©2001 Scott W. Schreiber
The Prayer of Jabez is a short book by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson that is enjoying amazing success. The book has been “number one” on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover nonfiction, the USA Today list of all books, The Publisher’s Weekly List of nonfiction, the Barnes and Noble list, and the Christian Bookseller’s Association and Christian Retailing lists. There have been over 4 million copies sold! Christians everywhere are talking about this book on radio and TV. Why is this a phenomenal best seller? What makes people buy this book by the case full to hand out to family and friends? One appealing aspect of the book is that it is not a heavy tome. If its 92 pages were printed on letter-sized paper, it would fit on less than 23 pages, so it is readable in a very short period of time. It may be appealing for other reasons. The obscurity of the subject lends itself to an image of mystery. Perhaps it contains some newly “discovered” secret that reveals how to get prayers answered. The bottom line for this popular book is this: Is The Prayer of Jabez teaching its readers biblical doctrine of prayer, or does it cater to the desires of its readers, turning God into some sort of vending machine where you say the right thing and the candy bar, romantic relationship or new car of your dreams pops out? Your view of the book will depend on your understanding of what the Scriptures say about prayer, the Person of God, and how He behaves. For Christians who trust the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, The Prayer of Jabez contains far too few gems among the rocky waste to be of real value. This paper will demonstrate several of the books errors and suggest a worthwhile alternative.
This small tome is written around an obscure two-verse biography of a character that has remained (until now at least) relatively unknown. Worthy of note is the fact that Jabez is, in the first place, only mentioned in this one brief reference. Secondly, and more interesting is the fact that Jabez is not at all connected with the genealogies that surround him. The verses about him occur in the midst of a sea of “begats,” yet Jabez himself neither begets, nor is begotten in the lineage. His mother is briefly mentioned, not by name, but because she is the one who bore and named this son whose name means “pain.”
The foundational concept of the book is that God is waiting for a signal from you, and once you give that signal, you will be “extravagantly blessed” and live an “extraordinary life.” Wilkinson asserts that God promises these extraordinary and extravagant things (POJ p.9), but nowhere in the book does he outline, even briefly, where or how God has promised them. This presents us with a difficulty right from the start. Does God actually promise these things? The faithful Old Testament Prophets certainly did not enjoy extravagant blessings. They were terribly persecuted and put to death. One, Hosea, was commanded to marry a prostitute who would continue to be adulterous. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, the writer speaks of the faithful of old:
“Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented” (Hebrews 11:35-37, NKJV)
This doesn’t sound like what we would call extravagant blessings. In fact, Jesus Himself states that the Christian can expect persecution, and He invites us to take up a cross. This is called the “Theology of the Cross.” The main idea of the Theology of the Cross is that God does indeed bless us, but that the richest blessings come masked as judgments and suffering and even death. For the perfect example of this, one need only look to the cross of Christ. Here the very Son of God hangs gory and bleeding and dead, yet this is the richest blessing of God.
Wilkinson apparently bases the promise of blessing upon the words “God granted [Jabez] what he requested” These six words are applied to everyone everywhere according to Wilkinson. Common sense would inform the reader that these words are not a mandate or dogma for all time. They simply tell the reader what God has done for Jabez. Nothing else. Imagine being a guest in someone’s home when the phone rings. Imagine the ring of the phone is the prayer of the person calling, saying “I want to talk to someone on the other end.” In response to the “prayer” of the caller, the host says, “I will answer the phone.” When you go home and your own phone rings will you wait for your host to arrive and answer the phone? Was he acting universally about every phone call, or the specific instance of his own phone ringing at that time? Of course he was speaking of a specific event, and you would answer the plea of your own ringing phone the way you felt best. The same is true for Jabez. God granted him what he requested. That does not bind God to grant whatever anyone else requests. As you can see, the foundation is quite unstable.
There is a great deal of assumption on the part of Wilkinson in the book. He summarizes the two verses about Jabez by assuming that “things started badly” for him, “he prayed an unusual … prayer,” and “things ended extraordinarily well.” How Wilkinson got that from two small verses is a mystery. Here is everything the Bible has to say about Jabez:
‘Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, "Because I bore him in pain." 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.’ (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)
There is nothing else about him, yet from these 70 words, Wilkinson has extrapolated a whole life for this man. The imagined details of Wilkinson’s Jabez appear other places in the book. He says that Jabez was born into the tribe of Judah, that he became a “notable head of a clan”(p. 20), that his birth was an “unwelcome arrival” (p. 21), and that Jabez is burdened “by the sorrow of his past and the dreariness of his present”(p 22). All this Wilkinson imposes upon the simple text of Scripture. Where does he get the details? He doesn’t say, so the reader is left wondering. These suppositions are not to be found anywhere in the Bible.
Thankfully, Wilkinson does not use this book to say that the “magic words” of Jabez will net you all the goodies you ever wanted. He often does talk about God’s “fullest blessing,” saying that the person who is going to pray this prayer must reach for it, as if God would dangle a carrot just out of reach. What is the “fullest blessing” of God? While daily bread, clothes and shelter are indeed blessings from God, the richest, most wonderful blessing of God is the vicarious death of His Son Jesus, the result of which blesses believers with eternal life in the presence of God in heaven. Nothing is richer than this treasure!
Wilkinson uses language that speaks of our “reaching” for or committing to something as though if we were able to strike a bargain with God, then God would have to hold up His end of the deal. In fact, he states outright “[W]ith a handful of core commitments on your part … your heavenly Father will bring it to pass for you”(p. 17). In other words, if I impress God with my efforts, He will reward me. This language makes God out to be some sort of cosmic pawnbroker. The truth of the matter is that God is more like a doting rich daddy. He lavishes His precious gifts upon His children without any earning on their part. Human beings simply cannot earn anything from God. Instead, God takes all the action and responsibility and heaps upon His children His blessings. In its discussion of the Sacraments, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article 24 explains:
“A Sacrament is a ceremony or work in which God presents to us that which the promise annexed to the ceremony offers; as, Baptism is a work, not which we offer to God, but in which God baptizes us, i.e., a minister in the place of God; and God here offers and presents the remission of sins, etc., according to the promise, Mark 16, 16: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”
Believing is a gift of God according to Ephesians 2:8-10, and Baptism is God’s action in adopting us into His family. This article therefore shows us that there is no convincing or earning. There are no contributions by us nor are conditions placed upon us. God just loves to give gifts.
Chapter three of Wilkinson’s book could be aptly subtitled “Misunderstanding Vocation.” The chapter is summarized “It’s when you thrust yourself in the mainstream of God’s plans for this world – which are beyond our ability to accomplish – and plead with Him, Lord, use me – give me more ministry for You! – that you release miracles” There seem to be several false points here. One, if you are faithfully carrying out your responsibilities as a parent, spouse, child, employer, and/or employee, citizen, and so on, that you have not thrust yourself into the mainstream of God’s plan. Is God asleep? Does He not know where you work and what you are to be doing? Of course He does. He has put us in our respective stations in life, and what we do in our vocations is how we serve our neighbor and show the love of God to them. In his sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, Martin Luther told his hearers “A miller’s maid, if she believes, does more good, accomplishes more, and I would trust her more, if she takes the sack from the horse, than all the priests and monks, if they kill themselves singing day and night and torment themselves to the quick. (Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol.1 p.37)” Luther is telling us that a Christian who works diligently at his or her vocation is doing more of a good work, or to use Wilkinson’s terms, they are in “the mainstream of God’s plan,” than all the pious sounding acts of monks and other pietists who deem it somehow more noble to be about their notion of “ministry” than to be serving their neighbor by sweeping the floor or delivering pizza. The Theology of the Cross plainly says “God does not need our service, but our neighbor does.” In the book of Colossians, chapter 3, verse 23, the Scriptures tell us to work at our jobs or stations in life as though we were working for the Lord. The very vehicle for thrusting us into the mainstream of God’s plan for the world is His placing us in our circumstances and our touching the lives of the people we come in contact with. Too many Christians today look upon their careers with distain, longing for “more ministry.” This usually means that they consider their career and family life as unimportant, while their higher goal is to “win souls for Christ” through some other activity such as evangelism programs or church events. This is a terrible thing. The result is too often that rather than serve their neighbor with the love of God by doing their job well, they give the clear message that “this job, and you as my customer or co-worker are not important, I’d rather be doing something else.” All this harm is done under the guise of Christianity.
The most disturbing idea in this conclusion to chapter three is the idea that we somehow “release miracles,” particularly through our increased effort at “ministry.” Here again is Wilkinson’s Vend-O-Matic god just waiting for correct change and out come the miracles. This is not the same God who created all there is, visible and invisible. If he must sit around and wait for my release of miracles, he can’t do much, can he? This is a far cry from the God of the Bible who is intimately involved in the world, holding creation together, and Who, through people, is lovingly serving men and women. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, in it’s treatment of the Lord’s Prayer tells us that all the things we ask for in that prayer come even without our prayer, and that we pray that we might be mindful of them and they be done among us as well. The same holds true for our other prayers, and is summed up in the Small Catechism’s treatment of the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer. God’s will is done. Period. The world has not been wound up and left to run its course with a few interventions by God. Instead, He is intimately involved with every detail. The Bible tells us that He has numbered the hairs on our heads! How much more detail-oriented can He get? If something happens, it’s God’s will. Our extra effort at “more ministry” does not finally twist the arm of God to release a miracle. God’s will is done. He rules from outside the bounds of time and space and has complete foreknowledge and control of the most intimate and mundane details of daily life.
Chapter four in The Prayer of Jabez is based upon the petition of the prayer, “Oh that your hand would be with me.” The author picks up where he left us in chapter three, being so bold as to say “with [this third petition of the prayer], we release God’s power to accomplish His will and bring Him glory through all those seeming impossibilities” (p.48). The most obvious question staring the reader in the face is “If God needs me to release his power to do His will, what has He been doing all this time? What have I been doing all this time?” It seems that Wilkinson believes the world is careening haphazardly through the universe all on it’s own. A frightening thought indeed! As stated earlier, God’s will is always done, not because He was convinced by humans, but because of Who He is.
In the “poetic license” department, Wilkinson is busy adding more detail and length to the Jabez tale than that which is given in Scripture. He gives the clear impression that the prayer was not one concise verse to God, but that it spanned some large period of time. Wilkinson makes it seem that Jabez prayed the first part and it was granted and then after some time when things started to get busy, he prayed, “that your hand would be with me.” Perhaps Wilkinson has some extra-textual notes that allow him to add all this detail to the life of Jabez, but the details he supplies simply are not in the Scriptural record. I find this dishonest, and a hindrance to any good point that he may make in the text.
Chapter four continues to say that our efforts garner something. He says this petition is “our strategic choice to sustain and continue the great things that God has begun in our lives”(p.49). Strategic Choice? That’s a military term. Are we the leaders and God is to obey our orders?
On page 53, we stumble on to a hidden gem. Here Wilkinson actually discusses total dependence upon God. For a moment there is realization that God is the reason for everything, that if there is something good in our life, it is there as a result of God’s activity. This is refreshing, but one has to wonder how this dovetails with all the talk of releasing God’s power. Are we, or our prayers the low-voltage solenoid that controls the megawatt power of God? Perhaps in the mind of Wilkinson, but the real answer is “No.” But then we have to wonder, “How do these two theses work together?” Unfortunately we are moved from reliance on God to assessing life based on our experiences and feelings.
Shortly after this brief glimpse of a good point, Wilkinson reverts to his disheartening false representation of the Scriptures. He says that early Christians “sought to be filled by God”(p.55) and cites Acts 4:23-31. Acts 4:23-31 puts all the emphasis on God. Verse 30 in particular asks God to “heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus." Wilkinson’s focus is in the wrong place, on the people instead of on the God who does such wonderful things.
He continues to assert that early Christians were “asking for God’s power”(p.55) and cites Acts 2:42-47. This is all wrong. Verse 42 says “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” This is a reference to the liturgy of the Church. Nowhere in these verses do the Scriptures say, as Wilkinson does, that the Christians were “asking for [God’s] power,” or “longing to receive more of God’s ‘hand’”(p.55). In the next paragraph Wilkinson makes another bad assertion. He tells us that Paul urged the Ephesians “to make it a priority to be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’”(p.56) and cites Ephesians 3:19. The verse says no such thing. The surrounding context is Paul telling how he prays God would do these things. Again, I find this dishonest. I wonder, as a read, does Wilkinson think the reader is too lazy to look up his faulty citations? Does he think that just adding a citation to a verse that comes close to what he writes will lend credibility to his work and make the reader assume “it must be there since he put the verse citation in the text”? Whatever the case, it makes reading this book a difficult task, like trying to drive 50 MPH over a field of speed bumps.
The fourth chapter concludes with the accusation that God will not provide “your loyal heart” toward any endeavor. Instead of praying the words of Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart o God,” Wilkinson would have you do it yourself. What makes a heart loyal to God? Faith. Where do we get faith? Can we muster up enough to be pleasing to God? No. Ephesians 2:8-9 makes this absolutely clear when it says “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith --and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.” God does supply the loyal heart. Plain reading of the Scriptures reveals this. While it’s certain that our concupiscence, mentioned earlier, has constantly inclined us toward sin, Christ living in us supplies all the loyalty needed. This is a basic tenet of Christianity, and it is baffling that a rather well known Christian would write anything otherwise.
The next chapter of the book is centering on the words “that you would keep me from evil.” In this chapter Wilkinson displays ignorance of common Christian practice. He writes “somehow we don’t think to ask God simply to keep us away from temptation and keep the devil at bay in our lives”(p.67). What about the Lord’s Prayer? “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Luther’s Small Catechism is again helpful in understanding these words:
God,
indeed, tempts no one; but we pray in this petition that God would guard and
keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us, nor
seduce us into misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice; and though
we be assailed by them, that still we may finally overcome and gain the
victory.
The prayer Christians have been praying since Jesus gave us the words meets the desire of Mr. Wilkinson. Why the assertion that Christians don’t ask this? Wilkinson reveals a terrible and foundational flaw. He calls this prayer a “model”(p.67). It is no such thing. When Christ gave His disciples this prayer He did not tell them that he had a suggested outline for them to follow. He said, “When you pray, say” these words. Christians who neglect this are, as noted by Wilkinson, missing out on a great deal. Hopefully some day Wilkinson will stop seeing this as a “model” and realize that there is no better way to pray than to use God’s own words. Luther realized the value of this prayer and the words of Christ to “say” this prayer. In his Small Catechism he outlines a daily life with this prayer as the mainstay, telling us to say this prayer eight times a day with various other prayers: once as we rise, once before and once after every meal, and once before bed.
Not to break the pattern of misinformation, later in the chapter Wilkinson says that Jesus did not discuss the offers of Satan as He was tempted in the wilderness. This is another error in fact. The fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel records the dialogue. Jesus refutes the devil’s proposals with the Word of God.
In chapter six we encounter another kind of error, one of translation. Wilkinson relies upon an English translation of the Hebrew for his book, and why not, it suits his purpose well. Unfortunately an error in translation is used to wrongly show that God can be manipulated. First, Wilkinson writes that Jabez’s prayer “earned him a ‘more honorable’ award.” In actually reading the Biblical text (something one might suggest to Wilkinson), you find that the notion of Jabez’s honor occurs prior to the prayer. Secondly, the translation occurring in most English translations that “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers,” would be more faithful to the original language if it read “Jabez was more honored than his brothers.” The difference may seem subtle, but it is a matter of focus again. Using the Wilkinson-approved “honorable” puts the virtue inside Jabez as some intrinsic value. The more literal “honored” makes the honor something bestowed upon Jabez from outside. This is not only a better translation of the Hebrew, but it is also consistent with God’s dealing with people, as has been mentioned previously.
Also in Chapter six is the statement that what ruins the whole bargain between man and God is sin. “[S]in breaks the flow of God’s power”(p.85). Any honest Christian knows that sin is not only the events in our lives, but it is the condition we are in. Everything about us is contaminated by sin; even the prayer of Jabez is tainted with sin. If sin stops God’s power, and all mankind are corrupted by sin, then God has no power. Uh-oh…
The book concludes with chapter seven urging us in Multi-Level Marketing fashion to say the prayer every day, and tell people about it (which leads to disclosure of where you heard the great idea, which leads to mention of Wilkinson’s book, surprise). There is more talk of “releasing” God’s power, and stories from the life of the Wilkinson family. The book is a short read, easily consumed in an evening if you go straight through. If, on the other hand, you look up the references and compare Wilkinson’s doctrines with Scriptural doctrines, it takes a bit longer. It’s bottom line is that Jabez’s prayer is a formula for making you a kind of super Christian. My study of the subject leads me to this conclusion: Jabez is a type or foreshadowing of the Christ Himself. He is a man of sorrow or pain. This is Isaiah’s name for Jesus. He is honored above his brethren, God blessed him, His territory, which is His Kingdom is still being enlarged to this day. It is my contention that as a reader is floundering in the “begats” of this part of the Bible, this aside was inserted as a reminder to point us forward to Christ, Whom all the Scriptures point to in the first place.
You can read this book and come away with a few good things, for example, the truth of reliance upon God and the encouragement to pray more about even the “big things” in life. Unfortunately there are too many errors in the book to really make it worth the six dollars you can pay for it at Sam’s Club. A much more worthwhile investment would be to get a copy of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism and a cold drink and sit down and read it with the aim of knowing it by heart. Once that is done, so many questions that arise in material like Wilkinson’s will be automatically answered with the solid doctrine found in that little book. What Luther saw that prompted him to write the Small Catechism is sadly too true today, that “the common people … have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine (Intro to the Small Catechism).” In ignorance they scurry after the latest religious fad, discounting the transcendent doctrines of the Church as “not relevant for today” in favor of any small book full of errors. The Prayer of Jabez is a prime candidate for such an approach.
Works Cited
Chemnitz, Martin, et al. The Book of Concord. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
1922
Keil, C.F., Delitzsch, F. Commentary on the Old Testament. Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1866-91
Lenker, John Nicholas, ed. Complete Sermons of Martin Luther. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000
Luther, Martin. Small Catechism. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1943
Pieper, Francis. Christian Dogmatics. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953
The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Thomas Nelson Inc, 1984
Wilkinson, Bruce. The Prayer of Jabez. Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 2000