What is The Prayer of Jabez about?
Wilkinson’s book opens like this: “The little book you’re holding is about what happens when ordinary Christians decide to reach for an extraordinary life — which, as it turns out, is exactly the kind God promises.” He proceeds to tell us how he discovered the Jabez prayer. He has prayed it word-for-word everyday for the past thirty years. He says his own experience and that “of hundreds of others around the world” has shown that God has “unclaimed blessings” waiting for each of us, if only we will pray this prayer. Jabez’s prayer is found about midway through the lengthy genealogies that open First Chronicles. Sometimes the Chronicler comments about someone he has named. With Jabez, he says: 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
