The Jabez Journey: Part 1 | The Greatest Obsession 

“Lord, bless me indeed.

Do something so big in my life, that it is obviously from you.

Lord, increase my influence and opportunities for you.

Please give me the awareness of Your continual presence and direction.

Protect me and keep me from Satan’s traps.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

– The Jabez Prayer based on 1 Chronicles 4:10 –

Reflections 

Days 1-3

I’ve heard miracle stories about this prayer.

I felt a longing in my heart to commit to our pastor’s challenge to pray the Prayer of Jabez for 30 days,  but excuses soon filled my mind. This isn’t a miracle prayer with automatically granted answers. It’s a prayer of posturing yourself before God and trusting Him to do something great in your life for His glory alone.

Satan has worked hard to convince me not to commit to this. He really doesn’t want me to pray this prayer. He uses tricks of mind like if I commit to praying this daily then God may do something that I don’t want Him to do or that He may call me down a hard path. The enemy tells me I should avoid praying, so I can cling to comfortable Christianity.

I hesitated from wanting to engage in this new, deeper step of faith because I know that when God wants to work, Satan will do everything in his power to stop that from happening – to stop us from experiencing God’s power, God’s Presence, God’s miracles, God’s freedom.

Satan almost convinced me that I really didn’t want to deal with his attacks. But deep in my heart, I felt the Holy Spirit’s steady urging. If I listen to Satan and I don’t step out in faith, I may miss something even bigger than my comfort. I may miss the Presence of God Himself. I may miss some of the biggest blessings and moments with God that I could possibly have here on earth. 

Satan tries to scare, but I’m more scared of missing God. God is greater than any attack from Satan. He even gives us His very own Spiritual Armor to use to combat the enemy (Ephesians 6:10-18, Isaiah 59:17). The enemy is so intent on convincing me to run that I know God has big plans to use this experience to change my life and bring glory someway, somehow to His Name and Kingdom. Why else would the enemy bother so much?

If Hawk and I did this, I wanted to take it very seriously and commit to it fully. I asked Hawk if this was something we felt called to do and he replied with “What do we have to lose.”

What do we have to lose? Because in truth, when we embrace that God is the Giver of all Good things – we don’t have anything to lose. Rather, we have everything to gain.

So, Hawk and I made the commitment to pray the prayer of Jabez for the next 30 days. We curled up on our couch in the stillness of the night and prayed. We prayed for God to cleanse our hearts from pride and impurity and for Him to give us clean hearts, compassionate hearts to love Him and others more.

There really isn’t anything that makes me feel closer to Hawk than when we are spiritually intimate with each other. I fell asleep that night comforted and committed to following through with the 30 day experiment and seeing God work.

However, when morning came, uneasiness returned to my mind. I asked God to give me the most passionate obsession for Him.

Because isn’t that the only healthy obsession? Isn’t He the greatest obsession? Isn’t that why He created our hearts with a longing only He can fill? 

My heart warred within me full of “What If” scenarios. Satan plauged my thoughts with nightmares of every bad thing. I want to pray for God to do BIG things in my life, but I also want to control and define what those big things are. 

In that moment I felt a whisper in my wrestled thoughts that stilled my soul.

I’m asking you to pray. I’m asking you to believe Me for big things. When have I ever failed you? Trust Me.

It was a well shot arrow hitting its target in my mind’s raging battlefield.

When has He ever failed me? When?

Not ever. Not even in the hard. Not even in the impossible. Not once.

Only a few seconds passed when a song started playing on the radio. I knew without a doubt it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me and reaffirming His target’s soul whisper.

I’m done fighting

I’m finally letting go

I will trust in You

You’ve never failed before

I will trust in You…
I’m giving You fear and You give faith

I giving you doubt

You give me grace

For every step I’ve never been alone…
I lift my empty hands (come fill me up again)

Have Your way my King (I give my all to You)…

‘Cause You are all I need

Hearing that song revealed the greatness of my God. I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe that particular song magically played by chance. My car was divinely set on that radio station for me to divinely hear that song in that exact second of my need. I’m already seeing answers to this powerful prayer and it humbles me and encourages me to know that we do have such an incrediblely BIG God.

A God who knows exactly where we are and comes to meet us in our mess. A God who tenderly picks us up out of our pit and wipes the smears of mud from our face.

So we can open our eyes and see.

See Him.

And life through the veil of His fingerprints.