Days 13 & 14: 1 & 2 Chronicles

I confess that I am kind of at a loss when it comes to 1 & 2 Chronicles. Much of what is in these two books is a repeat of the same events that were narrated in 1 & 2 Kings...but here goes anyway:

Why "The Prayer of Jabez" is Flawed...

At the beginning of 1 Chronicles, in the midst of an exceedingly tedious listing of name after name, lies the now-famous "prayer of Jabez" - about which Bruce Wilkinson wrote a little book that became a phenomenon. It became the poster-child for the "name it, claim it" way of thinking.

The logic went like this - Jabez prayed that God would bless him and expand his territory, and God did. Ergo, if we pray for those things, God will do them for us. Makes sense, right?

There is, however, one major problem with this way of thinking that occurred to me as I slogged through those genealogies last night - Wilkinson and other Jabez prayer aficionados have made a big jump from "occasional" to "universal." In other words, they look at the story of Jabez, which merely says that God answered Jabez' prayer, and they assume that what God did on that particular occasion is universally applicable.

What, then, are we to do with those times when people pray for God to bless them and expand their territory and it did not happen?

I think it is important for anyone who reads the Bible to take care not to jump too quickly from an occasion of God's power to a universal "law" of God's power.