My Dear Shepherds,

Back in the 1970s, when we were first married, my wife worked at a bank. One of the services the bank provided its customers was license plates, saving them the hassle of a trip to the DMV. At one point, the state sent a batch of plates that all began with the letters DP. The bank discovered that some older customers wouldn’t have them because after World War II, DP was shorthand for “displaced person” (i.e. a homeless refugee), and they didn’t want to have that stigma tagging their cars.

First and Second Chronicles were written to DPs, Jews who returned to Israel from their shameful Babylonian exile. They came as a people profoundly chastened and diminished by God’s judgment. I think that’s why the Chronicler gave them the miniature, reorienting biography of Jabez, a man who overcame his identity.

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. (1 Chron. 4:9-10)

Jabez’s name meant, “Oh, the Pain” (The Message), a name that must’ve been like a monkey on his back. It also resonated with Israel’s DPs. Pain, or for that matter, success, sin, or fear, can define and confine us or our church to a kind of walled compound. Beyond is the land of God’s promises, all “yes” in Christ, but we haven’t taken what God assigned to us. That changes when we pray. Jabez’s prayer for God’s blessing encompassed three requests, all rooted in God’s covenant with Israel. The New Covenant upgrades that prayer for us.

Let me focus on that first intriguing blessed petition, “enlarge my territory.” Moses had promised Israel a day “when the LORD has enlarged your territory as he promised you” (Deut. 12:20). Jabez was not merely asking God for more acreage for his crops. He was laying claim to that promise and making it his mission.

The New Covenant version of the prayer of Jabez is the prayer of Jesus, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That prayer has vast intentions. Some kingdom frontiers are within us, like a foreboding forest of fear or towering pride. Through prayer, God leads us in to take that ground. Pastors are also responsible to lead our congregations out; for example, to homestead new territories of love for one another or to take the gospel to a place of suffering in our community. But first things first. Pray!

Churches tend to sally forth to invade new territory, mission statement flying like a battle flag, troops in step behind a pastor with a bold vision. But they haven’t prayed anything but the most perfunctory and presumptuous prayers. We reason that if our intentions are biblical, God will surely be with us. But prayer is necessary to enlist and to listen. Prayer is how we armor up and receive the Spirit’s strength, how God schedules and prepares the way ahead of us.

There were dark times when I was deeply depressed by my lack of vision. What kind of leader am I? I have to think of something. We have to go forward someplace! It would have been enough to simply pray as Jabez did. When we pray persistently, with our ear tuned to the Word and Spirit, the territory God has for us will be open before us.

Be ye glad!

Lee Eclov recently retired after 40 years of local pastoral ministry and now focuses on ministry among pastors. He writes a weekly devotional for preachers on Preaching Today.