Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him Jabez saying, "Because I bore him with pain."When I was in college, a small book called The Prayer of Jabez came out. It was all the rage, a bestseller, etc. I heard about this prayer everywhere I went, and got rather sick of it. As I found more mature teachers to learn from, I also heard how dangerous this prayer was, in that it had been linked to the prosperity gospel school of thought. I therefore came to greatly distrust this prayer.
This is the first time in years that I've read this passage, and I find myself focusing on this verse, which introduces Jabez, rather than the prayer in the next verse. I look at this verse because it shows something very important about the person behind the prayer. Right off the bat, it says that Jabez was honorable, more than any of his family. There was something different about Jabez from the beginning, which made him more suited to the rewards God would later grant him. I believe that this is the key to the prayer: we must be suited to be honored by God before He might reward us, no matter what we ask for or how we ask for it.
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