The Prayer of Jabez Audio

Rating:
Summary: It could have been much better.
Review: Mr. Wilkinson does a great job at explaining how sometimes Satan can decieve us by mixing up the lies with the truth so that we don't notice them. Unfortunately, his book is very much like that.

I read it because I noticed it was "cult like" to many people. Initially heard it was very much "name it claim it" or "blab it grab it" prosperty gospel by some... others told me it wasn't like that at all, so I wanted to see for myself what this book said. It took me an hour - it's a small book and it's only based on two verses (That's a lot to make out of two verses), and although there were plenty of "truth" in it and may good points, there was many things wrong with this book.

I'll start with the very small things I noted that were wrong with it...
I had a few minor problems with it, such as the fact that he says a lot of things without clearing up what he means so that there isn't room for misunderstanding. It doesn't go as over the edge as I heard people say it was, but he does leave room for people to assume the wrong thing. His stories are very dramatic. I don't think I necissarily agree with some of the things he says such as "asking for Gods blessing is our ultimate act of worship"

I find a lot of the things he says can be taken the wrong way. But that was just minor. Two other minor problems I had. One was that at one point he says "when you take small steps you don't need God" I think he probably meant "when you take small steps it's easier to do it without asking the Lord for help or depending on him" but there isn't any time in our lives where we don't need God. Big or small things, we need him.

The other thing he said that bothered me was that at one point he explains how Jabez says one part of the prayer first and the next part after the first and acts like he waited and went through the first part before he wrote the next part. Unless he can prove it there was time that went by and this prayer was made in two different parts, my understaning is that the author is wrong. He needs to prove where he gets that from because the verses makes it seem that it was all said at once.

All that stuff is pretty minor to me.

MY MAJOR issue with this book was that he starts off saying that contrary to the prosperity gospel, the jabez prayer is one where Jabez doesn't get specific like "I want a Cadilac" etc.. but leaves room for God to bless Him however God wants to bless him. That made me go *WHEW* and put down my defenses, for a little while, however he goes on (the author) to give all kinds of examples of prayers that are VERY SPECIFIC in asking God for what we want- rather then letting God decide how to do it, under the name of "the jabez prayer". So I found it sad that although he starts off with the right way to go about it, he goes on with all these bad examples on how to pray it that go against not being specific on how God should bless you. It starts sounding very "prosperity gospel" and "name it claim it" after a while.

I thought it was a shame, because although he does a great job at times explaining how to apply these, and has me going "AMEN" at many points, at others, I was rolling my eyes, or just sad at what I was seeing. It ended on one of those notes as he goes on with how he has prayed this prayer for over 10 years every day and tells us all to pray this for the next 30 days of your life and watch the changes happen. I don't know how anyone else feels about that, but I find it silly since Jabez only seemed to have prayed it once from what we read! I also find it silly because Jesus told us a prayer for how we should pray, and to Mr.Wilkinson this prayer of Jabez has been "the main prayer".