Volume Six, Issue Five
5/01

Dear All,

Greetings from Hawaii!

FEATURE ARTICLE

Well, really not a very long article, but hopefully a humorous reminder of the dangers of yanking things out of their context in Scripture.  I wrote the following article not as a review of the Prayer of Jabez book, since we have many good reviews on our site on the Other Articles page, but rather to offer a number of tongue in cheek prayers you can pray to get God to do what you want Him to do.  Don't get me wrong.  It's a good thing to petition the Lord for souls, for boldness in preaching the gospel, for protection from evil.  But we must always remember that we as believers are subject to God's Kingdom plans. We don't run the show. We don't throw up prayers telling God to bless us as we go, nor do we think we can speak certain words that will propel God into action on our behalf.  In the Lord's Prayer, which is meant to be a pattern and not necessarily repeated verbatim, we are told to pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done".  Everything we pray must acknowledge that God is in control and it's up to Him whether to "expand our borders" or to let us be imprisoned, tortured and suffer death.  How foolish it is to assume that you can drag the personal prayer of a Jew in the Old Testament into the 21st century, repeat it daily word for word, and get God to rain down only blessings on you.  The popularity of the book "The Prayer of Jabez" is a symptom of our modern affluent times and, frankly, the desire to remake God in our own image.

In His hands,
Sandy Simpson, missionary

More Magical "Jabez" Type Prayers
A Prayer For Every Occasion And For Everything You Want
by Sandy Simpson, 5/7/01

My current response to people who come up to me and say that they got everything they wanted by praying the prayer of Jabez every day, word for word, is this: "Maybe you ought to try the Rosary next.  It has also shown great success! While you're at it, why not offer up a whole platter of pragmatic magical prayers that will force God to act in the same way He acted when He answered before? After all, we simply need the right formulas, the right intonations, the politically correct verbiage to get God to answer."  In that vein, let me offer you some other alternatives to the Jabez prayer.

To get the desired reaction out of God you must remember to vainly repeat the same prayer, word for word, daily or even hourly.  God will not be forced to react to your prayer if you don't follow it exactly.  Here are just a few of the guaranteed formula prayers you can pray to pull God's chain:

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Abraham's Chief Servant:
Prayer Location: Genesis 24:12
Purpose: To get God to give you a marriage partner. Works for both guys or girls.
Pray This: O LORD, God of my master Abraham (your name here), give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham (your name here).  See, I am standing beside this spring (or wherever you are standing), and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water (or whatever they are doing). May it be that when I say to a girl, `Please let down your jar that I may have a drink, (or any other leading question)' and she says, `Drink, and I'll water your camels too' ( or any other answer fleece you wish to use) -- let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac (your name here). By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master (your name here).

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Manoah
Prayer Location: Judges 13:8
Purpose: To get God to bring your favorite teachers back to your church.
Pray This: "O Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born (may substitute any subject you want taught)."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Samson
Prayer Location: Judges 16:28
Purpose: To get God to give you big muscles and revenge.
Pray This: "O Sovereign LORD, remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines (or whomever you are angry at) for my two eyes (or whatever they did to you) ."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of David
Prayer Location: 2 Samuel 15:31
Purpose: To get God to mess with people's minds.
Pray This:  "O LORD, turn Ahithophel's (or whoever you want to mess with) counsel into foolishness."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Elijah #1
Prayer Location: 1 Kings 18:36-37
Purpose: To get God to send fire from heaven. (Kids, don't try this at home!)
Pray This:  "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel (or wherever you are) and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Elijah #2
Prayer Location: 1 Kings 19:4
Purpose: To get God to show Himself. (This may seem like a roundabout way of making God show Himself, but it worked for Elijah!)
Pray This:  "I have had enough, LORD ... Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Elisha #1
Prayer Location: 2 Kings 6:17
Purpose: To get God to let you actually see angels.
Pray This:  "O LORD, open his (substitute your name here) eyes so that he (substitute your name here) may see."

Pray This:  "Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Elisha #2
Prayer Location: 2 Kings 6:18
Purpose: To get God to cause someone you don't like to be blind.
Pray This:  "Strike these people (substitute someone you don't like) with blindness."

Prayer Name: The Prayer Of Nehemiah
Prayer Location: Nehemiah 6:9
Purpose: To get God to make your hands strong. (This one can get a little repetitive, but then if you like these pragmatic magical prayers that shouldn't be a problem for you.  It can also put you into a nice altered state at the same time.)
Pray This:  "Now strengthen my hands."

If you have other needs I'm sure you can find a magic bullet prayer in God's Word for almost any occasion.  After all, that's what the Bible is for, isn't it?

Can you see how ridiculous the prayer of Jabez is today when it is yanked from its proper context?  I hope so!