Voice of the Nazarene 9-13-26

Coming to you from North Central Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Nazarene, a week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene.

We join our pastor, Reverend Ray Lasaule, and the Voice of the Nazarene.

In the book of 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, two little verses are nestled there in the dust.

1 Chronicles 4 · chapter mention

Verse 9, verse 10, and we read the story in the history of a man by the name of Jabez.

I don't know if you read your way through scripture, but when you come to the Chronicles, it's chapter after chapter, and name after name, hundreds of names, and so-and-so begets so-and-so, and they beget so-and-so, and so forth and so on.

And I don't know if you're like me, but frequently when I get to all of the names, I just speed up a bit to get through them.

And I wonder, where's names like Ray and Bill and Sue?

Names that I know.

Maybe you're more diligent than I and you want to go through each name syllable by syllable and pronounce them out, and my hat's off to you.

Did you know that we have a God that writes names in a book?

And did you know that God knows you by name?

The difference between Lazarus and the rich man, God forgot the rich man's name.

In this light, either your sin will be blotted out or your name will be blotted out.

Think about that for a while.

And here's a list of 500 and some names.

And suddenly you come to a name of Jabez.

Here's a name that isn't often mentioned.

Now I want you to look carefully at what God had to say about Jabez.

One name out of 500, and the biography that God gives to Jabez is less than 80 words.

72 words.

God wraps up about this person named Jabez.

When God writes a biography, you can bank on the fact that it's true.

And what God tells us about Jabez can change your life.

What he's saying about Jabez can change your way of thinking, can change your habits.

And read carefully what it says, and Jabez was more honorable than his brother.

And God said there was something about this man that was remarkable.

It wasn't just an honorable man, wasn't just an equal man to his brothers, but he was more honorable than his brother.

Would you like to have God say that about you?

That this man or this woman was more honorable?

Isn't it amazing how we crave the recognition of our peers?

We want them to say something good about us.

Aren't they something?

Aren't they incredible?

But would you like for God to say something amazing about you?

You know what I've discovered?

When men praise each other, they become overly polite.

Sometimes they use words that are almost a stretch.

But I want you to know that when God says something about anyone, there's never a stretch at all.

God said, I want you to know something about Jabez based on what I'm about to tell you.

He said that he was more honorable than his brother.

Wouldn't that be quite an epitaph on a tombstone?

Here lies a man that was more honorable than anybody else.

You'd stop for a little while and study, think about that, wouldn't you?

He began as a blighted man.

May I remind you the Bible is a book about people, about problems, about solutions to problems.

And now God tells you why he said it, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bear him with sorrow.

That was a real standout to me, and then I begin to notice this week in the scripture there are a number of people in the Bible who was labeled by name.

They were in Genesis 35, verse 16, and they journeyed from Bethel, and there was but a little way to come to Ephraim, and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labor.

Genesis 35:16

And it came to pass when she was in hard labor that the midwife said unto her, Fear not, thou shalt have this son also.

And it came to pass as her soul was in departing, she's about to die.

And she called his name Benoni, meaning son of sorrow.

You cause me pain.

You cause me grief.

You cause me hurt.

And her husband buried Rachel.

And as soon as he got the earth on top of her grave, he changed that boy's name to Benjamin, son of my right hand.

I'm not going to have him go through life with that kind of a name and everybody call him a pain, but I want everybody to know this boy, I counted on him as my right hand man.

Now back up ten chapters in Genesis, and you'll read about a guy by the name of Jacob.

He was a twin.

They were womb mates.

And uh if you read a little bit about the story, he wound up being called a surplanter.

And Jacob suffered all his life because he was labeled with that name a cheater, a double crosser.

And so that's the way he lived.

He cheated his way through life, everybody that he met, until he wound up a broken man.

Alone.

One night God came on the scene and he and God had a discussion, and God broke him and changed his name to Israel, meaning Prince with God.

Maybe some of us need a change of name and a change of nature.

God could do it if you'll ask him.

And then you come to Jabez, and he's given this name by his mother, Jabez.

I got you in pain, I got you in grief.

Wouldn't it be a terrible thing in your own language?

He was a person of trouble, a heartache.

We don't even know what his problems were, and we'll not know until we get to heaven.

But God said, take it from me.

He wasn't born into a lap of luxury.

He didn't have opportunity spoons stuck in his mouth.

He's born into adverse circumstances, and his name meant pain.

He didn't have much of a start, did he?

No, he didn't.

Didn't have much opportunity, you know.

It wasn't.

But God said, don't you worry about it, son, because you were more honorable than all the rest of your brothers, even in spite of what your name meant.

Now, I don't know what's happening in your life.

I don't know what may be coming next week.

You may feel like you're sitting there and I've got the world by the tail.

I've got it like a string wrapped around my finger.

But one little ring of the telephone can turn your world upside down.

Trust me.

God said, I want to make more out of you than you can make out of yourself.

And in 72 words, God tells us what made this man so great.

The Bible said that he cried out to the Lord.

God said, What made a difference was it was the fact that he prayed.

He prayed a prayer.

It changed his life.

It made him more honorable than all the brothers that he had grown up with.

Can I ask you a question?

I knew you were going to.

Thank you.

How's your prayer life?

Pastor, it's tops.

Man, I'm so proud of my prayer life.

I'm so glad you asked.

I hope you call on me.

I've pretty well, pretty good at this thing called prayer.

Well, I think a lot of times we believe in prayer, but sometimes we're kind of prayerless.

You know what I've discovered?

Most days I don't seem to have all that time to pray.

How are you all doing?

Sometimes I'm just too busy.

Sometimes I have things that have to be done.

And sometimes I find it easier to run down to McDonald's and eat than I do to get on my knees and pray.

And I'm finding that prayerlessness is a grievous sin to God.

I didn't say prayerless, I said prayerlessness.

When I said prayerless, all of us do a little bit of prayer.

But prayerlessness is not praying like God wants us to pray.

Did you know that prayer matters more to God than it does to you?

The one that made you, the one that created you, the one that gave his son to die in your place?

And he's commanded us to talk to him.

How many of you have ever had somebody that you love, maybe particularly a child, and they don't have much time for you?

You you want them to call you, you ask them to call and they don't call, and you call and they don't pick up.

Oh, they want their allowance, they want the keys to the car, but they don't want to hang around us old folkies.

You know what I mean.

If you go to see them, you might get one meal, they're just too busy with life and shuttling kids around, and you're kind of in the way.

And I'm afraid that America will go to bed tonight, breaking the heart of God, because God, we want all of your blessings, but we don't want to take time to spend any time with you.

Well, Jabez was more honorable than his brother.

He took time to pray.

He was a man of prayer.

Now I want you to look at Jabez' prayer.

And when I finish, maybe we can even pray that prayer as we're leaving.

I especially over the next couple Sundays, next two weeks, I would like for you to pray this prayer.

I want you to look at the particulars.

For God amazingly records those.

And this prayer is what made him stand out.

It's what made him more honorable.

Jabez just didn't want to stay where he was.

He wanted to break that cycle of dysfunctionalism in his family.

He wanted to get beyond mediocrity and the status quo.

And he wanted a cloudburst of God's blessing.

So he prayed.

Not a long prayer, a four-part prayer.

But I want you to read exactly what Jabez called on the God of Israel in his little prayer.

Your eloquence doesn't impress God anyway.

Just get to pray.

You say my prayers are kind of stumbling and bumbling, and I don't put it all in order.

It doesn't matter.

You need to start praying.

And I want to use an acrostic this morning.

Why, Pastor?

Because I'd like for you to remember it, okay?

That's why we use outlines and sometimes rhyme things.

And I'm using the necrostic.

The little word best, B-E-S-T.

I want to break the four-part prayer down with those four letters.

B E S T.

Bless me, he said.

Oh, that you would bless me.

He's saying outside of your blessing, I have nothing.

And he said, bless me.

And then he added the word indeed.

Indeed meant urgency.

I'm urgent about this prayer.

And you know what's happening in America?

We're trying to operate without the blessings of God anymore.

We don't want our kids brought up in our classrooms with a Bible or to believe in creation or even believe there's a divine designer behind the universe.

Moms trying to raise kids without the blessings of God.

Men trying to run an industry and factories and jobs without God.

Dad's trying to be the head of homes without God's blessing.

Preachers preaching sermons and messages without God's blessing.

And people get up from sunrise to sundown, from the time they get up to the time they lie down, they want to do and think without God being involved.

Jabez said, God, I've got to have your blessing.

I'm not running from you, I'm not trying to do my own thing.

I want your blessing.

Bless me indeed.

What would it take for you to realize that you're nothing without God?

God bless me.

You say, Well, Pastor, I just I just think you ought to have a positivity mental attitude.

Well, isn't that sweet?

I believe if I think I can do it, I can do it.

Maybe.

But you'll not find that any place in the Bible.

I challenge you.

Look for it.

You might find it in the maps where where you wrote it in the fly leaf, but you'll not find it in Divine Writ.

And without God, we can't remotely be what those kids need, Dad, without a total dependence upon God.

My prayer is bless me, indeed.

When our founding fathers signed that document, they were saying, without God, our nation would never exist.

Without God, we're saying, without you, we're nothing.

But we're also acknowledging, God, you're everything.

Here's the second point.

Expand my ministry.

His words were enlarge my coast.

Now are you ready to scare yourself a little bit?

He was saying, I want to do more than I ever dreamed of doing.

God, enlarge my capacity, enlarge my heart, enlarge my concepts, enlarge my vision.

God, I want more responsibility.

I want more impact.

I want more influence.

I want more of a burden to carry.

Oh, Pastor, that's not the prayer I want to pray.

That's not what I want.

The prayer I had in mind was, God, I'd like for you to kind of lighten the load a little bit, take some of the tension off, and lessen my stress.

I wasn't interested in lugging anymore.

I want things a whole lot lighter.

I want things less.

Well, then don't look to be more honorable in the sight of God then.

He started off saying, if you don't bless me, I'm nothing.

Then he said, I'm asking you to load it on and enlarge my coast.

Can I tell you that God is in the enlargement business?

What he's looking for you to take on, he'll enable.

What I find amazing is that I'm reading down through it, he can sustain anything that you have to be willing, though, to take on.

You know, Christians like living comfortably, don't we?

We want our giving to be comfortable.

What would it take for you to say, God enlarge my responsibility, my ministry, my influence.

I want to give until it takes you to make it happen.

It's called living by faith.

Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

Without faith, you can't really impress God much.

You have to diligently seek him.

I thought about some of our enlargement of our coast and ministry here at Desire.

You don't mind me talking about that for a minute?

Please, Pastor, would you mention that?

Thank you.

I shall.

Since you permitted it.

Just putting up that sign out front was a huge responsibility.

It was a huge thing to overcome trying to get a sign up.

For years this ministry had sat here and nothing told what time the service started or anything else.

It just said what the name of the church was.

Trying to talk leadership into putting a sign up.

Finally got it bought, but it laid out there for a year they wouldn't put it up because the pastor wanted it.

It even warped the sign.

It finally rusted.

Finally, out of embarrassment, they finally put it up, but it gave service times.

It told what the ministry, and then soon we added to that 17-foot-tall sign a digital reading where we could literally give out messages during the days, time of day and temperature, so people would start watching, and then we could announce weddings and announce a funeral and announce revival and on and on.

It's called enlargement of our coast.

You say it on amount to anything.

I had an evangelist by the name of Chick Shaver.

And uh he was here for a meeting, and and uh we're riding with him in his vehicle, and suddenly he pulled over and stopped, and he looked over the seat back at me, and he said uh to my wife, not to me, he said, uh, what did it take to get your husband to get that sign up out there?

He said, I attend first church right there in Kansas City.

And he said the pastor will not risk his name to upset anybody to put a sign up, and we don't even have service times.

And we're trying to be the first church in Kansas City home of our denomination.

You know, we enlarged our coast a little bit when we opened up Upward Basketball was a big thing to us people right here in our little city of Gesyrus.

And to think that on Saturdays more than a thousand people go through our gymnasium because we wanted to do more than we'd ever done.

Starting preschool, what we call sunshine preschool and childcare was another enlargement of our borders.

Starting on television, it was a big thing, an amazing thing.

People outside of the church have helped to pay television time without us even asking for financial support.

People are just good.

And then going live stream before other churches even started live streaming, going on radio, been on radio locally now for 34 and a half years.

Enlarging our coast was when we reached over to Upper Sandusky and kept a campus from closing and made it a campus.

And then on to Kerry, Ohio.

And then a year ago, next Sunday, we helped start Freedom Church on the northeast corner of Mansfield.

If you think what's going on here is what is happening, this thing is way bigger.

God's allowed us to enlarge our coast.

And when you give, it's helping sustain what we're doing and helping us to get a bigger vision of what can be done.

Next Sunday evening, it'll be one year, and they're celebrating that night, asking the DSs to come in, and they're going to share their vision of what God's doing.

Twenty-eight baptized were on one Sunday.

Last Sunday, 138 gathered.

Today.

At West Lafayette, Ohio.

That's about 20 miles, I think, from Kershachton.

They're having a mortgage burning today.

Right now, while I'm speaking.

He serves on our district level in the uh building and all that kind of stuff.

And he's on that board.

And they asked for permission to build and gave what money they could come up with, and this is what we think it'll cost, and it was agreed on.

And then they got into an awful struggle.

And this ministry sent work teams to help complete that church.

We sent around$30,000 back when we couldn't hardly make it.

And so we were sending sacrificially money that we needed for our own operation.

But right now they're having a mortgage burning.

I sent a little message over that'll be read and other things will happen, and Jim Mays will be the guest speaker.

It's called enlarging our borders.

And I'm hoping that somehow in your heart, God will enlarge your vision.

I'm saying, God, put more on us.

Don't take responsibility away.

God made us for burdens.

God didn't make us to be on a dress parade.

You go to most Christian bookstores, 90% of the books on the shelves are how to lessen your load.

How to get rid of stress and get out from under any responsibility.

Jabez said, just put some more on me.

Enlarge my post.

Give me more influence.

Then the next one is stay with me.

He said that thy hand might be with me.

God, I want you in control.

God, I want you to direct.

I want your discipline in my life.

Many of us say, God, I want to live the way I want to and don't spank me.

But how many, what would it take for you to say, God, would you correct me when I'm wrong?

I want your hand in my life for the good, for the bad, and whatever.

Sometimes I need correction.

It's the hand of God that controls and directs us.

He's asking for that hand.

It's what we call the Spirit-led life, his directing, his controlling.

And you'll be amazed when you pray that God will do that.

He'll do it.

And then he goes to the final part of his prayer.

He said, Take evil away.

Keep me from evil.

You need to realize the sin that you're letting into your life that you think you can handle is grieving God and it's destroying you.

If you come to church on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week allowing through the eye gate and through your thought life, things that are draining you spiritually.

He said, God, keep me.

I don't want it in my life.

Clean up my act.

God, keep me from evil.

And when you pray that, you'd better get ready for some things to happen because God is not in the sin toleration business.

God's ready to forgive, but God wants you to forsake.

While our forefathers claimed this nation to be a diverse nation, they never intended for it to become a perverse nation.

God doesn't sanction perversion in anyone's life.

Let alone church denominations trying to rewrite their manuals to say the sin that God hates, they're going to look the other way.

God keep me from sin, from what violates your word.

And I hope you'll pray that.

Lord, bless me indeed.

Enlarge my coast with burdens.

Put more on.

Help me to be a better witness, better testimony.

And I think of friendship Sunday.

I'm hoping, I'm praying that it'll spark something in you till you want to share your church with people that you love.

And then pray that his hand might be with you.

Lord, you're in control.

And it made him a better man, for it said, and God granted him that which he requested.

And if you want one other time, his name is mentioned.

It's in 1 Chronicles 2, 55.

And the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez.

Jewish scholars affirm the fact that he became an eminent doctor of the law that attracted scribes, so they moved into that town and made up the town.

And what he did for Jabez, he'll do for Keith Showalder.

For Ray LaSalle.

And for you.

I didn't know about you, but I got on my knees this week and I said, God, do it again.

Do it in my life.

I'm not saying light my load, I'm saying, God, put more on.

Give me better vision.

Help me to hear what you have to say.

I ask you, what are you requesting?

God, I've got nothing.

If you don't bless me, enlarge me, use me more.

Want to give more.

I want more put on me.

Keep me from the sin that I know that'll snare me and drain me.

It'll cause me to quit.

It was a simple prayer to change your life.

Five other names mentioned.

But when he gets to Jabez, he tells you what one prayer did in his life.

Made him more honorable.

And I'm asking you over the next couple weeks, would you begin to pray this prayer?

It's 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10.

1 Chronicles 4:9

Bless me indeed.

Enlarge my culture.

Keep your hand on my life.

From the evil.

I want to tell you something.

I've watched so many go down here in the last year.

Nationwide.

Evil.

The evil one got to it.

It only takes a couple times, and it can bring you down and ruin your name forever.

I'm saying, God, I I'm not big enough on my own to handle the battles of life.

Would you keep me?

Keep me clean.

Keep me honorable.

Help me to be hot for ministry and humble in ministry and holy in my living.

And help me to be honorable.

Father?

Thanks for being a part of the Voice of the Nazarene.

Visit us every Sunday at 9 a.m.

with BNC's pastor Ray Lasalle.

For more information regarding BNC, visit ducirusNazarene.org.