We would say today, not put your hand upon me, but would you please anoint me to do this? Would you please give me an endowment from high from your spirit so that I am able to do something in the flesh I know that I cannot do? Would you please put your hand upon me? What happens when the hand of God's upon you and you're doing it? Whether that's getting over your fear to talk to that person that you're afraid to talk to and you're in your bedroom by yourself and you say, Lord, I can't. In fact, I'm frightened of this. Please do this in me because I can't do it. I can't. Please. You know what you're saying? Please put your hand on me. Then you walk out of that room and say, his hand's with me because I just asked. And he moved the fence and I didn't. And you go right over and you trust your dad to go down the sliding board with you because he's there. And then you open your mouth and you talk. And I promise you as that's going on, you'll say to yourself, it's as if I heard myself talk. I didn't know where all those answers came from. I didn't have those answers. It was wonderful. And you walk away and you say, whoa, God did that. And you know what that brings, that dimension that brings in your life? It brings what's called the supernatural dimension in your life. See how many people miss that dimension? Are you missing it? When's the last time you felt in your heart, God did this in me? Nobody else. And God did it for me. And God did it through me. And He carried me. And He enabled me. And it was glorious. See, that's what the life of Jabez is all about. It's hitting the brick wall and asking for the hand of God upon you. Now, many of you are wondering, saying, I can't do this. Yes, you can. You can ask God to put His hand upon you. That's all you and I need to do. Now, you're not going to ask God to put his hand upon you if you're living in sin, are you? You're not going to ask God to bless you if you're living in sin because you don't want to talk to him. And if it's an area of major offense between him and you or you or somebody else, you're not going to go say, give me more ministry because you're not going to want to minister because your heart's quenched inside and the spirit's quenched and grieved. So all this won't work if you're not living with him. It won't work. You won't pray. It'll stick in your throat because it's stuck in mine. It doesn't come out if my heart's not clean. But if it's clean, and I ask for the blessing, he loves to bless. He loves even more than that to give more ministry. And he loves for us to get to the point in which we yell to our heavenly father, as close as I was to my son. I can't. Now some of you don't believe that yet. You really don't believe that God is watching you on your sliding board. You almost feel, I've talked to so many people about this, you almost feel, I have to convince God to do that for me because I'm really not worth it. What? If Christ would die for you, what do you mean you're not worth it? Or I got to convince the Father to show his arm, Strong, his hand upon me because he only does that for these other people that I hear give stories or write books. He really doesn't do it for me. Now I'm gonna show you a verse in the Bible that should change your mind forever. Because it's gonna show you something about God that may utterly surprise you. And it's right in the book following it. It's in 2 Chronicles chapter 16. 2 Chronicles chapter 16. And it shows you about how God watches us in the sand pile with our own sliding boards and what God's doing as He watches us. Someday I'll teach a series on this particular one like I am with the prayer of Jabez. But in 2 Chronicles 16 verse 9, which was a year verse for me years ago, It says, for the eyes of the Lord. Now watch this, here's Papa on the side watching his children. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the entire earth. Why are the eyes running to and fro? Answer, to show himself strong. For who? On behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him. You know what that tells me about God and tells you about God? We don't have to convince God about anything. That God is proactive. He is doing this. He's looking to and fro on the face of the earth. He's constantly watching. He's constantly looking. What's he looking for? Now watch carefully. Is he looking for a highly educated person? A person who can give great speeches? A person who has a lot of money or a lot of power? He's looking for one thing and one thing only. He looks to and fro according to Chronicles to find a person whose heart is loyal to Him. That's the one requirement, and that's it. If your heart is loyal to Him, and you're not taking part of the glory, or part of the credit, or living in sin, but your heart is fully His, guess what? Bingo! He finally says, I have an opportunity. I can let my hand go. And I will show my power in your behalf, for you. It's your person that needs the power. And it's not that God has to be convinced. I may or may not release my hand upon you, depending the mood that I'm in. No, it's the opposite. He's the one who's looking. Ah, loyal heart, loyal heart. But if you're not dependent, he's got no place to release it. If you're not actively asking it, ask, ask, come on. Or if you're protected on your nice little island and you don't have a need for God except your God bless the food, help the missionaries, help them to obey you today, amen. No wonder there's no supernatural thread throughout your life. So change your mind. There's meant to be a supernatural one. Oh God, please bless me. Indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me. And number four and last. Look at it in your scriptures. And keep me from evil. Keep me from evil. Now why did he pray that? Well, look at it this way. As God begins to respond to your and my requests to be blessed, he blesses us. Because we're being blessed, we ask God to give us more and more ministry. He gives us more and more ministry. The ministry keeps growing beyond our comfort zone, and we find ourself in a condition of dependence. And we say, dear God, please give, please put your hand upon me. As God, through the power of the Spirit, works in you, in your neighborhood, in your job, in your home, in your church. you will become an instrument of the hand of God. And you will know it. And somebody else is going to know it. Because every time God moves your fence out, He moves it into the enemy's territory. And he wants to reclaim his people. This one who doesn't know about Christ, get this one in the fold. Why, I got my 99, go get this one. Or this one needs some comfort. Go, go. It's out in the enemy's territory. And I promise you, I promise you. It works the same every time with every person. As the blessing comes, and more ministry comes, and the hand of God comes, and you begin to realize it, this is really true. This is really happening to me. I don't have to hear somebody else's story. This happened to me. It's happening to me. Guess who's gonna begin to come against you? Yes. And He'll do that by giving to you and to me opposition. He'll begin to oppose you. No! And He'll begin to tempt you. And if you're really walking in the Spirit, He'll begin to try to oppress you. There's temptation, there's opposition, and there's oppression. And what the Jabez prayer is, the realization is, as the hand of God comes more and more and more, I'm gonna need to be able to handle the evil one here. And his prayer is so surprising again. Do we pray, bless me? No, bless everyone else. Jabez, bless me. Do we pray, give me more ministry? No, we say, God, I can't do it. Jabez says, give me more. Do we feel another sense of dependence and say, God, please put your hand upon me? No. We complain. What does Jabez do toward the enemy? He says something absolutely surprising. Keep me through the evil? Uh-uh. From the evil. Oh, my goodness. Think about it for a moment. Did you pray today and say, Lord, keep evil away from me today? See, I've asked this many times too. Rarely do you find anybody that thinks this way. You mean I should actually pray and ask God to keep me away from temptation? Of course. Of course. Keep me away from evil? Of course. What's that word evil? And some Bible translations have the word pain there. The word evil is the same word in Genesis where God says, don't eat off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It means evil. It can also mean pain and affliction. but the centerpiece of it is evil, or bad, or affliction. You remember in Genesis, when God says, I'm gonna send the flood, it's because the imaginations in the hearts of men were evil continually. Same Hebrew word. Keep me away from evil, wickedness, pain, affliction, distress, wretchedness. Those are all the meanings of that Hebrew word, every one I just said to you. Keep me away. Now, should you pray that way? because I don't find people praying that way. Jesus prayed that way. John 17, Father, this is the Son of God praying for his disciples and said, Father, keep them from the evil one. Keep them from, keep the evil one from them. Lord's Prayer, and lead us not into but... Yes, from evil. We always think, God, give me strength when I'm tempted. That's not the prayer of Jabez. The prayer of Jabez is, don't even let me get tempted. Keep me away from it. If there's evil there lurking for me, God, please keep me from it. Direct my feet to not go in that direction. Now see, when's the last time you prayed that way? I dare say many of you have never prayed that way. Maybe that's why you may have so many sins you trouble with, because you walk right into it, and it knocks you over. You walk right into it. Lead us, Lord, teach me how to pray. Answer, lead us not into temptation. So tomorrow morning you're up. God, bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me and keep temptation away. Now, more temptation will come the more you do this. More opposition will come the more you do this. And it'll catch you blindsided if you're not used to it. Because as the Spirit of God is released in you, because you're doing it God's way, the enemy will unleash himself against you personally. When should you always be aware of this the most? Answer, when the hand of God has just been upon you and you're walking away from that event with a person next door, somebody in your Sunday school class, your spouse, your child, your grandchild, whatever it is, and you know the Lord just did it again, again. You'll have wonder every time. As you walk away, listen to me, listen to me. Close attention. It's that moment you must pray that fourth part of the prayer. God, I am weak, because it's that moment you think wrongly about yourself. I am weak. Keep me away from temptation. I just got finished from teaching at Moody Founders Week one year, years ago. And I had counseled 76 young people in a week. I kept a log. 76. Not much sleep, but a lot of counseling. Preached many times. I was completely, physically, emotionally, spiritually, absolutely useless. They almost had to carry me out, I was so tired. And as I was leaving on the way to the airport, I came to this last part of the prayer and I said, Lord, please, I have no resistance toward evil. Keep temptation away from me. I've served you hard, save me from this stuff. I don't want any, I can't cope with it. Get on the airplane. Couldn't get a good seat, got a middle seat toward the back of the plane. big guy sat here and a bigger guy sat here. We got our seat belts on. The man on the right hand side opened up his briefcase and took out a pornography magazine and opened it. Now, you've all been on an airplane? From one person to another, that's a challenging So I'm looking out the window, because I was on the left side of the plane. The guy on this side takes out his briefcase and opens a different pornography magazine. Puts it right here. I'm in the middle, about to get mad. Not at them, but about him. Lord. Because I had nothing in me left. Maybe I'm copping out here, but I didn't have it in me to say something to him or to say something to him. And it's pretty tough to sit there So I said to the Lord, Lord, I thought we had a deal here. Please help me with this today. I can't cope with this. The guy on my right side started swearing out loud. Nothing was going on. Nobody was talking to him. He started swearing. He slammed his book in, put it underneath. The guy on this side looked across, said, well, I'll be, swore himself, closed it, put it under. The guy in the middle started laughing on the top of my lungs. And they both said, what's so funny about you? And I said, if I told you, you'd never believe me. Now, I preached at Dr. Stanley's church at First Baptist years ago, and a young man was in the audience because he told me this story. His name was Troy. Troy heard this. Troy was working. He was a young person, high school. He was working someplace else, and he has to fly home. He gets on the plane, and the guy next to him pulls out a pornographic magazine. Troy tells me his mom, Jill, was next to him. And Jill said, this is what happened. So Troy said, well, I was sitting there, Dr. Wilkinson, and I remembered your story from church. And I said to myself, well, if God can do it for Dr. Wilkinson, he ought to do it for me. God, have him close it. He said, I said, Troy, what happened? He said, he closed it. He didn't swear, but he closed it, just like with you. I said, Troy, what are you thinking about God now? He said, well, I'm planning on being in J-Biz in my life. Last part of that phrase, keep me away from evil. Last part, look at your text. That it may not grieve me, pain me. Oh, the order of this, friends, is so utterly important. Why? Watch carefully as we wrap it up. Bless me, God does. Give me more ministry, he will. You will feel utterly beyond your capabilities and you'll say, help! That's another way of saying put your hand on me. And he will, he will. And you will find yourself being tempted or opposed or oppressed. And you'll be asking the Lord, keep me from evil. It's in that time, watch me carefully, it's when the blessing and the ministry and the anointing and the protections taking place, you will be living your life the way it's meant to be lived in Christ. And you will be living your life in a way that brings you such joy and such fulfillment and such meaning so deep to you personally, that if you sin in a significant way in this place of living, You will experience grief like you've not experienced in your Christian life because the hand of anointing will come back, God will pull in his fences, and the blessing of God will end for a period of time. And when that's all done, and you're all by yourself, on your little tiny island where you used to be the old way, you will know grief because you've tasted the other way. So don't sin. Don't sin. So my challenge to you in the next 30 days is to pray this in faith. and to kinda keep a record of every day you praying it when you get up in the morning. Don't pray it at night, it's useless. It's for today. You get up in the morning before you leave your house, you pray, oh God, please bless me indeed. Say it, dear God, please bless me indeed. One more time, dear God, please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Give me more. Try it from the top. Dear God, please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me. Put your hand upon me. From the top, dear God. Please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me. Keep me from evil. Ready? Keep me from the top. Dear God, please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me and keep me from temptation. Now tell the person next to you that prayer quickly. I want you to memorize it. We'll need the envelopes. Let's try it gang. Let's say it together. Look at me. Ready? Dear God, please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me. Keep me from evil. Just the men, ready? Dear God, please bless me indeed. Give me more ministry. Put your hand upon me. Keep me from evil. Just the ladies. Indeed, give me more ministry which would sanctify me. Feed me from evil. Now, here's what I want to challenge you to do. We're starting 1994. I believe that you would like to have a 94 like Jabez. Then don't be passive anymore. Go after it. And I tried to think of a way to kind of help you be accountable in what works. And here's what I want to do. I tried to have this done for you today, but we couldn't pull it all off. We're going to give you an envelope with a card inside in a minute. And here's what I'd like you to do. If you would like, you need to listen to this message four times in the next four weeks, because you'll not keep it all together. I gave you too much content. So listen to this tape four times in the next four weeks, from now January 11th to February 11th. Second thing I want you to do is I want you to, on this card, put down 11, 12, 13, all the way from this 11th, put 11, 12, 13 to the end of January, to the 11th of February. That's 30 boxes. And every day you pray that, put an X over your number. That's 30 days in a row. We'll have a habit then. Third thing, there's four things I want you to do. Number one, I want you to play the tape and listen to it yourself four times, once a week. Second, I want you to actually take a card. I'm gonna give you a card. It's a simple three by five. We'll have a better form next week. Put down 30 and begin putting an X in a little box. Draw a box, 11, 12, and just do 30 of them. So you're putting an X. Third, I want you to get in a habit of praying this prayer weekly. You won't pray this prayer every day the rest of your life. You will stop praying it because you will say, I can't cope with more blessing, more ministry, or more hand. I promise you, you will stop praying. It'll be too much for you. Now, what you need to do is to begin to pray this weekly, once a week, for the rest of your life. Because just that little reminder after 30 days will keep your mind focused on what the priorities of life need to be. I began to think through what could be the best and easiest way to remember to do this. Here's what I came up with. Every Sunday, you go to church. Every church I've ever been, all over the world, they do one thing on a Sunday for sure. They take an offering. That's right. Therefore, I want to build a habit. The next four Sundays, when they're taking offering, I want you to have a memory that when that plate passes you, you have to pray. Dear God, I gotta give Jabez now. You pray it as it goes through your row, and every week you do that. In four weeks, it'll be a habit. In the offering, it's always, Jabez, I gotta pray it. And then before long, it'll be a part of your life. So number one, right? You pray it. Pray the tape four times. say it 30 days in a row in the morning, do it in church when they give the offering, and fourth, on the back of that card, just write down one or two things that begin to happen that you would say, oh, that's because of that prayer we're praying. Write a couple things down. You're gonna be amazed what's beginning to happen. Now, if you're able to do that, and the next 30 days you do that, I have something next week I'll tell you about, a memory that is on my wall. It's the prayer of Jabez you can frame. Because I believe this is one of those verses in scripture that have a great deal of impact to you personally. But we're not going to make it available until you've done those things. Okay? So what I want to do is to give, we can't give you the tape. Okay, we're not trying to sell you tapes. We're trying to help you at this point. If you'd like to get a tape or borrow it, or a bunch of you get together and buy one and share it, I could care anything about that. Tapes are five. So we have some envelopes here, and we're going to give those out in a minute, but let me tell you what I want. On the bottom left, it says J, J, It's supposed to be J-Bez tape, or J-Bez, and inside is a 3x5 card. Keep this. If you want a tape, okay, we can't give you today, we'll give you the next week. Then take this, and on the back side, print, print your name and mailing address, okay? And if you have a $5, put it in. If you have a check, put it in. Or if you say, I'll give it to you next week, write on it, I'll give it to you next week. And we'll collect these, or you can mail them back if you, we better collect these so we know how many tapes to make. This is yours. Take and write the J-Biz prayer out. Make yourself four boxes. I'll listen four times. I'll say it 30 days in a row. I'll do it in church. And on the back, write down what happened. Got it? Any questions? Now, I don't teach or preach for information. I preach and teach for change, which means if you don't make a change, then I look at tonight, in some ways, as not accomplishing God's goal. This is an easy thing to do for a while, but your life will begin to change. Will you let God change your life regardless of what it is? Will you give him freedom then to let it go? Let it go. Will you give me and the Lord a commitment that as far as it's in your power, you will do those things. You will do it for 30 days. You'll do it in church. You'll listen to the tape. You'll borrow it. I don't care. If you don't have enough money, ask us. We'll loan you one. And you'll write down the notes of what happened, what happened, this is what happened. Now, I want to know how many of you are going to do that. But with the person next to you, will you tell the person next to you if you plan on doing that? How many are gonna do it? Let me see your hands. All right. Now, I'm gonna ask one other thing as a favor now. This is just as a favor from you to me, all right? This has nothing to do about you now. This is a favor I'm asking you. I've been praying that prayer for this place. I pray that for my family. I pray that for my church. and I'm praying it for New Heritage. I pray for my organization. J-Biz is well known in our organization. Would you please, when you're done praying for you those 30 times, just turn around and say, oh God, let me ask you one more thing. Would you please bless New Heritage indeed? Would you please give it more ministry any way you want? Would you please put your hand of blessing on it? Would you please keep it from evil, all of the people and the place itself? We need that prayer answered here more. Now, I think to be honest with you, this is a clear illustration of what happened here. This place used to have the most amazing blessing of God. Did it not? And it had an unbelievable ministry that was exploding And it had the hand of blessing on it. And it had the enemy who was opposing it. And then did it not have severe grief? We're still recuperating from the grief. So we who are in leadership in the ministry and the heritage owners, we have a sense of history. And take heed lest you fall. So we're no better men or lesser men, we're just men together. And we need this prayer prayed for this place and for us. Okay? Now, I would like to have a word of prayer, give out these envelopes. Then what you do, so you have a check you make out to walk to the Bible for five, you put in the money, you say, I'll get it next week, or just borrow it from somebody else, take out that card and begin doing it. But I wanna pray for you before I go, is that all right? And next week, don't miss the commissioning. And the week thereafter, we start a six-part series that is my favorite, is the next one I'll be teaching with you. So that'll be in two weeks from tonight. So let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we now pause before your mighty throne, and we must confess before we ask. We confess we've not asked for personal blessing. We confess that we have not asked for more ministry. We confess that we have not asked for your hand upon us. We confess that we've not asked you to keep us away from evil. We confess that your arm, therefore, your mighty and powerful arm, has been hindered because of the way we've been not following you. We know that you desire to unleash your mighty arm more than we want it to be unleashed. We know that you're the God who gives the greatest blessings of all time. We know, Lord God, that your heart is for everyone in all of the world. You don't have one barbed wire fence in your world. We know that you have given your spirit a member of the Trinity so your hand can be upon us in a way so that we can do greater works than those. And we know that greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. And therefore we We know that this prayer will work because every one of these four things is in your will. We don't have to question if this is a good prayer or if this is just for Jabez. This is your heart. And therefore, we come to you in a solemn moment at the beginning of 1994. And perhaps some of us, Lord, are going to take the prayer of Jabez as our year verse. It'd be a good one for 1994. Lord, I take this verse as a small part of New Heritage and I claim it for this place this year. That when we conclude 1994 for the last Bible study, Lord, remind me to bring us back to this prayer and ask the question of the audience. Have we had the blessing of God? Have we seen more ministry? Have we had the anointing of God together? And has this place been holy before God and man? May it be a time of overwhelming celebration. May we leap to our feet in cheers as we recognize that our great God has answered our prayers, just like you answered the prayer of Jabez, and God granted him that which he requested. And so, Father, in the quietness of the moment, we bow before you now. We know there's no magic in words, but there is wonder of a genuine prayer to our almighty God. Therefore, we humble ourselves before your mighty hand, and we quiet our hearts. And oh God, please bless us indeed mightily. Please give us more, more, more ministry, oh God. Please put your mighty hand of power and of freedom upon us. And Lord, I guess if I were to ask for one the most, it's the last one. Please guard us. Please protect us. Please hedge us about. Please lead us in the ways of righteousness. Please guide our footsteps and guard our eyes and guard the imaginations of our heart. that we may be acceptable and pleasing to you. Lord, we humble ourselves before you and ask you, not on the basis of merit, we have no merit, but on the basis of your wonderful grace, how you love to bestow good gifts upon your children. And because of your unbounding mercy that you can forgive those things in the past, which would make us all unworthy to pray this prayer. but because of the forgiveness, we can leave it behind. Therefore, we stand equally acceptable before your mighty and forgiving hand as Jabez one another. Oh, Father, thank you for that. And now we look forward to this year and tomorrow morning as we wake up, either because you prompt us or because of that alarm clock, may we remember to open our eyes and open our mouth and open our heart and pray the prayer of the Apex. Oh God, planted in the hearts of many, we now honor you and praise you. We've confessed our sins, we've brought our request to you, and now we know you are worthy of great praise and honor and majesty. Oh, you are wonderful to care about us, to even think about us, let alone to bless us. We do honor you. How we love you. Thank you. In Jesus' name, Amen.