T.I.G.E.R.

March 2, 2003

5 PRAYERS:
Bless Me!

“Have you seen this little book? It’s all the rage!” 10 million copies have been sold of a little book that in the beginning was never intended to be what it became. What book am I speaking of? It is The Prayer of Jabez.

Read 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 and 1 Kings 5,7-10.

Ask:

• What outrageous question did God ask Solomon?
• What would you ask for if God said that to you?
• Let's all look up Matthew 7:7. How literally do you take this?
• What did Solomon ask for? Why did that make God happy?
• What four things did Jabez ask for?
• Is it good, or is it sorta selfish to pray, "Lord bless me"?
• Anyone read the book Prayer of Jabez? What did you get out of that book?
• Is praying, "enlarge my territory" tantamount to praying, "give me a raise"?
• Is it a good thing to pray, "Lord, give me a raise"?
• How do you think God feels about giving us more stuff?

1. The Prayer of Jabez: Notice that at the end of the this prayer it says, “And God granted his request.” If prayer for blessing is wrong, then God would not have granted the request.

2. It puts us in the right position. It puts us in the position of the needy. We are the needy; He is the Supplier. We are the helped; He is the Helper. We are the sail; He is the Wind. We are the cup; He is the Pitcher.

Can you think of any more metaphors that help you to understand the idea of us being the needy and God being the Supplier?

3. It allows God to decide how the blessing will take place.

Illustration:
Joni Erickson Tada tells of when she had her accident that left her paralyzed. She enjoyed friends of hers reading stories from the Bible. Her favorite was the story of Jesus healing the man who had been ill for 38 years by the pool of Bethesda. Joni would picture herself lying on a straw mat by that pool. For hours on end she pleaded with God for a miraculous healing. It seemed in those days that God did not reward her with a response to her prayers.

Thirty years later, however, she received a revelation of sorts on a trip to Jerusalem. When she arrived, the first place she wanted to see was the Pool of Bethesda. She hurried as fast as she could in her wheelchair, and when she arrived, she leaned over the railing and stared at the now dry and dusty pool. Her mind flashed back to those long hours when she imagined herself lying on that straw mat waiting to be miraculously healed.

Then, like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, she realized that God had not given her the response to her prayer that she always imagined. He had given her a far better one. Overwhelmed by emotion, she began to thank God for NOT healing her. She thanked God for teaching her that her wheelchair had become a tool for Him. She prayed, O wheelchair, I bless you.” She prayed this because she realized her wheelchair had helped teach her to pray.

We don’t define how the blessing will come. Have you ever had a time when something did not seem like a blessing at first, but you came to see it that way later?

4. It gives God joy to bless us. Its Christmas time with God all the time. As parents, imagine you had only enough money to either give your kids presents or buy one for yourself. What would you do?

Remember the words of Jesus himself when He said, “It is more blessed to give than receive” (Acts 20:35). I am sure that Jesus and His Father would follow their own advice. It gives Him great joy to give his children blessings.

5. It glorifies God. One of our main purposes in life is to bring glory to God. When he supplies, He gets the glory.

6. We need it. Read Psalm 23:1 and Revelation 3:15-17. Is it a good thing to pray, “I don’t need a thing.”?

7. It is not all we pray. If all you are praying is, “Lord bless me,” I would say your prayer life is a little shallow. In the coming weeks we will discuss other prayers that will fill out and help secure a healthy prayer life.

Read:

The nation was war-torn and weary in the midst of the Civil War, and victory in the long struggle was anything but certain when the President received a resolution asking him to declare a national day of prayer. Here is part of his response:

"We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us," he wrote. "And have vainly imagined that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

With those words, President Abraham Lincoln called on all Americans to turn to God in prayer for a quick outcome to the Civil War.

Source: Excerpt from The Presidential Prayer Team Web Site, 9 February 2003, www.presidentialprayerteam.org.

Ask:

• Have we become too proud to pray for blessings?

• Is our prayer for blessing for the wrong motive, such as greed?

• What do you need from God in order to perform the duties that God has assigned to you?

Passage

The teacher should expose the passage to the class and explain through discussion the content.

Principle

The teacher must take the principle, the main idea of the passage, and expand upon it from other related passages in the Bible so that the class become convinced it is biblical.

Personalize

During this step, the teacher focuses on applying the passage and principle in such a way as to touch the student's emotion so he becomes convicted by the Holy Spirit of his need to obey.

Persuade

The teacher now must move to persuading the student toward commitment through exhortation.

First Baptist Church
1400 State Hwy 214
PO Box 299
Plains, TX 79355

P: 806-456-3661
F: 806-456-2245