Eyes UP
LIFE GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE #4
EYES UP (WEEK 4) (ONE Service)
1 Chronicles 4:9-10
10/2/2016
MAIN POINT
We should regularly and fervently pray according to God’s Word and God’s Will.
INTRODUCTION
“Prayer is not our will being done in heaven but God’s will being done in us.” Jabez
prayed passionately, persistently, and according to God’s purpose. He asked for
supernatural favor – what only God could do – for the glory of God. We should
regularly and fervently pray according to God’s Word for His will to be accomplished
through our lives. Our purpose must always be to make the Lord’s Name (not ours)
great within our spheres of influence.
OPENING QUESTIONS
Have you ever been in a situation where you were certain that you were living out
God’s plan for your life, but you began to question the plan?
Remember Isaiah 55:9 – God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher
than our thoughts – what does that mean for us practically as we live out our lives?
It’s been said that the 2 most important elements of prayer are that we: (1) pray
according to GOD’S WORD, and (2) pray according to GOD’S WILL. What do you
think it means to pray according to God’s Word? God’s will?
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
READ 1 CHRONICLES 4:9-10 (Prayer of Jabez)
After reading the prayer, what are your initial thoughts/reactions?
What does verse 9 tell us about Jabez?
READ PSALMS 1:1-2
What do these verses teach us about the kind of person God blesses?
1 Chron. 4:10 says that “Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh that You would
bless me indeed…” Is it wrong to pray for God’s blessing? Why or why not?
READ JAMES 4:2-3
What do these verses teach us?
What else did Jabez pray for? What does it mean that he asked for God to “enlarge
his territory”? For what purpose did he ask that God do this?
God granted Jabez’s requests according to verse 10 – does God always grant us
exactly what we request?
DISCUSS THIS STATEMENT:
“Prayer is not our will being done in heaven; prayer is God’s will being done in us and
through us on earth.”
APPLICATION QUESTIONS
Do you think we should use Jabez’s prayer as a model for how to approach God with
our requests? If so, how do we ensure that we are asking according to God’s Word
and God’s will? If not, why not?
How can we specifically apply Pastor Heath’s message and the truths that we
discussed from 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 this week? How can we intentionally help each
other in this effort?
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COMMENTARY
A key theme in this passage is that God answers the heartfelt prayer of honorable
people who are truly seeking after Him. Bruce Wilkinson in his short book called The
Prayer of Jabez describes what happens when we pray expectantly for God-sized
requests according to God’s will, “Your spiritual expectations undergo a radical shift,
though it might be only slightly apparent to someone else. You feel renewed
confidence in the present-tense power and reality of your prayers because you know
you’re praying in the will and pleasure of God (emphasis added). You sense in the
deepest recesses of your being the rightness of praying like this. You know beyond a
doubt that you were redeemed for this: to ask Him for the God-sized best He has in
mind for you, and to ask for it with all your heart.”
Key to understanding how to pray like Jabez is to see what kind of man Jabez was and
that his heart was honorable in God’s sight. Psalm 1 lays out for us the type of man
that is blessed by God: (1) walks not in the counsel of the wicked; (2) does not sit in
the seat of scoffers; and (3) his delight is in the law of the Lord and on God’s law he
meditates day and night. It’s important to understand the prayer of Jabez in light of
these truths from Psalm 1 as well as the principles found in James 4:2-3. We must not
ask with wrong motives. The closer we draw to God – His desires become our desires.
From the context, it appears that Jabez wanted more so that he could do more for the
glory of God. The word for “territory” literally means “border” – he asked that God
would expand his borders. And adding the word “indeed” (bless me indeed) was like
adding exclamation points or writing the request in capital letters. In essence, Jabez
was saying “bless me a lot!” But again, the key to why Jabez can ask for abundant
blessings with confidence was that he maintained a right relationship with God. He
asked according to God’s Word and according to God’s will.
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