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Hoosier United Methodist News Archives
| Hoosier United Methodist News |
September 2001 |
Commentary:
A tale of two prayers
By Ken Carter
I first heard about the prayer while visiting family in another state. I had stopped in to see a friend from college who now operates a Christian bookstore.
"You have to read this book! We can't keep it in the store!" he told me enthusiastically.
The title was The Prayer of Jabez, by Bruce Wilkinson and taken from a little known passage in 1 Chron. 4:10. The prayer is simple: "Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, and that your hand would be with me, that you would keep me from evil, and that I might not cause pain" (NKJV).
It is a small book, 92 pages, and I read it over lunch. It was at times inspiring, and at other times convicting. Yet, in reading The Prayer of Jabez, I had the sense that something essential was missing.
A few weeks later, I was able to begin making sense out of my response to this book. By now it had sold 4 million copies. I imagined folks being genuinely helped by the commentary on the prayer. Still, there had to be more. What was missing became apparent to me as I concluded a year of helping teach Disciple Bible Study. At the course's end there is a focus on relationship with God. This relationship is established through a covenant and remembered in Holy Communion. Within the closing service are the following words: "I give myself completely to you, God. Assign me to my place in your creation. Let me suffer for you. Give me the work you would have me do. Give me many tasks, or have me step aside while you call others. Put me forward or humble me. Give me riches or let me live in poverty. I freely give all that I am and all that I have to you ."
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'Our spiritual birthright as people called Methodist was not in the prayer of Jabez.' |
These words of the covenant prayer have been part of our devotional life for almost 250 years. With the advent of Disciple, they have been introduced to more than 1million Methodists meeting in small groups. In saying the words, I realized our spiritual birthright as people called Methodist was not in the prayer of Jabez. Our spiritual heritage is captured in the words of the covenant prayer. They are profoundly biblical and express a radical dependence on God and submission to God's will. They are almost a commentary on a briefer prayer of our Lord: "not what I want, but what you want."
Reading the words of the prayer of Jabez alongside the covenant prayer presents starkly contrasting visions of the Christian life: one is about self-fulfillment, the other self-denial; one is about changing God's mind, the other about submitting to God's purpose; one is in harmony with a culture of acquisition and consumption, the other is in conflict with expanding markets and egos.
By grace, God welcomes all of our prayers. God takes the inadequacy of all of our prayers, hears our true intentions and responds. Paradoxically, God did expand the territory of a group of disciples who were shaped by a prayer that asked for nothing other than to be of service to God's will and purpose.
My appeal to United Methodists is to recover another prayer that has been practiced for 250 years, a prayer that has been transformative to millions of believers across the generations, many of whom know the fulfillment of the covenant prayer's concluding petition: "May this covenant made on earth continue for all eternity."
Last updated on 01/14/2004The Rev. Ken Carter is senior pastor of Mount Tabor UMC in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Commentary provided by United Methodist News Service.