Rating: 
Summary: Simple, Accurate, Powerful
Review: The Prayer of Jabez is unique in three ways. First, it is simply taken from what the Bible says, and the author does an excellent job of showing how the Bible relates to life today. Second, the author accurately portrays what the Bible says historically regarding a man's attitude towards life and God, and thirdly he shows how praying specifically is powerful for changing lives. Dr. Wilkinson does not provide a magic formula, rather he provides principles anyone can adapt to his or her life. I loved this book, and I think I've found a keeper.
Rating: 
Summary: A Refreshing Look at an Obscure Prayer
Review: A quick read, The Prayer of Jabez is a well-thought out, well written little book. It's a book that will challenge the doubts that typically plague the Christian in his endeavor to accomplish great things for the will of God. Wilkinson has successfully presented a biblical story but has resisted the temptation to embellish, stretch, or twist a Biblical theme to please an audience. His exegesis of Scripture is solid and accurate. He presents the Jabez prayer as a formula or an way of thinking. Why can't we ask God to enlarge our territories? Why shouldn't we expect Him to bless our the vocation in which he has called us? Dr. Wilkinson has stayed clear of prosperity theology and has also noted that sin can block the believers prayers from being answered. The quality of the writing is good, if not great. He writes in an easy-going manner and offers hope to the Christian in any spiritual condition. You will be blessed by reading the Prayer of Jabez.
Rating:
Summary: Prayer Of Jabez
Review: This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Bruce Wilkinson takes it beyond expectation.
Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: I don't have a lot to say about this book.... just WOW! It is a little book packed with power. If you are interested, really longing, to find God's will for your life. Read The Prayer of Jabez, apply the principles and see where God takes you. It will be a thrill ride!
Rating: 
Summary: Taking 1st Chronicles Seriously
Review: The Prayer of Jabez displays a lack of reflection and a careless approach to the study of the Bible. It seems to me that the best way to read is to attempt to understand a book in the manner in which the author intended us to understand it. This method is contrary to the approach Dr. Wilkinson has taken. In reading, The Prayer of Jabez, it appears that Dr. Wilkinson has invented or fashioned a new Jabez. The Jabez in Dr. Wilkinson's book is completely different than the intentions of the author of 1st Chronicles. We learn about Jabez in the ninth and tenth verses of the fourth chapter of 1st Chronicles. These verses are part of the whole of the book of 1st Chronicles. It would seem that the author intended us to consider the book of 1st Chronicles as a whole. Dr. Wilkinson has subverted the author's intention by removing these two verses from the whole and treating them as though they exist by themselves. In following the intentions of the author, our first question should be to ask what 1st Chronicles is. In contrast, Dr. Wilkinson's first question is "Will you join me in a personal exploration of Jabez?" (preface) In brief, 1st Chronicles is primarily concerned with the reign of David, from the death of Saul through to the peaceful transfer of authority to David's son, Solomon. The author of 1st Chronicles has little concern for Jabez, the subject of two verses. Dr. Wilkinson, however, has found that Jabez is the model individual for the pursuit of an intimate knowledge of God. Stated another way, Dr. Wilkinson would have us imitate Jabez if we are to seek God's will. If we accept the principle that one should attempt to imitate and learn from the best, then in the context of 1st Chronicles it is inconceivable that the author has pointed to Jabez. Jabez puts forward to the God of Israel one comparatively modest petition. Only one. From the text of 1st Chronicles, there are many others with clearly better qualifications in regard to those who seek after God. I will only mention eleven. Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun were leaders in inspired prophesy to the accompaniment of harps, lutes and symbols. The author of 1st Chronicles even identifies Heman as David's seer in divine matters. As well, Heman was blessed by God with fourteen sons. Although these three men played minor roles in 1st Chronicles, they clearly had a more intimate knowledge of the God of Israel and they received richer blessings from that same God than Jabez. Obed-edom, the Gittite, and his family were blessed by the Lord because he housed the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord for three months prior to its entry into the City of David. Amasai, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, and chief of the thirty, can be said to have had an intimate knowledge of God. When he and other men of Benjamin and Judah came to David at Ziklag, the spirit of the Lord made it known through Amasai that they had come to David as allies. Nathan acted as a prophet for David, and Samuel and Gad were the king's seers in divine matters. Unlike Jabez, each of these men received the direct speech of God. The communication did not come through signs nor was it delivered through a third party. In fact, the communications they received from the Lord were of vital importance to the nation of Israel. The Lord had said, through the lips of Samuel, that David would be anointed king. It was Nathan who communicated God's will to David that it was not to be him, but one of his sons that should build the temple of the Lord. Finally, Gad communicated the nature of the punishment Israel was to receive as the result of God's displeasure toward David for having taken a census of the people. It is even reasonable to count Saul among those who sought an intimate knowledge of God. Although he forfeited his life as the result of his unfaithfulness, he had been anointed of God. Beginning in his minority, Solomon was favoured by God. The assembly of the people twice appointed him king and he was anointed as the Lord's prince. In fact, the author of 1st Chronicles states, "The Lord made Solomon stand very high in the eyes of all Israel, and bestowed upon him sovereignty such as no king in Israel had had before him." While these ten individuals certainly surpassed Jabez in the virtue of seeking an intimate knowledge of God, David is clearly the subject of 1st Chronicles. It was David who excelled all, in 1st Chronicles, in the practice of this virtue. He often communicated in speech directly with the Lord. It was David most of all whom the author intended for us to contemplate seriously. In David's forty-year reign over the whole of Israel he maintained law and justice among his people. God gave into his hands the Philistines, the Moabites, Hadadezer king of Zobah-hamath, and the Aramaeans, to name a few. It was David's prayerful offering of thanks to the Lord, situated almost in the center of 1st Chronicles, which the author has directed us to. Finally, at the close of 1st Chronicles, the author pointed to the books of Samuel, Nathan and Gad for a full rendering of the life of king David. Unfortunately, Dr. Wilkinson has invented a new Jabez by removing him from his place in 1st Chronicles. Dr. Wilkinson has disregarded the intentions of the author of 1st Chronicles and appears, by treating Jabez in isolation, to have used Jabez for his own intentions. This is only a partial review and I would be happy to send anyone a copy of the entire review.
Rating: 
Summary: Inspiring, But Incomplete
Review: Pastor Wilkinson's book strikes me as potentially helpful to readers who, like Jabez, might be distressed, groping for answers, desperate for a sign -- any sign -- of God's favor toward them. It might also speak hope to Christians who have never prayed with anything approaching Jabez's passion. The pew-warmers among us might benefit from examining such fervor. Even so, Jabez's prayer, uttered long before the Cross, must be understood in light of this critical historical limitation. "Oh, that you might bless me," Jabez cried, and he had reason to wonder if his prayer would be heard. Jabez lived without benefit of the full picture. He was born during a time when God required sacrifice after sacrifice for the atonement of sin. God had not yet lavished His ultimate grace on humankind in the person of Jesus the Messiah. He had not yet offered a definitive sacrifice, "once for all," to rescue humankind from sin's grip. The richness of Heaven's favor unveiled in the Gospels, in Paul's epistles and throughout the New Testament sheds important light on the power of Jabez's prayer. Those who have responded to the Gospel message with a cry of faith -- "Yes, oh yes, I receive this gift of grace!" -- have ALREADY been blessed beyond measure. Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus encapsulates this overriding New Covenant theme quite well: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who HAS BLESSED US in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ" (emphasis added). And so, while the Jabez prayer might serve as a helpful example of one Old Covenant man's faith, Christians might well be wary of turning it into a ritualistic mantra. In fact, rather than praying the prayer of Jabez each morning, followers of Christ would do well to emulate the prayer of JESUS daily. "Pray in this manner," Jesus instructed in Matthew and Luke: "Our Father in heaven" [Jabez couldn't know God as "Father" in the tender way that Jesus proclaimed Him], "hallowed by your name; your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." [The Jabez prayer doesn't address the key tenet of forgiveness as a door into spiritual growth.] "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen." I'm not knocking Pastor Wilkinson or his book. I'm just suggesting that readers consider the Jabez prayer in light of the panoply of faith set forth in both the Old and New testaments. For followers of Christ, our strength and healing ultimately spring from a daily relationship with Jesus, not from reciting one Old Testament phrase over and over.
Rating: 
Summary: poor exegesis
Review: For approximately 3500 years the Prayer of Jabez has been virtually ignored by scholars in both the Jewish and Christian communities. Now along comes Wilkinson who writes as if he has discovered some new secret to prayer. Jesus, in his introduction to the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:2), said, "When you pray, say; ... ". This prayer was given to his followers as an example of how to pray. The Prayer of Jabez was given to Jabez only, no one else. Any attempt to make this prayer universal, especially when it comes to increasing one's borders, spiritual or not, is poor exegesis.
Rating:
Summary: Some Very Good Points and Some Serious Ambiguities
Review: In this best selling book Wilkinson urges some important spiritual lessons. It's not selfish to pray for God's blessings for oneself, especially when you leave the nature of the blessing up to God. And there may be some things that God is waiting for us to ask for before granting. We might very well ask for the gift of being called to do more for God than we are doing, and to be more ambitious in trying to serve. We should live in dependence on God and ask for deliverance from personal harm and from hurting others. All of these are good things and the prayer of Jabez is one way of packaging them. Except that Jabez may have meant something else. Since Jabez lived in a time prior to prophetic notions of social justice or the concept of an afterlife, his idea of blessing is more materialistic than any gospel or post-gospel understanding. His expansion of territory is literally a land grab at the expense of his neighbor's lives, which he felt he was taking with the approval of God, something so close to today's West Bank settlements that it ought to cause us some ambivalence to use this prayer at all. The hand of God that Jabez sought was more likely to have been as a military power with which to overthrow and kill his neighbor. And since it would have been many centuries after Jabez that the concept of an evil Satan developed, that can hardly be the evil he asks to be delivered from here, although it is what Wilkinson seems to think is the entire focus of this last request. It may be rather from the magical implication of his name that he asks deliverance, something in which moderns would put little stock. There is much ambiguity in this book as one passes from a request for a blessing that is left up to God to a specific request that the individual decides on some basis or other must be God's will (like Trinidad, a DC-10, or the delay of a flight that will inconvenience hundreds of other people). Wilkinson should say more on how to distinguish between God's will and our own desires that we too easy mistake for God's. He also touched too briefly on the notion that a person's business is the way in which one serves God and so an expansion of business becomes a growth in divine service; more guidance needs to be provided Christians who mistake corporate greed for doing God's will and earthly success as a sign of God's good pleasure, and who may possibly have picked up this book to find a way somehow to serve both God and mammon. For all the talk of Satan in the book, there is little talk of other evils we need to be delivered from, like the religious self-righteousness that convinces us that our wants are God's will and our understanding God's revelation, and also the greed that enriches the wealthy Christian while impoverishing the rest of the world. The book is a best seller, probably because there are so many who are searching for spirituality and for God. If it has helped some find what they seek, well and good; but I suggest that if you are looking for a daily prayer to say, try the suggestion of Jesus that begins "Our Father ..."
Rating:
Summary: Jabez and Hermeneutics
Review: Jabez's prayer contains some very honorable petitions. I think they are worthy of meditation and reflection. His prayer may even be an impetus to pray differently. Sadly, he is one of the many biblical and historical characters who loved God, and yet, so very little about them is revealed to us. Their story is reserved for another time, another place, another realm. I believe that if the reader were to really believe The Prayer of Jabez, and follow Dr. Wilkinson's advice, the reader would be inviting four holes to develop in his Christian foundation and these will be the genesis of a significant "eating away" of one's faith. Hole #1 Hermeneutics - this is the theological word for "the art and science of interpreting Scripture's meaning." The focus is on how to understand the author's intended meaning for a text. There are methods for doing proper exegesis (drawing the meaning out of the text), and they focus on understanding the author's purpose for the book and the context of thought where the passage is found. Scripturally, one would ask the questions, "What is the meaning of this passage?" "Why is it present in the book?" Relating this to 1 Chronicles 4:9-10, our main concern should be this, "Is there any insight in the context which says this prayer is to be for all believers?" Does the writer give word or inferences that the life of Jabez is one that he wants all to emulate? Does the rest of Scripture do any of this with Jabez's life and prayer? If not, then why can this passage be used to promote the principles The Prayer of Jabez is promoting? Hermeneutics establishes the rules that govern the perimeters of meaning and application a passage can support. Where is the biblical authority to make the following statement, "I want to show you just how dramatically each of Jabez's requests can release something miraculous in your life?" (page 15) Hole #2 Testimony of the historical Church - is there any evidence that anyone in Church history has advocated praying Jabez's prayer like Dr. Wilkinson is recommending? Approximately 4000 years has gone by since Jabez. Was this prayer mentioned by the prophets? Old Testament saints? Jesus? Apostles? Church Fathers? Reformers? Why has there been such silence on this prayer? Dr. Wilkinson is advocating for it to be prayed every day and calls it "the second most important sentence in my life." Do you think a prayer of this importance would have been mentioned, or practiced, by the historic Christian community? Does the silence of history in this matter caution the present day Christian community? I think it should. Hole #4 Logic and Reasoning One particularly important faculty of the mind is reasoning. I think Christians should be disturbed by the reasoning used in The Prayer of Jabez. In general, I think it is a good practice to make note of what honorable people do. This is one of the reasons people enjoy reading biographies of famous, honorable historical figures. Individual character and thought produce actions and words. But, the formula does not necessarily work backwards -- honorable words and actions do not always produce honorable character and thoughts. It is a mistake to think that imitating an honorable person's actions will necessarily make one honorable. Do you see the fallacy in this? It has to do with cause and effect. Jabez, an honorable man (cause), prayed a prayer and it was granted (effect). In Wilkinson's The Prayer of Jabez, the focus is taken off of the "person" of Jabez and placed on his "asking". The new cause is the "prayer" itself and not Jabez. A further unhealthy use of logic and reasoning is found early in the book, on page 11. "The next morning, I prayed Jabez's prayer word for word. And the next. And the next. Thirty years later, I haven't stopped." Chapter seven of the book is a story of what has happened in the life of Dr. Wilkinson over the past thirty years; it is a very impressive chapter. However, now we see he credits these blessings to God granting his and his wife's daily Jabez prayer. The logical fallacy being displayed is formally called post hoc (Latin for "after this"). Just because there was an activity before an event does not make it the cause for the event nor does it create a formula generating similar results. Remember the rooster who thought he made the sun come up because of his daily, morning crowing? What do we make of all this? What I intend for this article to do is to draw attention to a lurking danger. Dr. Wilkinson is prompting the Christian community to do more with this passage of Scripture than was intended by the author. Now, I'm not suggesting life will suddenly come crashing down around the person who follows his advice. What will happen is a subtle loss of understanding of how to read, interpret, and apply the Scriptures. If so much can be drawn from an obscure life tucked away in Chronicles, if so many good thinkers have missed this over the centuries, then, shouldn't we feel a bit bewildered? What else are we missing? How do I know I understand the meaning of the Scriptures at all? The Scriptures now become more of a mystery versus a knowable communication from the living God to human beings. Ideas have consequences. Decisions matter. Language matters. God's language must be properly interpreted and applied or we can expect an eroded faith, full of holes. When Scripture is interpreted properly, Christ, The Rock, is revealed to us. On Him we can build our faith and stand against new ideas, clever arguments, and distractions.
Rating:
Summary: God doesn't need us, we need God...
Review: Paul warns us to not build a belief on mere speculation. Luke quotes Paul in Acts as saying to be on the guard for "grevious wolves" This, along with the Left Behind series are merely that, speculation, and false teaching. If you want to build a belief system on a few verses, why not try promoting canabalism by quoting Revelation 19:17-19? I had a friend tell me once that more often than not if a book or movement in Christianity becomes extreme popular, or mainstream, that it, as Steve Brown says, smells like smoke (i.e. it's from the Devil). Be aware when reading any "Christian" literature, fiction, non fiction, etc. Do as the people in cities where Paul preached did, search the scriptures, see if it's true. Don't rely only on the words and thoughts of mortal man.
| 
