What ever happened to Dr. Bruce Wilkinson’s book The Prayer of Jabez?
Back in the day it enjoyed great success. The book hit the top of most bestseller lists and leaders in churches around our nation and in our nation’s capitol acknowledged it. It would be difficult to dismiss the impact this book had on thousands of individuals and it would be foolish if ignored. The book was motivational and many claimed is got people to pray.
I wrote this critique back in 2000, originally as a response to Dr. Wilkinson’s book. I wrote it in the midst of the hype and hope of the book. I wrote it because I not 0nly struggled with its problematic suppositions, but also with the hyper-crazy response from the public and the church. I am only a layman and the following was simply one man’s observation. -TK
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You may wish to first read Dr. Wilkinson’s book for yourself before reading this paper. The Prayer of Jabez is small and is less than one hundred pages. It is easy to read and contains all of Dr. Wilkinson’s ideas and insights that this paper can only extract by quotes.
The Prayer of Jabez is one piece in a collection of books Dr. Wilkinson has created called, The Breakthrough Series. He wrote this particular book with a design to help the reader in what he calls, “Breaking Through to the Blessed Life.” It is obvious that Dr. Wilkinson had good intentions for writing the book. However, this book has some questionable scholarship and appears to lack true biblical support. Dr. Wilkinson begins with a premise that God wants to hear repetitious prayers and will always answer one type of prayer in particular. He uses large amounts of speculation to uphold this premise. When expositing two verses in the Bible, Dr. Wilkinson reconstructs the passage to form a new meaning. He also participates in an all too common practice that trivializes the word of God. His little book does not even mention anything of God’s sovereign character and what man’s position is, as related to Him. This critique of Dr. Wilkinson’s book addresses all those concerns.
Good Intentions
Dr. Wilkinson is right when he talks of praying to the God of Israel, the God of the Bible. He also understands that God answers prayers in a real and often tangible way. He is excited about the way God actively partakes of our prayers and our lives.
God is not some distant entity to Dr. Wilkinson. God works in the lives of His people and prayer is the means of that communication (Philippians 1:3-6). Scripture does direct us to talk with God.
This is right.
Jabez’s Prayer in 1Chronicles 4 contains a genealogy of people’s names, it is not uncommon to find such lists in scripture. When one arrives at 1 Chronicles 4: 9,10 it is easy to see something that is unique. The short passage briefly mentions a man named Jabez and a prayer he once uttered. God saw fit for people to know about Jabez. He wanted to expose more about him than just a name. God was pleased to see a brief snip of Jabez’s biography grace the pages of His Word. Not only that, God wanted us to read and know the prayer that Jabez offered.
Is it wrong to pray the prayer that Jabez offered to God? Absolutely not! “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16). However, one should not presume that this prayer of Jabez’s holds a magic key or is the end all of all prayers.
The Premise
When reading the book, The Prayer of Jabez it is essential to understand Dr. Wilkinson’s premise. He believes in a repetitious style of prayer that he claims God will unequivocally answer. The “Jabez prayer” as he calls it becomes a formula in which to style daily prayer after. According to Dr. Wilkinson, saying this prayer enables the person praying to have some special access to get blessings from God.
In the preface of the book, Dr. Bruce Wilkinson gives this promise:
“Dear Reader,
I want to teach you a daring prayer that God always answers.” (p. 7)
That is a pretty bold statement; especially since nowhere in 1Chronicles four does God make that promise.
Dr. Wilkinson claims in his book that repeating the prayer of Jabez is something he has done for many, many years.
“The next morning, I prayed Jabez’s prayer word for word.
And the next.
And the next.
Thirty years later. I haven’t stopped.” (p. 11)
He wants all believers to follow this mantra-type method in their prayers, even though Scripture does not call for this action. “Pray the Jabez prayer every morning…” (p. 86).
He claims that this repetition, or cycle, will give you more blessings from God. “As you repeat the steps, you will set in motion a cycle of blessing that will keep multiplying what God is able to do in and through you.” (p. 83). This multiplication is also referred to as exponential growth. “With the fourth plea of Jabez as part of our life, we are now ready to move up to a higher level of honor and exponentially expanding blessings.” (p.75). He ends that particular passage referring to God’s kingdom as an investment with remarkable growth (p.75). Dr. Wilkinson also believes that this prayer, “distills God’s powerful will for your future.” (p.12). Does this prayer of Jabez have some sort of special power to unleash God’s blessings?
Dr. Wilkinson is on very dangerous ground. He wants believers to pray repetitiously, everyday; one prayer that scripture does not treat as that type of prayer, simply because he believes it will somehow extract God’s blessings.
Some Speculation
Throughout the book, The Prayer of Jabez, Dr. Wilkinson adds an enormous amount of speculation to the relatively few words found in 1Chronicles 4:9,10. He even adds fictional accounts and history to the life of Jabez that the scriptures do not include.
“Despite his dismal prospects, Jabez found a way out. He had grown up hearing about the God of Israel who had freed his forefathers from slavery…By the time Jabez was an adult, Jabez believed and fervently hoped in this God of miracles and new beginnings.” (p. 21,22)
The passages from 1Chronicles have no such information. Mr. Wilkinson fabricates this “history” of Jabez. He continues the fiction.
“…I picture Jabez standing before a massive gate recessed into a sky-high wall. Weighted down by the sorrow of his past and the dreariness of his present, he sees before him only impossibility—a future shut off. But raising his hands to heaven, he cries out, ‘Father, oh Father! Please bless me! And what I mean is … bless me a lot!’” (p. 22)
Based on this fiction from his own opinion Mr. Wilkinson then draws a conclusion based on his imagination.
“With the last word, the transformation begins. He [Jabez] hears a tremendous crack. Then a groan. Then a rumble as the huge gate swings away from him in a wide arc. There, stretching to the horizon, are fields of blessings.
And Jabez steps forward into another life.” (p. 23)
As the reader embarks on this risky train of thought with Dr. Wilkinson it is often easy to overlook his guesswork as to what certain passages of scripture are to be interpreted. In Chapter three, we are told what a specific part of Jabez’s prayer means with no scriptural references whatsoever. “The next part of the Jabez prayer--- a plea for more territory--- is where you ask God to enlarge your life so you can make a greater impact for Him.” (p. 30). This sounds nice, but does scripture support this equivocation? If it does, Dr. Wilkinson does not note it anywhere in the book. He simply states, “From both the context and the results of Jabez’s prayer, [that God granted his request] we can see that there was more to his request than a simple desire for more real estate.” (p. 30). It is amazing that he can draw such a conclusion. Dr. Wilkinson then purports to read Jabez’s mind, “He [Jabez] wanted more influence, more responsibility, and more opportunity to make a mark for the God of Israel.”(p.30). The passage does not support any of this.
Later in the book, Dr. Wilkinson asks the reader to imagine Jabez as a wife and a mother (page 32) and then constructs prayers that might have been said by that type of person.
One could come away from this book with the idea that Dr. Wilkinson actually knew Jabez, “Jabez, by contrast, was so certain that God’s hand upon him was necessary for blessing that he couldn’t imagine a life of honor without it.” (p. 54)
Does Dr. Wilkinson have Jabez’s diary?
In chapter five, “Keeping the Legacy Safe,” Dr. Wilkinson brings up various topics one might deal with, like weakness of our wisdom, slipping into sin and our misleading feelings. He then gives these instructions,
• “That’s why, like Jabez, we should pray for protection from deception.” (p. 69).
• Again, on page 70 we receive this instruction, “Like Jabez, then, we should ask to be spared dangerous misjudgments.”
• This type of instruction continues, “Like Jabez, we should plead to be kept from the powerful pull of what feels right to us, but is wrong.” (p. 70).
After each of these particular instructions, Dr. Wilkinson generates a particular prayer that would fit each situation, as if Jabez, himself, prayed that prayer. Nowhere, in the few verses that even briefly mention Jabez, are any of these topics encountered.
There are even whole sections where he imposes his thoughts upon Jabez. “ I think Jabez would have liked that prayer. He wanted to live free from the bondage of evil because God’s trustworthy character and steadfast Word had showed him something imaginably better.”(p. 74). It is amazing the liberty Dr. Wilkinson has already taken, but he continues in a similar manner, this time giving Jabez a voice in words:
“Stay out of the arena of temptation whenever possible,” he [Jabez] would advise, “but never live in fear or defeat. By God’s power, you can keep your legacy of blessing safe.” (p. 74)
When one takes the privilege to construct and fabricate a person’s whole life down to the thoughts and words they would say with no proof or background we should not sit back and accept it. Caution is called for when people use their own ideas to prove their own ideas. Dr. Wilkinson claims to have gotten these things from scripture, but the Bible is silent on all of Jabez’s youth and thoughts. Two verses cannot be stretched to create all that Dr. Wilkinson would have the reader believe.
A Little Reconstructing
In chapters, six and seven, Dr. Wilkinson takes some great liberty to rearrange two particular phrases from the verses found in 1Chronicles 4:9-10, to suit his needs and favor his conclusions.
As each chapter begins, a small portion of each verse from 1Chronicles 4:9,10 is quoted. For example: Chapter 1 begins with “Jabez called on the God of Israel”(p.9), Chapter 2 begins with “Oh, that you would bless me indeed!” (p. 18). Each is in sequential order and adds one to another as the reader arrives at each chapter.
In a most precarious move, Dr. Wilkinson, in chapter six, quotes the first passage of verse 9 as if it occurred at the end of the prayer. Chapter 7 begins with the last phrase from verse 10, reconstructing the passage to read this way:
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. So, God granted him what he requested.
It is easy to see that juxtaposing the two phrases in this manner changes the meaning of the whole passage.
The Chronicles passage simply states in 4:9, “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.” This passage occurs before Jabez’s prayer and is not connected to the prayer, except that it is about Jabez. According to the passage, Jabez’s honor from God does not have anything to do with his prayer. Jabez was more honorable because God in his sovereign decision just made it so. It is similar to Genesis 4: 4,5 “…The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.” God decides what He will. Another passage along similar lines is where Paul points out in Romans 9, that before either of the twins had done anything good or bad, God loved Jacob but hated Esau, so that His purposes would be fulfilled.
Dr. Wilkinson proceeds with his newly constructed phrase and asserts that a person earns God’s love through special prayers.
But, Jabez whose prayer earned him a “more honorable” award from God, might have made the case that God does have favorites. His experience taught him that equal access to God’s favor does not add up to equal reward. (p. 76)
Essentially, he dismantles the passage in 1Chronicles 4:9,10, and reorganizes it to fit his specific agenda; moreover, he adds a little of his own speculative ideas (i.e. “his [Jabez’s] experience taught him”) to get his point across.
Reorganizing 1Chronicles 4:9,10, in this way makes it seem as if Jabez was granted his request because he prayed a particular prayer that made him more honorable. Once again, it must be stated that these two sections are not next to each other in the scripture passage and it is impossible to read the passage this way. Dr. Wilkinson moves them around to fulfill his premise. This type of scholarship needs to end. It is a dangerous practice to rearrange scripture as Dr. Wilkinson freely does in this book.
Bumper Sticker Scripture
The trivializing of God’s word into cute quotes and phrases is another drawback with Dr. Wilkinson’s book. God’s word is to be respected above all other written words, yet a common practice, it seems, among evangelicals, is to trivialize God’s word, making it fit for nothing more that a bumper sticker or a T-shirt. He spends time relating a story of how he challenged some college students to pray the Jabez prayer,
“Over the next weeks and months, a vision for more territory swept the campus. By fall, a student team…had mounted a major mission project…They called it Operation Jabez.” (P.35 emphasis added)
He then creates another quipy term. He writes about strangers approaching and talking to him.
“People will show up on your doorstep or the table next to you…They will ask for something—they’re not sure what—and wait for your reply. I call these encounters Jabez appointments.” (p. 36,37 emphasis added)
Again, he is telling the story of a woman who sat next to him on a plane, a “Jabez appointment,” and then says this:
“As I look back over this divine appointment, I can see the footprints of Jabez and his little prayer.” (p. 82 emphasis added)
What is the meaning of these phrases: Operation Jabez, Jabez Appointments, and Footprints of Jabez? If they sound corny and contrived, they are. How do these relate to the scripture passage that he claims to be expounding upon? Are we to consider God’s word cute and cuddly so that we make up little phrases like these? It is an extraneous exercise and does not add to anyone’s understanding or application of the passage. It is distressing to see Dr. Wilkinson participating in such weak and juvenile practices.
What’s Missing?
A few things are desperately absent from Dr. Wilkinson’s book on prayer. Topics like repentance and God’s sovereignty are absent. Psalm 2:11 instructs us to “Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.” None of these topics achieves mention in any recognizable way in Dr. Wilkinson’s book. They do not seem to be essential for understanding God’s character and man’s position under a holy God in prayer.
According to Dr. Wilkinson’s introduction to the reader, he asserts that God’s blessing will flow absolutely if we pray this simple, formulaic prayer. He does not credit God with any power to determine to whom the blessings go. Any man, woman or child that prays this prayer consistently will receive God’s blessings. It is a done deal. Is the reader to believe that a holy and just God is to be coerced and manipulated into giving him blessings because he uses a word formula? The God of the Bible is bigger than that.
What about the state of man’s own heart? Is he to repent? Is he to bow before God, obey His commands, and show Him honor or is he to just ask for things, as the prayer states? Bruce Wilkinson makes these statements on page 82: “I asked for and expected God’s blessing…”, “I pleaded for more ‘territory’ (more ministry and influence for Him)…”, “I leaned…upon the Holy Spirit…”, “I asked God to keep evil…from spoiling the blessing...” The silence on those few questions speaks volumes, while the repetition of “I” also reveals much.
Look at an example from Luke 18: 10-14. Jesus speaking says:
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers and adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted. (emphasis added)
Dr. Wilkinson turns Jabez’s prayer into a prayer that sounds rather selfish, and compared to the prayer the Lord Jesus gave to us in the Gospels, it is. In Mathew 6: 9-13, Jesus tells us how to pray. The prayer reads with such gracious poetry, attributing to our God the highest office, “Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name…” It acknowledges His power “…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Then we supplicate God with, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We recognize that we are under His authority and are sinful, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgotten our debtors.” Finally, we look for delivery and protection from evil, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
We are to fear God, not take Him lightly.
Concluding Remarks
1Chronicles 4:9,10 is an interesting section of God’s word, which is worthy of the time and effort it takes to study it, and understand what it means. To approach it in the way Dr. Wilkinson does, however, is an unsafe practice. Some people think an expository work on a piece of scripture does not have to be completely correct theologically for it to have certain benefits. Is asking God to bless you and prosper you a valid truth of scripture? It might be, but Dr. Wilkinson does not and cannot prove it with his exposition of 1Chronicles 4:9,10. Dr. Wilkinson is in error when he equivocates between Jabez asking God to increase his territory and our asking for more ministry and influence. He gives no Biblical proof that the connection even exists. His revision of the passage and flippant attitude toward it should be a warning sign to believers. The challenges that the book must overcome to prove its point, compounded by what the book lacks in its view of God and man, leave the reader in the shallow end of scripture, with little motive to go deeper.
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