Note: some of the illustrations in this series are not acknowledged - this is due to loss of my notes, and not out of a desire to deny the sources. Thank you!
The Prayer of Jabez #3 –
“…Enlarge My Territory!”
1 Chronicles 4:9-10
(January 13, 2002)
Introduction
Today is our third session looking at the prayer of Jabez. We began two weeks ago by taking an overview of the person and prayer.
We mentioned that Jabez had to overcome his name and his circumstances, becoming a man of noble character.
Last week we looked at the first part of Jabez’s prayer, “Oh that You would bless me.”
I mentioned that to ask for blessing is to ask for nothing more and nothing less than all God has for us. And that the attitude needs to be that our blessings aren’t for us to hoard, they are meant to be used to benefit the body of Christ.
Today we are moving on to the second part of his prayer.
By the way, if you have missed one of the messages, you can obtain a copy of the tape. Just talk to Jim, and he get you one right away. The cost is $2.00, which is basically the cost of the tape plus a little extra to help with upkeep of the machine, etc.
Before we move on, I would like us to look read together the prayer. It is printed in your bulletin.
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, "I gave birth to him in pain." 10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request.
I am excited about this prayer, but I am especially excited about this part of the prayer.
I. Living large for God.
Listen to what Dr. Wilkinson says about this part of the prayer of Jabez:
“From both the context and the results of Jabez’s prayer, we can see that there was more to his request than a simple desire for more real estate. He wanted more influence, more responsibility, and more opportunity to make a mark for the God of Israel.”
The idea here is to have a greater impact. He may allow your business, holdings, exposure, or whatever, to grow, but with the idea of using that growing influence to actually influence people for Christ.
One thing I learned while I was in the business world that if you don’t think big, you will always be small.
My bosses in Brookings were masters at finding new opportunities for growth. They weren’t satisfied with selling office equipment, supplies, and furniture. So they began to look for other opportunities.
They now have the only port-a-potty business in Brookings, and believe me, that’s a lot, when you consider that every construction site is required by OSHA to have a toilet available for every so many workers.
They rent party tents, tables, and chairs. And they buy commercial property and develop it, renting the buildings to tenants willing to pay good money for a good facility.
My point here is that they never thought small. And they have reaped the rewards.
If you start a business and want it to grow, you need to run that business in a fashion that allows for pro-active action geared for growth. Reacting is too late in most cases.
And that is also the case for churches. That’s why we have added signs pointing to the bathrooms and nursery and such. That’s why we are having greeter training in a couple weeks. That’s why we will be putting together a real live nursery schedule, so we will always be prepared when young children come here. That’s why we are constantly looking at ways to make our church more attractive to visitors, and I don’t just mean the looks of the place.
Small churches like ours don’t need to do these kinds of things if they don’t plan to impact people outside of who they are already impacting.
Bigger churches like ours will be need to do these things. And we need to have things in place before they become an issue.
I’m gonna be bragging a bit on your leadership this morning. And the first thing I want to say is that they recognized some of the areas needing improvement before I did. And that is very encouraging.
They are acting proactively rather than reactively. You have good leadership and I hope you are thankful for them.
As individuals we need to think beyond the boundaries we have been living in. If we think that all we can do for God is limited by what we can see in the mirror, than we will be limited in our impact.
There’s a popular term in business – I’m sure you’ve heard it. It says, “Think outside the box.”
It means to try to think beyond what you have always done or thought about something.
For example, Fred Smith who founded Federal Express, saw how packages were being delivered, taking many days and weeks to get to their destinations.
He decided to think up a way for people to get their stuff not in a few days or weeks, but overnight. Anywhere in the world.
The college professor who looked at his idea submitted in a paper thought it was a nice idea, but not very practical, so he gave him a “C” on the paper.
Not very practical, huh?
Tell that to Fred Smith now. He still won’t listen. Fed Ex is a household name.
Fred saw the box of package delivery and said that there had to be a way, outside what everyone had that before.
That’s what I mean when I say we need to live large for God. And coming from a short skinny guy like me, you’ve got to see that I’m serious about this deal!
I kid myself about being like I am in the physical looks dept. I’m not as good-looking as Franklin Graham or Michael W. Smith, and that’s okay with me (most of the time).
I could let that get in my way, but fortunately, I don’t work for a modeling agency, I work for God Almighty, and He is able to work not just around my shortcomings, He can work in and through them. We will talk about that more in our next section.
But what I want to focus on here is that with God, we can think outside the box of tradition and the box of our past histories.
Let’s not get into the trap that says, “That will never work.”
Isaiah 55:11 says that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
I’m asking God to give me a little bit of insight into what His thoughts are for Aberdeen and the surrounding area.
And He reminded me of a verse that I memorized back in college because those of us in the leadership team for the Navigators were required to memorize it.
It’s Isaiah 54:2-3, and here’s what it says.
"Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.
God was telling Israel to get ready to get back in the game, because even though they would go to exile, they would return once again to possess the land.
We used that as a promise that God would allow our ministry and impact to expand at SDSU. And wouldn’t you know it, we were able to lead a good number of people to Christ and establish them in fruitful walks with God.
Because He was able to work with people willing to think that He could do it if we were willing to be involved.
I think that God wants us to think outside the box of this sanctuary, outside the box of our small, but growing numbers, outside the box of our flaws and shortcomings.
And we should do this not just as a group, but individually, asking God to help us to think beyond our weaknesses so we can individually have a bigger impact for Him.
But the key to doing that is understanding how God works in us to expand our territory, both individually and as a church. And to help us get the idea, I want to move on to the next section,…
II. God’s Math.
One of the reasons it is hard, many times, to get excited about new opportunities is because we have erroneous thinking. We have the formula wrong.
Let me show you two formulas that Dr. Wilkinson offers in his book. Now you’re going to have to pay close attention here, okay? Here’s the first one:
A. My abilities + experience + training + my personality and appearance + my past + the expectations of others = my assigned territory.
Got that? Now, I want you to take your pen or pencil, and draw a circle around that formula. Done that? Now put a big slash in that circle.
Get the idea? That’s the wrong formula. Unfortunately, that’s the one we are most familiar with, so that’s the one we use. But let’s look at the second formula:
B. My willingness and weakness + God’s will and supernatural power = my expanding territory.
Huh? My weakness figures in there? Now that’s something new! I would have never thought that my weaknesses would be beneficial for anything.
Folks, that’s thinking outside the box!
It makes no sense, especially in business, to factor in our weaknesses as being something that can be good. But God is in the business of using weakness for His glory.
If you don’t believe me, check out 1 Corinthians 1 some time. It’s a great portion of Scripture.
“When you start asking in earnest- even begging- for more influence and responsibility with which to honor Him, God will bring opportunities and people into your path.
You can trust Him that He will never send someone to you whom you cannot help by His leading and strength.
You’ll nearly always feel fear when you being to take new territory for Him, but you’ll also experience the tremendous thrill of God carrying you along as you’re do it.”
Keeping in mind that we need to live large for God, and that we need to rely on God to use us imperfect humans as He builds His kingdom, what is my…
III. Vision for Aberdeen Wesleyan Church
Obviously we don’t need for God to expand our territory in the sense of more land. We have plenty of that for the time being.
In the future, as we look at where God might have us plant other works, we may need to ask Him for that.
Remember back in the first point of this message when I said that if you don’t think big, you will always be small?
Guess what I think about this church?
I think we need to move beyond the borders we have been working with until now.
If I remember right, you began worshiping in this building in May 1992. Is that right, Doug?
If that’s right, than this may marks 10 years in this building.
How many of you have started coming to this church since that time?
A good portion of you are relatively new, compared to Doug Harms, whose been part of this church since Jesus was in pre-school.
Here’s my point. Of those who have come since this building was built, how many know that the building we are in is actually part 1 of a 2-part building project?
Part 2 is a 300-seat sanctuary, with more classroom space, a choir loft, and a baptistery.
In fact, you can’t see it from the back, but I’ve brought up the plans to show you. I will leave these up here after the service.
What’s my point? My point is simply this. When these plans were drawn up, they were a reflection of the vision of your leadership, most of which is still working with me on the board, and I couldn’t be more glad.
Your leaders had vision. And I’m here to tell you they still do. I love our board meetings, because I see the heart of these guys who are hungry to know and love God more, and to reach the lost for Christ.
I believe these plans could be a reality, and sooner than we think. And maybe even bigger than we think. Maybe this will be a 500-seat sanctuary rather than 300.
Would that be okay?
Remember last week that I mentioned that our District leadership has a vision to reach 10 percent of the midwest for Christ, which would mean approx. 3500 people.
I want to mention a couple benefits from reaching that goal.
The first is that I think certain business establishments would lose enough business to cause them to close. I don’t need to be specific, but you can probably guess what they are.
And here’s another great thing about reaching many people for Christ. Our church will be a sending point for laborers taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Now that trips my trigger, folks!
We can have many people following Christ here, and serving Him all over the world.
How does that happen? By adding our weakness to God’s power, and letting Him use us.
In doing that, we need to focus on a couple things. The first is the need to...
A. Strengthen and nourish the Body.
Jim, I’m going to brag on you a bit.
Jim is our church treasurer, and he’s doing a mighty fine job. On top of keeping track of the church funds, he is heading up a committee along with a couple others to come up with a real live operating budget for the church.
That’s not an easy task.
But as we were talking during our board meeting about some outreach ideas for Easter, Jim got to thinking. Now Wendy tells me that that can be a dangerous thing, but Jim was doing it anyhow.
And following the meeting, he approached me and told me of his concern that in our efforts to reach new people, we might forget those who are part of our family but can’t be as involved as they once were.
I hate to admit it, but he was right on the mark. We need to continue to develop a healthy fellowship. I need help with that, because things like visitation and such are hard for me, particularly with my schedule, and they can get totally neglected if I am not careful.
We need to make sure that our education program is high quality, so that our young’uns and older’uns can be grounded in the Word through Sunday School and Wed. night activities and such.
I think we need to expand our Adult Sunday School offerings. Our current adult class is beginning to outgrow the room they’re in, so we need to look at possibly starting another class.
Just last week a fella came up to me asking about starting a Friday morning group. I told him that was no problem as long as the coffee was strong and the donuts were fresh. Actually, I’m joking about the donuts.
So we do need to strengthen and nourish the body.
But we also need to…
B. Reach out to others.
Folks, I operate under two working premises:
The first is that everyone in our area already has access to the gospel. Many churches in the Aberdeen area preach the life-changing message that you can go to heaven by calling on Christ for forgiveness and eternal life.
The second is that although the gospel is available, we still need to take it to people, because many will refuse to go looking for it, or don’t recognize it. We take it to people as a church and as individuals.
In other words, we need to be active in ensuring that people hear the news.
Romans 10:14-15
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
You see, folks? We need to take it to them. We cannot expect them to just walk in the front door hoping to hear the preacher tell them how to get to heaven.
That will happen, I’m sure, but not nearly enough to abandon the rest to the false hope that they will figure it out on their own, because I’m here to tell you, folks, they won’t figure it out on their own.
Because they are dense and stupid? No, because it takes the Spirit of God using the Word of God in the hands of the people of God to reach the lost.
That’s what I envision for this church. The building will come as the need grows, as we see people coming to Christ for salvation, then being established in their walk with Him, so they can be equipped for service in His kingdom.
You remember the famous line from Field of Dreams, that “If you build it, they will come.” Well, I don’t think that’s necessarily the way it goes with church buildings.
It’s my opinion that if they come, then we’ll build it. The building isn’t the issue. The building will only become a necessity as we reach people to fill it, amen?
So let’s get with God’s program. What is God’s program?
It’s outlined in Matthew 28:19–20.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
That’s His program – the making of many disciples of Christ, and as I have said many times before, He has given the job to us, promising us that He would always be with us in our efforts.
How can we be sure of success? Because we are praying for success in reaching these souls for Him, and 1 John 5 says that when we pray according to His will, He hears and grants the request.
2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not willing that any should perish, but come to repentance.
We move in accordance with the known will of God, and we can be sure that God will be with us and grant us a harvest, for His glory.
Conclusion
We need to wrap this up, so let me just encourage you to do one thing over this next week.
Take this prayer, and pray it. Pray it every day. Not as a mindless mantra, remember. But rather as a reminder that God wants to act your behalf and on behalf of this church.
And while you are praying, ask God specifically to help you “think outside the box,” to see what is possible with the mighty hand of God moving as only He can.
My guess is that if you make a habit of that kind of prayer, you will see God do things you never thought possible before.
Invitation
Before Lowell comes to lead us in our closing chorus, I want to take just a moment to invite any here today who haven’t taken hold of God’s offer of eternal life to do so this morning.
(Gospel presentation)
