Ordinary or Extraordinary
Ordinary or Extraordinary?
James Merritt
I Chronicles 4:9-10
11-28-04
Introduction
1. I want to get your juices flowing this morning by asking you two questions.
If you had a choice would you want to live an ordinary life or an extraordinary life?
Which do you think God wants for you?
2. I can tell you what Jesus said. He said in John 10:10,
"My purpose is to give life in all its fullness." (John 10:10, NLT)
God wants to make a difference in your life, so that you can make a difference in the lives of others. God wants to work in you, with you, through you and for you to manifest His glory in your life.
3. That statement leads us to a man named, Jabez. Have you ever heard about a man named Jabez? Up until about four years ago, most of us had not and then Bruce Wilkinson wrote a book about this man and more specifically about a few words that he prayed and sold 9 million copies. When you think about it that is amazing!
4. His total biography occupies less than 80 words in English. Yet, in those 80 words we learn how to go from the ordinary to the extraordinary. We learn how to become the cream of the crop.
5. If you would like to learn how to become a speed reader, begin reading the first several chapters of I Chronicles, because it reads like a Hebrew telephone directory. Jabez's name is listed with more than 500 other names in these first few chapters.
6. As you are reading these first several chapters it is like driving on the Autobahn. You can go as fast as you want to go - it doesn't take long. All of a sudden on this interstate highway of names, you hit a speed breaker in verse 9.
"Jabez was more honorable than his brothers." (I Chronicles 4:9, NASB)
Immediately we were told there was something different about Jabez. He was not one of God's favorites, because God doesn't have any favorites, but he was one of God's intimates. Amazingly, Jabez is remembered, not for what he did, but for what he prayed.
7. Now you wouldn't have thought that Jabez would have amounted to very much. His name literally means, "he who gives pain." Come to think of it, I've known more than a few Jabez's in my own life. How would you like to know from the time you were born that your name means to be a pain in the rear?
8. That name tells us something about this man. He evidently came from a very hard background. He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He wasn't educated at a fine university. He had no access to a lot of money, but he was still able to go from the ordinary to the extraordinary because of the three things we learn about him in this prayer. What took him to the top can take you to the top as well.
I. Be Passionate In Your Ambition For Life
1. "Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, 'Oh that You would bless me indeed...'"
(I Chronicles 4:10a, NASB)
That doesn't sound like an extraordinary way to begin a prayer, because we all ask the Lord to bless us. There is a word He adds that we never do. It is the word, "indeed". In the Hebrew language that would be like adding five exclamation points. It would be like writing the request in bold print, capital letters, underlining it and italicizing it.
2. You can learn a lot about a person by the kind of prayer that he prays. We learn that Jabez is not hesitant or bashful to pray not only for God's blessings, but God's best and biggest blessings. There is nothing wrong with praying for success, because that is what success really is - the blessing of God. If you haven't prayed for God to make you successful in what you do, why haven't you? There is nothing wrong with praying for success if you are asking to be successful for the Glory of God. If you can't ask God to bless what you are doing, then you had better start doing something else.
3. To bless in the biblical sense means to ask for a supernatural favor. When you ask for God's blessing, you are not asking for more than what you could get for yourself if you just worked harder. You are asking for something that only God can give.
4. The Bible says,
"It is the Lord's blessing that makes a person rich, and hard work adds nothing to it." (Proverbs 10:22, GWT)
When you seek the blessings of God, it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with God.
5. I want you to notice something about this request for blessing. Jabez left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessing would be. He left the timing of the blessing up to God, the form of the blessing up to God, the content of the blessing up to God, and the method of the blessing up to God.
6. This type of blessing has nothing to do with the popular message that you ought to ask God for Cadillac's, Rolex watches and a six-figure income. All Jabez wanted was what God wanted for Jabez. If you ask God to bless you your way, He won't bless you. You can only ask God to bless you His way.
7. It may surprise you to learn what the biggest obstacle to God's blessing is - we are. There are many of us that think God's abundant blessing is for someone else. I want you to understand, if you are a child of God, you are as much a candidate for God's blessing as anybody else on this planet.
8. Jabez had an ambition to be blessed by God and he was passionate in that ambition. He didn't mind saying, "God I want the best that you have. I am grateful for what I have already, but if you have something more, I want you to give it to me."
9. I know there are some people who would criticize Jabez. They think ambition is wrong. They think it is wrong to want to be great and to do great things. My answer to that is it all depends on why you want to be great and why you want to do great things.
10. If you want to be great so you will have more power, more prestige, more possessions or a better position, then it is wrong. Jeremiah 45:5 says,
"Are you seeking great things for yourself? Don't do it!" (Jeremiah 45:5, NLT)
You should never want to be great for what greatness will do for you, but you should want to be great because of what greatness can do for God. Be passionate in your ambition for life.
II. Be Pointed In Your Approach To Life
1. Jabez goes on to say,
"Enlarge my territory."
(I Chronicles 4:10b,NKJV)
The word for territory literally means "border". In that day a person's border or territory would mark the limit of his influence. Jabez was asking God to give him greater responsibility, more influence, larger opportunities to do something for Him.
2. Jabez evidently looked around at the circumstances of his life and said, "I believe I was born for more than this. I believe God has more for me than this and if He does, I want to get in on it." It breaks my heart to know that there are people who are looking forward to retirement, so they can do less. Jabez wasn't looking to do less. He was looking to do more. He wasn't looking to slow down. He was looking to speed up. In effect, what he was saying was, "Oh God expand my opportunities and my impact in such a way that I can touch more lives for your glory and do more for your honor."
3. This was not a selfish prayer. This is so important to understand. Jabez did not want more - just to have more. He wanted to have more so that he could do more. He did not want to get to keep. He wanted to get to give. He wanted more, so he could do more for the Glory of God.
4. The reason why I left a church that I pastored almost 18 years, a good church, a church full of wonderful people, a church that I loved, a church where I could have easily spent the rest of my life and came here is because I really believed, here, I could enlarge my territory. Here I could have a greater impact. Here in the long run, I could reach even more people for Christ.
5. I am convinced that too many churches and too many Christians live under a cloud of complacency and sleep in a cocoon of comfort. They are satisfied with walking when they could be running. They are satisfied with running when they could be flying. I pray God will never let me get there in my life.
6. I read a story one time about an Indian who found an eagle's egg and put that egg into the nest of a little prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with that brood of prairie chickens and grew up with them.
7. All of his life, this eagle thinking that he was a prairie chicken did what the prairie chickens did. He scratched in the dirt for seed. He clucked and cackled. He would never fly more than a few feet off of the ground because that is how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.
8. Years passed and this eagle grew very old. One day, he saw one of the most magnificent birds he had ever seen in his life. There in the cloudless sky, hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, this bird soared with scarcely a beat of those strong golden wings.
9. He thought to himself, "What a beautiful bird!" The eagle said to one of his prairie chicken brothers, "What is that bird?" The prairie chicken replied, "Oh, that is an eagle. He is the chief of all birds, but don't even give him a second thought. You could never be like him." So this eagle never gave it another thought and he died thinking he was a prairie chicken.
10. One of the biggest problems today with teenagers is they want to be a part of the "in" crowd. They want to be accepted by the group and I certainly understand that. We all felt that way, but I would like to say a word to all of our young people. Eagles don't fly in flocks or formations. They don't depend on a group for their existence or their esteem. Geese fly in flocks and ducks fly in formation, but God hasn't called us to be geese or ducks. God has called us to be eagles. Flying alone if we have to, but always soaring above the level of mediocrity.
11. Put simply, we do not need to pray for tasks equal to our powers. We need to pray for powers equal to our tasks and that is exactly what Jabez did.
III. Be Purposeful In Your Aim In Life
1. Jabez continued saying, "And that Your hand might be with me". Think about that. Jabez realized something very important. The blessor is more important than the blessing. When you start seeking the blessings of God, you have to remember that with them, you must seek God in the blessing.
2. Why? Otherwise, you won't be able to handle the blessings that God gives you. Did you know that success is more dangerous than failure? Think about this - failure never went to anybody's head.
3. It finally hit Jabez - if God answers my prayer and God blesses me and God enlarges my territory and God gives me even more responsibility and more opportunity, His hand had better be on my life or I won't be able to handle it all.
4. This was in effect, his declaration of dependence, because independence says, "Keep your hands off me!" Dependence says, "Keep your hands on me!"
5. Jabez realized he could never manage the bigness of the blessing and the extended borders he had prayed for unless the hand of God was with him. There is nothing you cannot handle if the hand of the Lord is with you. There is no problem you cannot solve and no circumstance you cannot face if the hand of the Lord is with you.
6. He finally prays this,
"And You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!"
(I Chronicles 4:10, NKJV)
What a wise way to end this prayer. Jabez knew that the more you do for God and the more God does through you, the higher ambition you have and the more achievement and advancement that comes your way, the more you are being set up for the devil to tempt you, trip you, and trap you.
7. This part of the prayer tells me just how mature and godly Jabez really was. What he said in effect was, "God bless me, enlarge me, lead me, fill me, give me more, but keep me humble and keep me holy."
8. Too often, we pray for strength to endure temptation, but we don't think to ask God to keep us away from temptation. That is exactly what Jesus told us to pray,
"And do not lead us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."
(Matthew 6:13, NJKV)
9. The reason this is so important it is the one thing that can reverse the process and take you from the extraordinary to the ordinary is sin. Samson is a great example. From the time he was born, he was intended by God to be extraordinary, but if you know the old story, sin took away his supernatural strength and made him just one of the boys.
10. Years ago there was a full page magazine ad that depicted a Roman gladiator in big trouble. Somehow, he had dropped his sword and an enraged lion seeing its opportunity is in mid-dash lunge, jaws wide, ready to kill this gladiator. The crowd in the colosseum is on its feet, watching in horror as the panic stricken gladiator tries to flee. The caption at the bottom of the ad reads, "Sometimes you can afford to come in second. Sometimes you can't."
11. You can't afford to come in second when you fight temptation. The most important strategy for defeating that roaring lion, the Bible calls the devil is to stay out of the colosseum to begin with.
12. You can go from the ordinary to the extraordinary if your motives are right and if your heart is pure and if it is all about God and not about you.
13. A wise man was talking to a relatively young man and he asked him the question, "What do you want to do with your life?" The young man said, "Well, I want to go to college." The wise man said, "Well, what then?" He said, "Then I want to go to Law School and get a law degree." The wise man said, "What then?"
14. He said, "I want to become an attorney and have a successful law practice." The man said, "What then?" He said, "I want to get married and have children and build a beautiful home." The man said, "What then?"
15. The man said, "Well, I want to have grandchildren and live to be a ripe old age." The man said, "But what then?" He said, "Then I would like to retire and just take it easy and enjoy the fruits of my labor." The man said, "What then?" He said, "Then I guess I'll just die." The man said, "What then?" You can go from the ordinary to the extraordinary, but it really won't matter at all in the long run, nor in eternity, if you don't do it for God and with God.
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: The text contained in this database is protected by copyright and International Law, and is solely owned by its authors. The reproduction, or distribution of this product, or any portion of it, without the expressed written authorization from the contributing authors is forbidden. Remember, this database is to inspire the development of new messages to further the Kingdom's work.