if you will, to First Chronicles, chapter number four. First Chronicles, chapter number four. Good to be a Christian, isn't it? I don't know of any other life I'd rather live than the life of a Christian. I'm not perfect, I'm far from it. If I was perfect, I wouldn't need a savior. but I'm not perfect. And Jesus said that He would save me and He did. And I'm still in working order. I mean, He's still working on me, okay? And so maybe He is you as well. 1 Chronicles 4 9-10. I want to read that today and you can read it as well. They've got it on the board there. I want to preach on the subject, I can pray. I can pray. And Jabez, more honorable than his brother, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, because I bear him with sorrow. Verse 10 says, And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, that thine hand might be with me, that thou wouldst keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me. And God granted him that which he requested. Let's go to God in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we're thankful for this scripture today. I pray, God, you'd help me to preach. Give me the voice I need to preach with. I pray, Lord, that the Spirit of God would just move among the congregation here and those that are listening online. Lord, we don't know the need of anybody, but God, you know everything. I just pray, God, that you'd meet the need that people have today. In Christ's name we pray, amen. This man Jabez is mentioned three times in the Bible, once in 1 Chronicles 2 and verse 55, and then twice here in 1 Chronicles 4. Jabez comes from the family of Judah. The first eight verses there talks about who he was and his lineage. Most of the time when we read about the lineage we kind of go over that because we think, well that's a little boring, we don't want to spend too much time there. But I believe it's good that we look at the lineage here, and it talks about who was in his lineage in the first eight verses. Most of the time Jabez and those who were before him are simply glanced over without much scrutiny. Sometimes we get bored looking at the history and geology in this chapter. There's a story about a pastor that went to preach, His sermon one Sunday morning, after it, he said he wanted to see the church board. And so after he got done preaching, he went to his office and he walked in. There was a man there that he didn't recognize. He said, well, who are you? And the man said, well, he said, just to be honest with you, he said, I wanted to see if anybody was more bored than I was this morning. And so Jabez stands out in this chapter as a different man. Jabez didn't win a battle like David did. He didn't go against a giant or anything of that nature. He didn't win a fight. He didn't build a temple. He didn't perform any miracles at all according to the Word of God. He was not a prophet, he was not a preacher, he was not a teacher, but he's known for one thing, and that's his prayer. And I wonder after we're all dead and gone, and our tombstone is set, what will we be remembered for? Some will be remembered for their preaching, and some for their teaching, and some for maybe being a good neighbor, or a good husband, or a good wife, but what will we be known for? It'd be good to have somebody be able to put on our tombstone, he was a man of prayer, or she was a woman of prayer. I don't know of anything any greater than that. When I pastored a church there in Licking, there was a man there that had been there for years and finally his health grew so bad he couldn't come to the house of God. I'd go visit him and he'd say, Brother Danny, I want you to know something. He said, I can't come to church, but I can pray. And he said, I'll guarantee you that 11 o'clock every Sunday morning, I will be on my knees in prayer for you as you begin to preach the gospel. And one day I got a call that this man had passed away. And I went and done his funeral, and I told the church the next Sunday morning, who's praying for me today? Who is it that's willing to spend their time and pray for me today as I share the Word of God? Jabez is known for that one thing, and that's just prayer. The name Jabez means pain. His mother delivered him in pain, and she never let him forget it. There's a story about a preacher that filled in for a month for a pastor who had surgery. On the last Sunday he filled in, he thanked the people for letting him be a substitute pastor for a few Sundays. At the door, a lady came to him and said, preacher, you're not a substitute, you're a real pain. Jabez overcame the obstacles in his life. The Bible says he was more honorable than any of his brethren. I want to say this to you. It doesn't matter about your past. It doesn't matter about your failures. You can overcome the obstacles in your life and serve the Lord. What's unusable about this prayer? I'm gonna take this from verse number 10. First of all, Jabez prays for God to bless him. He sought God's blessing upon his life. He wanted God's best for him, and he believed that God wanted the best for him as well. He remembered what God said to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 and verses two and three. The Bible says, I will make of thee a great nation. I will bless thee and make thy name great. Thou shalt be a blessing. I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curses thee. And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So as he began to look at that, what God told Abraham. I want to ask you a question this morning. Why doesn't the church seek God's blessings today? Why don't we seek God's blessings? You say, well, Brother Danny, I hadn't thought about praying about that. Well, Wednesday night services here is the least attended service that we have. Some churches, a lot of churches in this area have completely done away with the Wednesday night service. They say because there's nobody coming. Well, if there's nobody coming, why do away with the prayer service? I don't understand that. It's like to me, we ought to be praying that people would come to the house of God. But I would say if attendance begins to lack in any service, you need the prayer service. I believe that we don't pray like we should because, and we don't want God's blessings like we should want them because of the apathy that's in the church. I've heard people say, well, I work a job, I'm too tired to come on Wednesday night. Others say, well, my plate's already full, and I don't have, I've got too much to do already. Some say I'm too busy to be blessed with anything else. Shortly after I came to the church last Wednesday night, Brother Jim came in, and he didn't sit down, but he went right over there where he always sits, and instead of sitting down, he knelt down, he began to pray. Now, he didn't know that I saw that, but before we come to church, Ramona and I began to talk about Jim was preaching tonight. And I said, well, I hope people are praying because I know he needs prayer. Like anybody else that takes the word of God and tries to write and divide the truth, they need to be prayed for. And I don't know how many people came and prayed, but I do know one thing. I took 30 prayer requests that I wrote down the other night, Wednesday night. There may have been more than that. Man, I got all of them. But there was 30 of them that I wrote down. I just want to say, Brother Pastor, I believe that every man in this church ought to preach one time. For the simple reason, if they did, they would want somebody praying for them. If Brother Reg tonight called on any one of you to preach tonight, first of all, fear would set in. You'd be scared to death, I can tell you that. Your first message, you'd be scared to death. But let me say this, you would hope and pray that the people of the church would be there to pray for you. And it's sad to say, but it seems like sometimes a lot of apathy in the church. This man Jabez would want, would pray and pray for God's blessing. When you pay for God's blessing, it means responsibility. I pray that God will bless you, put a new fire in your soul, and also He might give you more passion for God, and more zeal to serve Him. Most of the time, our lives are about us. You have a prayer request, well, pray for me, I want this, I need this, and this, and this. Nothing wrong with that, okay? There's times we need a special prayer. But we want more, we want it faster, we want it better, we want it cheaper. And the reason that is, our lives are shallow and self-centered. So first of all, Jabez prayed that God would bless him. Secondly, he prayed that God would enlarge his coast. Jabez prayed that God would enlarge his borders. Now Jabez was from the tribe of Judah, which was among the ruling class among the Hebrews. Two things would happen if God answered his prayer. First of all, his territory would increase, meaning that his people would have more area to live in, more freedom to move. Secondly, that he would have more people to serve as a leader. You see, we need to be praying that God would increase our sphere of influence. I think every time a baby's born, I think that mom and dad brings that baby home, and Pastor Red will tell them that we've had a new baby, and they'll get up and hold that little baby up. And I think, you know what? They might not realize it, but their sphere of influence has just increased. Mom and dad are the most important influence on that child of anybody else. Not the pastor, not the Sunday school teacher, or anyone else, mom and dad is. And so we need to ask God to do something so big, we can never do it ourselves. When David slew Goliath, he didn't do it by his own strength. He said this, he said, the battle is the Lord's. Read your Bible. that God was in every victory that His people experienced. When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, God was there. They didn't tiptoe across the tulips trying to get across the Red Sea. God parted it. And the Bible said when they got to Jericho, the defeat of Jericho was not because of the mighty battle that they fought. They didn't fight nothing. They didn't do anything. except obey God, march around the city seven days. On the seventh day, they marched around it seven times, and the trumpets were blown, and they shouted, and the walls came tumbling down. Every victory God's people have is because of God. I thought of that song as I tried to prepare this message, and I had trouble with this message because it's hard sometimes to narrow down on what you want to say. I thought of that old song, Victory in Jesus. It doesn't say victory in ourselves. Don't say victory in the church. Don't say victory in the preacher or the Sunday school teacher or anyone else, but victory in Jesus. We don't want this church to be a country club. There's enough country club churches in this country already. We don't want this church to just dot the landscape. You can take North, South, East or West, church after church building is empty, dotting the landscape. The Word of God not being preached from it any longer. I can remember Brother Reg, when you and I started preaching, these churches were strong. They were strong churches. They preached the Word of God and they saw people saved, but today the doors are shut. I mean, it's a sad fact, but that's just the way it is. We need to be God's people in a world that desperately needs Him. I want God to bless us for one reason alone, that we can be a blessing to somebody else. God has given this church every tool we need to serve Him. As a matter of fact, it amazes me what God has done. It amazes me. I shouldn't be amazed by anything about God because God can do anything He wants to do. But what we need to do is take the tools out of the tool shed and use them for His glory. You see, when spring comes, you get ready to do your garden, you probably put your tools up. The other day, we worked out in the yard a little bit and we cut the roses down and all this and that stuff and put the mowers up for the winter. And I thought, now I got nothing to do. I bet you'll find something for me to do, don't you? Honey do jobs, honey do this, honey do that. But what I'm saying is, we put the tools up. I won't need the lawnmower till spring. I won't need the hoe till spring. I won't need the clippers till spring. So we put them up. but sometime I'm gonna have to take them back out. You have to fuel those lawnmowers back up and sharpen the blades on them and all this and that, get them all ready for next summer. We need to take our tools out of the shed that God has given us and use them for His glory. I think of this down here, this tabernacle. Ramona and I were married down there in that tabernacle. And before we were married, we courted for about a month. And a lot of people said it's a pretty short courtship. Yeah, it was, but that's what we did. But we didn't want to be by ourself. And so one day there's some people working down here, and I think Brother Don maybe was down here working. And so we just went there and pulled underneath the tabernacle there, and we visited and talked and visited and talked. And then when they left, we left. And sometimes we'd go to a cafe and we'd sit down and eat because always somebody at the cafe, you know. I didn't want a bunch of rumors spreading around. Well, boy, I'll tell you they're running around together. You know, I didn't want that going on. And so. We'd go eat, and one day, Ramona said, I'm gonna eat you out of the house and home. I said, well, you won't yet, because we ain't down at the home yet. So when we get down there, we'll see what happens, all right? But what am I saying? I'm saying, get the tools out that you need to use. You ladies, probably when you get home, you're gonna fix lunch or dinner, or what you call it. We always eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A lot of people eat breakfast, dinner, and supper. I don't care what you call it, just eat it if it's fixed, all right? I know when Myra made her first pie, I come home from work, I worked at Springfield, we lived at Rogersville, and I come home from work, and I walked in, she said, I made you a pie, and she turned around and dropped it right in the middle of the floor. She started bawling. You know what I did? I ate that pie. I got me a little deal, and I scraped it all up in another bowl, and I ate that pie. If I hadn't eat that pie, I never got another one. I was smart enough to figure that out. Isaiah 54, two says, enlarge. Isaiah 54, two says, enlarge the place of thy tent. Let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation. Spare not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. Think about that. Think what he said. Enlarge the place of thy tent. Get a bigger tent. Some of you folks having kids, some of you just started out having kids, you may have 10 or 12. You say, I'm not having 10 or 12. You don't know that. You may have 15. You'll see the looks I'm getting up here. Listen, folks, I'm just saying, we need to be ready to do what we need to do to take care of the people that God gives us. Let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation. God wants you to enlarge your life so you can bless others. Make your tent bigger, build on a new room for the new baby. Make your tent curtains wide, more babies can fit in. Don't hold back, go forward full throttle. God knows what you need, God knows what you can take care of. Jabez prayed for God to bless him. Number one, he prayed for God to enlarge his coast. Number two, number three, he prayed for God's hand to be upon him. Jabez wanted something so big, only the hand of God on his life could accomplish it. When our grandchildren were small, we'd go to a parade or something, and I could pretty well see over the people that were there, most of them. And so they couldn't see anything. They couldn't see through the crowd, they couldn't see over the shoulders. And so I'd grab Emily with one hand and Josh with the other hand, there was only two that was born yet, and I would guide them with my hand through the crowd. Some of you parents have done that. You've grabbed your children by the top of the head, And away you go. If I want him to go to the left, I bring him to the left. Want him to go to the right, I bring him to the right. Helping him get through the crowd, okay? God will do that also. Let God lead you with his hand. I believe that we need to pray big and pray so big that if it happens, only God could have done it. I believe we've done that here, here in this church. What would you pray for if you knew you couldn't fail? The problem is we pray little and get little results. What is God speaking to you about that you are ignoring? For 16 years, I ignored God's call to the ministry. I was 15 down at Camp Joy, 15 years old when God called me to preach. I come home and told my sister, Judy, God's called me to preach. I never told anybody else, but Myra, before she married me, I said, I may have to preach, you may have to be a preacher's wife. She said, that's fine. I guess I thought she backed out. I don't know why I thought of it anyway. She didn't. What am I saying? What God is speaking to you about, are you ignoring it? Or are you willing to say yes to him? We've got a lot of preachers here, a lot of young preachers here, and I appreciate that. Thank God for that. But for 16 years, I ignored God's call to preach. God says something to us, we immediately dismiss it from our minds. But God guides us with his hand, like I mentioned earlier. Peter on the day of Pentecost had God's hand upon him. You see him earlier saying, I don't know Jesus. I don't know this man that you're talking about. Let me ask you a question. Do you believe that God can do the impossible? Do we really believe it enough? I hope you do. I hope so. See, we serve the living God. God's not dead. He's not sick. He's not weak. God is still God. God is living and God is still alive. It means he's capable of doing anything that he wants to do. Myra's life first was Philippians four and verse 13. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Now, before she passed away in December, 2020, she could do two things. She could feed herself and brush her teeth. That was it. She couldn't dress herself, she couldn't fix her hair. Probably if you had seen her hair, you'd knew that I fixed it. But that's the only two things she could do. But she still loved that verse of scripture. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. I sometimes see that verse kind of mutilated on the internet there because it's not King James. But I just ignore it and go on. Years ago, when I pastored a church down south of Mountain Grove, a woman came to me, she said, pastor, she said, my marriage is hopeless. My husband and I, all we do is fight and fuss and feud, fume at one another. I turned in a Bible to Joel chapter two and verse 25. And the Bible says there, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten, the canker worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent among you. I said, if you'll do what I tell you to do, I said, God will save your marriage. And she said, what is that? Well, she had left with the two kids and moved in with her mom and dad. Her dad was the problem. I'll just tell you right off the bat. I said, you take your children and you call your husband and you go back to him. You can't sell anything living apart. I told him the very same thing. I said, your wife's gonna come home to you. She's bringing the kids. I said, and you need to come to church every time the church doors are open. There's something in that service you're gonna need. And they did exactly what I asked them to do. She moved back home, took the kids back home with her against her dad's wishes. And today they're still married. They have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that's been probably a good 30-some years ago. But you cannot just shun God away, kick Him out, and think that your marriage is going to be all right. God restored their marriage. Number four, Jabez prayed that God would keep him from evil. Now, some people think there that Jabez was asking God to keep him from harm. That's a play on words. His name meant pain. He didn't want to cause any more pain. He wanted to keep from sinning because sinning causes pain. Sin has caused every pain that this world has ever experienced. Just think about it. God told Eve, she would have pain in childbirth. Every one of you women that have had a child knows that. If men were having children, we'd be out of people in a couple of generations. We don't like pain. One woman got a telephone call one day and her friend asked her, what are you doing? She said, well, me and my husband got the flu. She said, what are you doing? She said, I'm in the kitchen doing dishes. He's on the couch moaning. Sounds about right, doesn't it? Sin brings pain to the one who commits it. What King David say? My sin is ever before me. Did he get forgiveness? Yes, he did. But when he woke up of a morning, that sin was right there. He thought about sin with Bathsheba. The daddy thought about the innocent child that died. The daddy thought about Uriah the Hittite, one of his mighty men that he had killed. Sin brings pains in the lives of those who sinned against Bathsheba, the newborn baby, Uriah. Her husband lost his life because of David's sin. But most of all, sin brings pain to God. You want to pain God today? In Noah's day, God saw the wickedness of man. He repented, he made man because man's thoughts were on evil continually. Genesis six, verse five and six. And God saw that the wickedness of man was greater than the earth. And every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and he grieved him at his heart. Grieved, he was hurt. If you ever grieved over anyone, you hurt over somebody. If you've lost a family member, husband, a wife, child, then you have grieved over that individual. So sin brings pain to the heart of God. And if you don't believe that, take a look at the cross. The cross is the instrument of torture. Jesus didn't die with that look of peace upon his face that all these pictures show. He died a torturous death. He was naked. His flesh had been shredded by the whips of the Roman soldiers. He was filthy from the cell where he'd been kept. He was bruised from his beating he had received. The crown of thorns caused rivers of blood, not trickles of blood as you see in the pictures, but rivers of blood to flow down his brow. And then God poured out the sin of all the world on his son. My sin and your sin. My sin, probably the worst sin that he had to bear upon the cross. But the Bible said he became sin. He bore my sin and your sin. Then God separated himself from his son. And Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? You know, it'd be bad for one of you fathers to forsake your children. I've seen fathers walk off from their family, forsake their children, their wife and their sons and their daughters, and seeming like don't think the second thought about it. Psalm 119 and verse 11. The Bible says there, Psalm 119 verse 11, Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. Each time a person sins, it causes pain. It causes pain to the one who sinned, to the one who was sinned against, and it causes pain to Almighty God. I compared sin to like a cancer. Cancer begins to eat away at your life. And if you can't stop it some way, surgery or some kind of treatment, then it'll eventually take your life. Sin will strip you of God's blessings. Sin will destroy your effectiveness. It will tear apart your relationships. Sin will leave you alone. It will leave you beaten. It'll leave you discouraged. What do we need to do as a church? Take hold of the promises of God. Are you willing to pray? There's a song that says, I can pray. When we pray, ask him for the moon. Maybe he'll give us the sun and the stars also. The apostle Paul prayed for the churches he wrote to in the Bible. Jabez prayed that God would bless him, number one. Secondly, he prayed that God would enlarge his coast, number two. Thirdly, he prayed that God would put his hand on him. And number four, he prayed that God would keep him from evil. And the Bible says that God granted him his request. He granted him his request. The song says, you say I'm not able. I'm too young and I'm too old. I can't sing or teach, and no title do I hold. Lord, what can I do? For I want to do my part. I want to help the hurting with all my heart. And the Course says I can pray until the walls come down. I can pray until there's healing all around. I can pray, there's something I can do. I can pray in my secret place. Calling on your name, that's something I can do. I can pray. All of us can pray. I've often said I don't pray very good. I'm not a good prayer person. I've been preaching over 40 years and I still get a little nervous when somebody calls on me to pray. But I'll tell you, it's essential we do. It's essential. That can be great preaching. We got some of the best singing. I don't know where you go to get any better singing than what we have. I'll just be honest with you. I'm not trying to brag on them, I'm just stating the fact. They're good. And they're doing it for the right reason. They're doing it to bring honor and glory to God. But folks, we need to pray. We need to pray. Brother Van, what's the most important thing for people to do for your camp? Pray. Missionaries will say the first thing, they won't ask for money. The first thing they do is say, we need your prayers. We need your prayers. We're out there on that mission field. We're away from home. We need your prayers. Brother Jason, I want to tell you face to face, I'll pray for you every day. I don't know how good my prayers are. I've been to Mexico a couple of times on a short mission trip. You're facing a lot, but you've got a great God. You got a big God that's going with you. He'll go before you. I thank God for that. I thank God that we know that He goes before us. If He's called us to do something, He won't leave us or forsake us. I begin to think about the other preachers here that started preaching. God bless you. God bless you. But I tell you, the devil is going to try to defeat you. He's going to try to defeat you. So pray. Pray one for another. Let's stand this morning, if you will.