The Prayer of Jabez!

Hi Friends! Enjoying your Chinese New Year so far? I'll bet... with all the good food, fun and MONEY! LOL

Well, well... I have so many updates, but I shall start with the trivial ones first...

I ran my fastest ever 10 rounds (personal best) on 7th Feb - 25:33.72, almost 10 secs faster than my previous PB of 25:43.53! Yay!!! I'm back! So many things happened since the time I had a lot of fast times... injury (the left heel), and a couple of long lapses due to lack of discipline... But surely, this time, I am back on track... Now looking forward to breaking these few PBs:

10th Feb - 15 rounds - 40:14.10

14th Feb - 5K - 33:03.73

17th Feb - 10K (SJ RUN) - 69:07.34

22nd Feb - 2-mile - 17:45.63

Next update...

Have you ever eaten a FORTUNE COOKIE? I never did... until like last week, I "happened" to see a box of it lying on the "common" table where shared food is normally placed in my office. So innocently, I took one cookie without much thought...

After I unwrapped it, I could see that it was a weird-shaped cookie, hollow in the middle... As I took one bite into it... I was like... WHAT THE? I tasted something hard, like paper. When realization dawned upon me, I was like... DUH... FORTUNE COOKIES are supposed to contain some message on a piece of paper inside... LOL... Damn jakun-nyer aku...

Ok... so I excitedly took out that piece of paper... and lo and behold... a message that hit right on the spot...

What a nice reminder... heh heh heh... I shall not speculate when I am getting married, because it will be next year, for sure... Thanks for the reminder Lord! (I shall not reveal what my darling thought I said, when I read to her the Chinese version... LOL... only between me and her... but I think it applies too!)

AHHHHHH! The most important update of ALL...

I just finished reading The Prayer of Jabez by Dr Bruce Wilkinson in less than 2 hours... and MAN... it spoke DEEPLY and DIRECTLY to me. So powerful and convincing that I had multiple paradigm shifts!

I wished I had read it earlier, cos it's really something every Christian need to read... even for those back-slidden ones like me...

Only God knows how far away I had fallen... but thank God that He never gave up on me... His grace keeps reaching out to me...

When I first started reading the book, I didn't expect much... I was like... "Oh well, just another self-improvement book"... But as I read on, and on, and on... the facts presented startled me! My God! Real life miracles!

I'm sure most of you have heard of Jabez, whose name in Hebrew means pain. Why did God, among a long list of names in Chronicles, had a special mention of this guy (description). I mean, the rest of the other guys only had their name listed, without any description, but Jabez was the special one... and WHY? God said in 1 Chronicles 4:9 that Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. How did a guy, given a terrible name, mocked and abused throughout life became someone God calls "more honorable" than everyone else during his time?

There was something special about his prayer!

Jabez prayed:

"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."

Most people, even mature Christians would not see anything special about that one-sentence prayer, but God through Dr Wilkinson revealed many truths and amazing messages about how a simple prayer like that caused such a powerful transformation in Jabez's life. It transformed my thinking too!

A few key points that spoke to me:

1. Make it a point to ask God to bless you daily (and bless you A LOT)!

Many Christian believe God to be some kind of auto-blesser kind of thingy... at a pre-determined rate... whether you asked for it or not... LOL Don't worry... I am a culprit too...

"Ask," promised Jesus, "and it will be given to you" (Mat 7:7). "You do not have because you do not ask" (James 4:2). If you didn't ask God for a blessing yesterday, you didn't get all that you were supposed to have. That's the catch. You forfeit your blessings when you didn't ask. Is that why many Christian are not living the ABUNDANT life promised by Jesus (John 10:10)?

This part struck me hard... and from today onwards, I'm going to start a prayer journal. And I'm going to ASK GOD TO BLESS ME EVERY DAY! I don't want to miss out His blessings (daily)!!!

2. "... enlarge my territory..." was something very scary for me...

I mean, I always knew, and my leaders knew, that God had a great plan for me... I was destined to do great and mighty things for Him... but the mere thought of that scares me... I mean... I don't think I am ready to step into any BIG things for God, now... sigh...

But Dr Wilkinson's sharing inspired me...

"Let me encourage you, friend, to reach boldly for the miracle. Your Father knows your gifts, your hindrances, and the condition you're in at every moment. And He also knows something you can't possibly know - every single person who's in desperate need of receiving His touch THROUGH YOU! God will bring you to that person at exactly the right time and in the right circumstances. AND AT THAT MOMENT, YOU WILL RECEIVE POWER TO BE HIS WITNESS!"

Wow... powerful huh? I knew, at that moment, that I shouldn't be afraid to ask God for people I can minister to, for more ministries, more businesses, more abilities, giftings and talents - all related to ENLARGING YOUR TERRITORY.

3. We need God's hand.

This is, simply said, all about dependence on Him. You could ask Him to enlarge your territories, but without His hand, you could lose hope, lose the enthusiasm, cease to experience MIRACLES, and eventually give up on the initial plan. "Larger territories" can be overwhelming many of times... and usually involve you getting out of your comfort zones... This is not in the book, but I think, God's hand could also be the spanking for some Christians to get up and get moving out of their comfort zones... Hello? Anybody there? Too busy living your own lives to bother? Too comfortable to do something different for His kingdom?

4. And of course, we need the protection.

Relating to asking God to enlarge your territory, guess where you are stepping into when you asked for it? The enemy's territory, of course. People who never heard of the Good News. People who had gone astray. People who need a special touch from God.

I agree very strongly with something Dr Wilkinson's mentor said - if you are in the ministry, and everything is going perfectly well, guess what? You are not doing what God wants you to do... Because if you are doing what He wants you to do, do you think the enemy will leave you alone, and let you expand into his territory like nobody's business?

And another thing that struck me was, Jabez did not ask God to give him the anointing, power or what-nots to go head-on and fight the enemy... He simply asked God to keep him AWAY from evil... I think that's so wise... it'll save a lot of heart attacks and frights if you keep coming face-to-face with the enemy daily... Of course, there's nothing to fear, but like what Pastor Vernon shared... we are still human... and normal reaction to fear is often unavoidable. But if you have a choice of a path free of demons, and another one filled with demons, would you rather take the demon-free one, or instead, that the other one and having to ask in God's Name, cast away all the demons? I'd rather ask God to keep me AWAY from evil!

This applies to temptations as well. Keep AWAY from temptations, or asking God for strength when faced with temptations?

Of course, some school of thoughts say, hey, if you keep avoiding meeting the enemy, aren't you becoming a JELLY Christian, and will fall like nobody's business when you eventually meet the enemy one day?

That's true, but let's be honest here... Would YOU ask God to give you more challenges, more troubles, more demons visitations at night... to make you a TOUGHER Christian?

The last thing that hit me on the spot was this statement:

"The only thing that can break the cycle of abundant living is SIN. SIN breaks the flow of God's power."

When I stand before God, I want to be able to stand boldly and proudly give an account to God for all that I had done for Him and not for Him. Of course, He already knows, but the Bible said that ALL of us need to give an account to Him when we get to heaven. Don't you just look forward to hear God telling you "Well done, good and faithful servant"?

Seriously, I BEG you... read this book, if you haven't... apparently, they already have a 5th Edition (ISBN: 9781590524756) to the one I read:

"So God granted him what he requested."