruct it,
Lord.
Not just the washing of regeneration, but the
renewing of the Holy Ghost.
Lord, that renewing process.
You're the great physician.
You're the healer.
You're the restorer.
You're the encourager.
You're the one that has come to bring
hope to the hopeless.
Father, I pray that you would, Lord, bind
again the work of the enemy.
That Lord would bring that condemnation.
Lord, reach into the past and dangle that
thing and say, not you, but Lord, we
do ask for conviction.
That, Father, we can bring that situation that
has never been dealt with to the blood.
And get out of death row and say,
Lord, thank you for freedom.
Thank you for liberty.
Thank you, Lord, for changing my life.
So, Lord, bless this congregation.
Enlarge this congregation.
Put your hand upon this congregation.
In Jesus' name.