The Prayer for Breakthrough - Breakthrough Start

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I want to talk about prayer from the perspective of a prayer that's in Scripture.

It's this tiny prayer, and it's this, it's actually not a prayer, but it's documenting a prayer.

And it's it's by this insignificant guy that has really no place in Scripture except for this one place.

And you know what?

We're all kind of insignificant, but he becomes significant because the writer says this guy was honorable.

And then it shows us what he prayed, and then it says God answered his prayers.

And it's a breakthrough prayer, guys, in this obscure book.

Probably one of the most boring books in the Bible.

Nine chapters, the first nine chapters are all the genealogy of Israel.

How boring can you get in that?

Five hundred names listed in nine chapters.

Most of you in this room have probably never read this book in its entirety.

Matter of fact, you started reading it at some point maybe in your journey, and you got about the second chapter, third chapter, and you quit and you said, I'm skipping this.

And so you never saw this part because it's so obscure.

And yet it might be, it might be one of the most powerful prayers in the Bible.

It certainly is a template for us.

And it meant so much to me many years ago, and to really our whole nation in America, because it was the best-selling book for like three or four years in a row in the 90s.

It's called The Prayer of Jabez.

And we're selling that book for two bucks.

You can get the prayer of Jabez.

You could read the book in three hours.

And if you're a slow reader, six hours.

But it's just a little book.

And I want to talk about it tonight because it's perfect for understanding this idea of breakthrough, the prayer of Jabez.

How many of you have heard of the prayer of Jabez?

How many of you heard it?

Raise your hand.

All right.

So I'm going to be speaking to the choir about the prayer of Jabez tonight, but under the auspices of breakthrough.

So turn in your Bibles to this obscure book of the Bible called First Chronicles.

And it really is a bunch of chronicles and a bunch of names.

And we're looking at chapter four.

And if you made it to chapter four, just straight reading Chronicles, it was in your reading plan, you are a mighty man or woman of God.

Because this is really tough slogging getting through this book.

But then there's this like floodlight on verses nine and ten.

So you're moving along and you're going, oh man, this is a yawner.

And then you come to verses nine and ten of chapter four, and something happens here.

It's like the whole tempo and the whole theme and the whole fire of the writer like comes alive, and for two verses he writes something kind of interesting, and then we're back to the list again.

Here's what he says.

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.

That has nothing to do with anything.

Because everything's just been a list.

And then, like, out of nowhere he says, Jabez is more honorable than his brothers.

And his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bore him in pain.

His name means pain.

His name means he gives me pain.

So this is getting even weirder.

So he's more honorable than his brothers, but his butt's like naming a boy Sue.

You know?

I mean, there's a lot of interesting names in the Bible.

There's Jacob is grabber.

He's a grabber.

How about Naomi?

Naomi names two of her sons, Malon and Chileon.

That means puny and piny.

That's just not right, folks.

That is not right.

Where I come from, and we slap that woman upside the face and say, you give that kid a different name.

That ain't right.

So she names Jabez pain.

So when he goes to school, they say, pain.

Is pain here?

Does the one who brings us pain?

Is he here today?

I mean, can you imagine growing up that way?

So his name means you bring pain.

You bore him in pain.

But Jabez, it says and Jabez, but I'm going to say, but Jabez, because of that verse 9, verse 10, called on the God of Israel, saying, and here's his prayer, oh, that you would bless me indeed, enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I might not cause pain.

So God granted him what he requested.

So, Father, tonight some of us have been born in pain.

Some of us have childhoods and backgrounds that are painful, and we bear the imprint of a bad name.

Some of us have made choices in our life that have not been good.

And we have a bad reputation.

Some of us are running from our reputation.

Some of us are running from our failures.

Some of us wake up at night with panic attacks, shame attacks, where we hear the scripting again and again rolling through our heads that we're not lovely, that we're not beautiful, that we're ugly, that we're never going to amount to anything, and that everything we try to do fails.

And we look at Jabez, and it seems like from just this little bit of a biographical sketch that we have, that's his background.

That's his story.

And yet you call him honorable.

You say that he was more honorable than his brothers.

And so, Father, we want to learn tonight.

We want to grow tonight.

We want to change.

We want to change our thinking.

We want to have a unbreakable spirit yielded to you to be worshipers and warriors.

And Lord, we want to see a breakthrough in these areas where shame and failure, weakness have wrapped their tentacles around our heart and our mind.

And we can't do it, Lord.

We don't have what it takes, but you do.

And we don't have the power, but you do.

We don't have the wisdom, but you do.

We don't have the insight to hang in there when things get tough, but you have it, and you make us more than conquerors.

So, Father, come and speak to us tonight in our different journeys, different roads that each of us are on, that we would be filled up with the knowledge of the wisdom and the power of God.

In the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

So we don't know what caused the name pain to be associated with Jabez.

Could be that it was uh it was a very, very painful birth.

There seems to be some indication of that.

Could be that the father left the family right when Jabez was born, and there was nobody to take care of the widow or the or the or the woman who was bearing Jabez, his mother.

He had brothers, it sounds like, so it might have been a large family.

So we don't know, except that the beginning seems to have been so hard for the mother that she named him for her pain.

And he carried that with him.

And in Jewish culture, the name of a child was very important.

It imprinted upon that young child that child's future.

It said something about what they would become, more than we have today, where names are less important.

But at that time it spoke of a prophetic imprint of character upon him, and that's how Jabaz got started.

So what he does, it appears, is he begins to pray this prayer probably from his childhood.

As a young man, he decides he's not going to be defined by that name.

And the first thing he says is this, and this is the first thing for us to remember here tonight is he prayed, God, would you bless me and then bless me indeed?

And a blessing from God.

What is a blessing from God?

I say, God, bless me.

Well, well, the Hebrew has the idea of supernatural favor.

He did not even have natural favor from his mother.

And evidently there wasn't a strong enough father there to say, we're not going to name him pain.

Come on, mama.

I know it was hard, but it ain't his fault.

Let's name him fighter.

Let's name him overcomer.

No, his name shall be He Causes Pain.

Okay, whatever.

So with no role model, no standard set at the beginning, he decides, God, would you bless me with supernatural favor?

Men and women, as we start the year, would you begin to pray for supernatural favor from God on your life every day?

Might you, and I thought about this, um Anna, a little graphic artist.

I thought, wouldn't it be neat if we developed a card with the prayer of Jabez on it that we might give out next few weeks?

And you guys could have that.

It could go in your Bible or something like that.

You could carry it on a prayer walk, you could carry it when you're on a trip, you could have it in your Bible.

But the first prayer would be, God, I need supernatural favor.

Would you bless me?

And would you bless me indeed?

There's the story told of Mr.

Smith.

You remember the movie Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington?

Well, this is Mr.

Smith went to heaven.

And when he got up there, God said, I want to show you something.

And he took him up and he and he opened up this door, and inside was this massive warehouse as far as the eye could see.

And he says, What is this?

And he says, These are all the blessings that were destined for you, but you never experienced it.

And he said, Well, what was the reason?

And he says, You never you never took the key and put the key in the lock.

He said, What's the key?

The key's Matthew 7.7.

If you'd have just put Matthew 7-7 in the lock, it could have been yours.

Ask and it'll be given to you.

Seek and you shall find, knock, and it will be opened unto you.

So, men and women, God wants you to ask, He wants you to seek, and he wants you to knock and ask God to bless you every day.

Every day, ask God for supernatural favor.

He loves to answer that prayer.

Second thing he says is enlarge my territory.

Enlarge my territory.

Territory can be translated coast or borders.

Jabez's desire was conquest.

He wanted influence.

He wanted his borders, he wanted his territory enlarged.

Kind of reminds me of the spirit of Caleb.

Caleb is over 80 years old.

You can follow him in Deuteronomy 1, and he flat wants that land that Joshua had promised him.

And before that, Moses had promised him.

Caleb said, Give me that mountain.

And it says that he went up into the mountain and he took it from the sons of Anak.

So he went against those giants that we studied on Tuesday night, and he was one of the last ones to get his land.

You know why?

Because Caleb fought with everybody else to get them their land.

And so when it was all said and done, he wanted his land.

And over 80 years old, he said, give me that mountain.

Can you imagine that dude?

Give me that mountain.

And he and he and he got out his sword and he whooped some tail.

You know, he got out there and he did it.

That kind of spirit.

Jabez says, Enlarge my territory.

Men and women, enlarge your business.

Ask God that he would enlarge your business.

Ask God that he would enlarge your bank account.

Ask God that he would enlarge the territory of your marriage.

Ask God to bless your kids, bless their work and the things that they're doing in school or the businesses they're starting or the ministries they're involved in, that it would be enlarged.

Ask God, go for it.

Ask the Lord to enlarge that territory, to push back demonic powers, to break you out of your limited thinking.

Into a way of thinking that you can be more than a conqueror, that you can increase that land, that you can break out into new boundaries and new areas that God has for you.

To ask Him for that.

Lord, bless me, bless me indeed.

God, enlarge my territory.

Enlarge my influence with my neighbors.

God, increase my oikos.

It's a Greek word for household.

God, increase my oikos.

Increase those in my circle of influence, the affinity groups that I run around with, those in my neighborhood, those at a club, those that I uh that I see at King Supers.

God, would you enlarge my territory and use me to be an inviter-includer?

90%, probably 95% of the growth of this church is just people inviting people.

Just them coming along and inviting them to church, inviting them to Christ.

It's relationships that changes people's lives.

And so, God, would you enlarge my influence?

Would you give me that relationship with that lady at King Supers that checks me out all the time?

Just a simple question.

How are you?

Turning it from a statement to a real question.

And just keep checking out at the same place and just bugger.

Just bug, keep just keep bugging them.

Go to the same restaurants, give good tips.

If you guys ever, some of you know what I'm gonna say because you've been around me long enough.

You go in a restaurant to eat, and you give some track, instead of a good tip, do not tell them where you go to church.

Personally, track giving to waiters and waitresses is stupid.

I mean, pray for them.

Ask them, pray for them.

And if you do that, then you want to give them something fine.

But tip them 25% or better.

Most of the folks in these restaurants barely are making it.

A lot of single moms.

Might even be cool to sometimes go in and say, who's a single mom that can be my waiter or I mean my waitress tonight?

And then you get that person, and then you tip her big time.

Look how much we've been blessed.

You say, Well, I'm not very blessed.

That's because you're stingy.

So you start becoming generous, you'll start getting blessed.

And so bless people.

Bless them.

Love them.

That's enlarging your territory.

You start giving away more, watch out.

Because God finds you as a conduit for great things that he wants to do through you.

And so I think influence is what enlarge of the territory means more than anything else.

Okay, thirdly, he says, Oh, that your hand would be upon me.

Okay, here's what's going to happen.

Take it from me from experience.

You start praying like this, and you're going to get in a heap of trouble.

Because here's what's going to happen.

Start praying, Lord, bless me, bless me indeed.

Lord, enlarge my territory, and he does the first, and then he does the second, and now your life is really uncomfortable because you're in territory you've never been before.

And you need the presence of God.

You need the presence of God.

And so he says, Lord, would you be upon me?

Would your hand be upon me?

We need the presence of God because we're starting to move into territory that we're not comfortable with.

We don't know what to do.

You start praying for your marriage, God's going to start working on your marriage.

You start asking God to enlarge your territory.

You can start having relationships with all these people that got all kinds of problems.

And they're going to start calling you.

And you're like, man, I didn't bargain for this.

I like complaining about my life.

I don't want to be listening to anybody else's problems.

And so you don't have the power now.

And you don't have the strength now.

And you don't have the wisdom now.

And you need the presence of God.

He said, Lord, I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to do about this.

And so, and so what did Jabez do?

He said, Oh, that your hand would be upon me.

That's the presence of God.

You start needing.

See, some of us don't even need the presence of God.

Because everything we do is just so predictable and it's so normal and it's so natural that as long as you grew up half decent with a mom and dad that cared about you, and you went to school, and you can you can add, you know, two plus two equals four, you're pretty good with life.

But if we start moving into this supernatural life and we start caring about others and we start asking God to enlarge our territory or enlarge our business.

And things like that start to happen, you're going to get busy.

And you're going to need the hand of God upon you.

We need the hand of God.

We need the presence of God.

We're not going to know what to do.

Isn't that awesome?

I mean, it's an awesome problem to have because guess what God does?

It's just like working out.

Your muscles get stronger, your body gets stronger, and you start to do more.

You start to be able to lift more.

You start to be able to have the strength for more people and for more issues and more problems because the hand of the Lord is upon you.

And He starts to widen your thinking, and suddenly you're getting creative thoughts, you're getting ideas, you're getting wisdom.

Where'd that come from?

Because you're praying, Lord, I need your hand upon me.

It gives you wisdom.

We have one kid.

We thought that was really hard.

And then we had another one.

We thought that was harder.

Another one.

Another one.

And another one.

So life is like that.

We take that step and we're faithful with what God's called us to do.

We ask for more.

He does give us more, and you need more of his wisdom and power in your life.

So Jabez cries out to God for blessing.

Cries out to God for enlarged territory.

Cries out to God now for the hand of the Lord to be upon him.

And then he says that I would not cause pain.

He says, Keep me from evil that I might not cause pain.

And so I think what happens in our lives is as God begins to bless us, if we're not careful, we start to take the credit.

When we start to take the credit, we start to presume upon God that this blessing's always going to be there.

And that's when we start to get into trouble.

That's when we start to move into temptations that we can't handle.

Full-page magazine ad depicts a Roman gladiator in big trouble.

Somehow he has dropped his sword, and the lion is rushing him with jaws open wide.

And the caption below reads, Sometimes you can afford to come in second, and sometimes you can't.

So as we begin to ask God for his blessing, as we begin to ask God for enlarged territory, as we begin to ask God for his presence, it's so important, men and women, that we keep boundaries around our eyes and boundaries around our life because we can fall, we can tumble quicker than anyone.

And for some of you, if you're coming out of alcoholism, the place to witness is probably not at the bar.

And for some of you that are coming out of drug addiction, the place to witness is not back with your drug friends.

And for some of you that you're coming out of being a gossip, you just you struggle with being a gossip, maybe you need to drop the phone for most of the day.

You hear what I'm saying?

So there's areas of our life where we have weaknesses.

And in those weak areas, we need to avoid those until we're strong later.

But the point is, is that somehow and in some way, Jabez had figured out that he did cause pain, that he could cause pain.

And he's asking God to put boundaries around him that he would not cause pain and that he would watch himself so that the beauty and the power of what God wanted to do through him could continue in his life.

So, men and women tonight, make this your prayer.

That's our heart tonight is that you would make this your prayer.

Lord, that you'd bless me.

Supernatural favor.

Lord, that you'd enlarge my territory.

And whatever it is that God's putting on your heart, that he would enlarge your territory, that he would stretch you.

Thirdly, that the presence and the power of God would be upon you.

And then lastly, God, keep me from temptation.

Keep me from causing pain that I might be usable for you.

So, Father, in the name of the blood of Jesus, we thank you for these last four days.

We thank you, Lord, for Jabez.

Thank you, Lord, that that we can learn and grow from this in a powerful way.

God, I ask you, in your mighty and through your mighty signs and wonders, that Father God, you would cause each one of us to begin to pray daily for blessing.

Pray daily for enlarged territory.

Pray daily for the favor of God and the presence of God to be over our lives, and pray daily that we would not cause pain.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

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