Prayer Changes Situations, Changes Destinies

I want to continue with this series of messages. We have been talking about the power of prayer to bring change, and I believe that our service has been a demonstration of the power prayer has to intervene in different situations in life.

When we are beginning our journey, like these young married couples, we believe that God is powerful to bless through the prayers of God’s people. When there are losses too painful even to comprehend at times, we believe that God can also be there. When a community is in a time of transition, as with this election of the new superintendent of schools, we believe that God can intervene there as well, and the Church moves under the wind and energy of prayer and trust in the Power of God.

Last Sunday we spoke about the importance of living lives of prayer, of making prayer a way of life, of praying without ceasing, of praying continually; that when we are going through difficult and persistent situations, when there are processes in our lives that do not respond to a quick prayer, we must persist continually in prayer.

Prayer must permeate every process we go through. We are a people, as that chorus Jessie sings says: “We are among those who believe that through the Power of God barriers can be broken.” Walls can be torn down, impenetrable areas can be penetrated, giants in our lives can be beheaded; prayer changes destinies.

And we have also devoted time to the idea that there are truths in Scripture, teachings in the Word of God, that it is important to know and use as the basis and foundation of everything we do. I believe in the truths; I believe in the principles of the Word of the Lord.

But I have also told you that there are times when we need to come directly to the heavenly Father so that He may minister to us through His Spirit, and that is where prayer is irreplaceable. When everything else fails and we do not have the answer, we can come before God so that He may sovereignly change the circumstance, so that He may work within the very circumstance of life and turn our ship, which is heading toward an abyss, 180 degrees and bring it to a safe harbor.

We must be a people of prayer, and of all the things we should remember, this is one: prayer changes situations; it changes destinies. And I want to use the example of a prayer that changed a destiny, a prayer that changed a life. Remember that we have used cases and examples that illustrate the truths we have presented.

And in the Bible there is a character whom I have always loved as an example of faith and of prayer that changed a condition that seemed unchangeable. This was a man who was born under a dark and gloomy sign. His very birth was painful and sad, and this man grew up carrying a burden, a stone that he dragged along every day of his life, and even his name reminded him of his painful origins.

But one day something happened inside this man that inspired him to speak directly with God. And in a very brief prayer, inspired by the Holy Spirit, this man touched the heart of God, reached the Throne of God’s Grace, and the Bible says that this prayer completely changed his life, changed his destiny. And I want us to look at this man’s condition and the prayer he declared before the Lord, and to use that prayer as a model for our own prayers, to change those painful situations we are experiencing in our lives.

It may be a situation like that of one of these families we have blessed this afternoon, or there may simply be something else, another situation in your life, but I encourage you to believe that through your prayer, if you manage to enter the Presence of God through your prayer, God can also change the situation in which you find yourself.

I am referring—perhaps some of you already know whom I mean, not because you heard the sermon this morning but because you know—I am referring to Jabez. Jabez is a character who is like a comet that crosses the firmament for an instant and then disappears, but that moment illuminates the entire firmament. There are only two verses in Scripture that speak about this character, but they are two verses filled with teaching for us, and they are found in 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, verses 9 and 10.

What is interesting about this character is that he is surrounded by what seems like a desert of names. You know those lists of names in Scripture: so-and-so begot so-and-so, and so-and-so begot another, and the other begot this one; and they are passages we rush through at a hundred miles an hour because we say, “This says nothing. This is simply something that is there just to keep a record, but it has no teaching in it.”

Nevertheless, in that endless list of names, where the names of the descendants of Judah—one of the twelve sons of the tribes of Israel, right?—are being specifically listed, this name appears among the sons of Judah and their descendants.

And let me read verses 7 and 8 so that you can see how different this is—verses 9 and 10: “The sons of Helah: Zereth, Izhar, and Ethnan. And Koz begot Anub and Zobebah, and the family of Aharhel, son of Harum.” But then it stops there and says: “And Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.” Suddenly it singles Jabez out, and that is why it separates him from that endless list: “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called him Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’” That is why they called him Jabez, because he was born through a painful and sorrowful delivery.

But then, in verse 10—and we do not know how much time passes between verse 9 and verse 10; I assume that many years pass and that this is possibly a young man in his twenties or thirties, who knows?—in a moment of desperation, he does the following: “And Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my territory, and that Your Hand would be with me, and that You would deliver me from evil so that it would not harm me.’ And God granted him what he requested.” How beautiful. Two verses, and yet they are filled with great blessing.

And I want to apply this—because I have preached this sermon in previous years—but I want to apply it to how to come out of painful situations, how to come out of spiritual dead ends, how to come out of conditions in our lives that mark us and seem to destine us for a life of suffering and loss. There are entire families and generations in our community that are born like Jabez, under a sign of pain. There are families riddled with illness from generation to generation: cancer, divorce, incest, alcoholism; there are different kinds of afflictions, and if you look at much of our community, if you look at the generations of grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and descendants, they are families riddled with different kinds of difficult situations. And yet, when they come to know the Lord, there can be a change; something can begin to change through the Power of God, which begins to heal a family, begins to heal a lineage.

And I encourage you, my brothers and sisters, if you belong to one of those families that has lived under poverty for generations or under some sign of failure, believe that you can be the defining point that changes that destiny and that you can be the beginning of a blessed family and a blessed lineage. Or if your life has been marked by suffering, sadness, and pain, believe that God can do something different; rebel against a life lived under a sign of darkness and sadness.

The prayer of Jabez speaks to us about the importance of the Holy Spirit’s direct ministry in a circumstance, because prayer and God’s ministry have the power to transform our feelings and our bondages if we believe. God can work directly and sovereignly upon our wounds and our emotions, upon our circumstances, miraculously change our attitudes, and launch us in a new direction.

The story of Jabez proves this, because Jabez’s destiny was negative, but his prayer changed the course of his life. Without realizing it, Jabez’s mother condemned him to a life of suffering and pain. The very name Jabez means pain in Hebrew; through a play on the Hebrew words oseb and Jabez, which does not translate well into Spanish, the word Jabez means “pain,” and his mother wanted to mark his birth as sorrowful.

Jabez’s very birth was a birth of pain, a painful birth; his mother almost died because of his birth. That is to say, from birth he was already marked with a sign of pain, and his mother, who did not understand spiritual things, gave him a name that, in a sense, condemned him.

And what one understands from Scripture is that Jabez lived with that pain, and that is why the Bible singles him out in two verses. One of them is devoted to pointing out the fact that he was born in pain and that his mother gave him a name that meant pain, and that then a moment came in his life when he wanted to change that situation.

And at the end he speaks of God delivering him from evil so that it will not harm him, and the translation in English, for example, says: “Keep me from evil so that I may not cause pain, so may I not suffer pain.” At the end, what it says, “so that it will not harm me,” conveys the idea “so that it will not cause me pain.” In other words, this painful and sorrowful situation was part of his very identity, and Jabez had been marked by it.

And the first thing I want to tell you is this: the importance of words. This mother did not understand the power a word has, and she marked her son’s destiny with pain, because every time people called him by name, it was as though they were reinforcing his painful situation. And as Christians, we must always be very careful with the words that come out of our mouths—first of all, with respect to our children. Brothers and sisters, let us make a habit of praying with them, encouraging them, inspiring them, spurring them on with visions of what they can do, telling them that they are good and intelligent and that God has a good destiny for them, that they can study. Invest in your children and declare blessing over them; pray with them and declare God’s blessing.

I know that when our daughters were very little, Meche prayed Aaron’s priestly blessing every night, and those girls depended on their mother’s prayer every night. And now, thanks to the Lord, they have been able to continue that chain of blessing. But Meche sensed the importance of blessing, the power of blessing. Let us bless our children, and in our minds let us envision them as successful, as open to God’s blessing and good Will in their lives.

And the second thing is the importance of words. The Bible says that the power of life and death is in the tongue; the tongue has the power to bless or to curse, you know? And what you confess with your mouth has the power to rebound and come back to you. If you are a person whose words and conversation are negative, or if you often hold back positive words because you have a somewhat gloomy or sour temperament, or are cynical about blessings, train your mouth to speak good things.

For example, with all this cold and snow, I acknowledge it, but I also try to say: “But God is powerful, and how good it is that we are well, and spring is on its way, and there is hope!” Because otherwise we will keep cursing the blessed winter, and winter will not want to leave. I believe that we must also say positive things and expect good things from God, because the mouth has tremendous power. The names we give to life, the conversations we have, the things we confess with our mouths—always remember that words have great power.

When this mother named her son, and every time people called him “Pain” or “Sorrowful”—and I do not know how the concept of pain was incorporated into the Hebrew—but we must be very careful with these things, because evidently Jabez grew up with this; his name condemned him to a painful and negative life.

But the other thing it says here is that Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. I looked up the word “honorable” because I found it intriguing and significant, and I also looked it up in the original Hebrew. The word translated into Spanish as “illustrious” is “kabad” in Hebrew. Kabad is a word that refers to something heavy, something that has weight.

And the idea is that Jabez had more substance than his other brothers. Jabez had more substance, more weight in that sense. You know that the Spanish word aplomo, “poise,” conveys the idea of lead, plomo, but it also conveys the idea of a poised, substantial person who carries himself with confidence. The idea is that Jabez—his personality, his person—had something different from his other brothers, and that is why he stood out in the midst of this list; he emerged as... An illustrious person is someone who—the word “illustrious” conveys the idea of light. Jabez shone among his other brothers; he had substance.

And I believe this was what was in him, in his heart and in his character, that enabled him to express such a distinctive prayer. Because think about this: I imagine that the reason Jabez’s name is mentioned as well is that, if Jabez’s prayer had remained private and had simply been something he said there in secret, without any greater impact, perhaps there would have been no reason to mention him. I believe Jabez became a truly outstanding man in his community. A prosperous man, perhaps a businessman, perhaps a man who had many children and a large family and was renowned in his community, perhaps a great spiritual teacher—we do not know—but it says that God granted him what he requested, which means that the blessings Jabez asked of God were fulfilled and Jabez became a man of great influence in his community.

And so this leads me to think of something, namely, that this sense of substance and weight probably came to him, ironically, through the pain he suffered in his life. Do you know that there are children who are sometimes a little sickly and delicate but grow up to be great men and women of God? Because instead of being out there with the other kids playing ball and doing athletic things, they devote themselves to reading or music, or to philosophical reflection and study, and they become people of great renown even though the other kids used to make fun of them and all that; but their delicateness and frailty led them to orient their lives toward another dimension that, once one becomes an adult, is a dimension that pays many dividends.

And so I think that Jabez, because of his sadness and his somewhat lonely and sad childhood, became a spiritual man, a man of principles, a man of deep thought, a man concerned about the important things in life.

So that is important to me because I believe there are situations in life that, although painful, redeem us and enable us to understand a dimension we otherwise would not understand. Perhaps the pain itself, paradoxically, prepared him for that moment of blessing and definition.

Many times, life’s tragedies create in us the character and weight, and the disposition to do and conceive great and exceptional things. Pain can be one of God’s great fertilizers, and I encourage those families who are going through these painful moments perhaps to enter into their pain and use it as an ally to reach another spiritual level, because I say that pain either makes you bitter or makes you sweet; pain either hardens you or equips you—it all depends on how you receive it. And the key is not to rebel against the pain, not to let the pain make you bitter, not to resist it, but to let it pass through you and use your tears and your sadness to come and pour them out before the Lord, and to ask the Lord to bring you out, in His time, renewed and strengthened—and He does.

All these teachings we have had over these past few months are directed toward that fact: pain can come to anyone; even those of us who love God the most, who serve the Lord the most, and who give the most to the Kingdom of God can go through terrible and sorrowful experiences, because no one is exempt. This world is a fallen world, and it is a world filled with evil, and we have an enemy who inhabits this world and wants to kill, steal, and destroy.

And yet God has guaranteed that the children of God will always come through all our trials and all our difficulties successfully, and He has made sure that what destroys others makes us stronger. That is why it says: “All things work together for good”—tribulation, anguish, hunger, nakedness, danger, or sword—God uses all these things to bring us through. Believe that your pain can be used by God to prepare the platform for your leap toward greatness and spirituality.

Jabez, in the sadness of his childhood, when people would look at him and say, “Wow, what a pity about this little boy; look at how he was born, look at his childhood, so gloomy and lonely,” but I imagine Jabez would go out into the countryside and think while looking at the stars or at a little bird, or watching water flow in a stream, and Jabez would think about deep and powerful things while also reflecting on his sadness, on how he wanted to be popular among the children too and all that; but God was using that background to prepare for Himself a special man, a powerful man.

And then a moment came when something came out of Jabez—something of greatness; that greatness he possessed, that noble heart being formed within him, guided him toward a prayer that was like a pressure bursting forth from his very depths.

And I see in this prayer some key elements that we must not overlook. Number one: Jabez’s “Oh.” I have always been captivated by, “Oh, that You would bless me.” I believe our prayers should always have an “oh” somewhere, because remember that I have said our prayers must be specific, they must be passionate, they must be intense. God loves people who approach Him with a sense of urgency—people who have measured their prayers, people who have simmered their prayers over low heat, people who, by praying again and again for the same request, have come to desire it desperately.

The Bible is full of people who offered desperate prayers like that “oh” of Jabez. One of them, Hannah, wanted a son; she was barren and desired a son more than anything in life. It says that one day she approached the sanctuary, and she had so many tears and so much anguish that the elder, the high priest, thought she was drunk. And it is true—she was drunk; she was drunk with pain, she was drunk with desperation. And she poured out her soul before God, and she left there with the Word of God; and not only did she have a son, but that son was not just any son: he was the prophet Samuel, and other children came along with him as well.

I remember the friends of the paralytic. Desperate for the Lord to intervene, they broke through the roof, lowered their paralytic, and the Lord said, “Wow, what great faith you have,” and healed him. The woman with the flow of blood pushed her way through the crowd, breaking the law, touched Jesus’ garment, and stole power from Him, and she left healed. The Syrophoenician woman with her demon-possessed daughter came before the Lord; the Lord almost insulted her with a word—He was testing her—but she persisted in her request and left there with her daughter healed from a demon at a distance. God believes in desperate prayers.

And I sometimes believe that our problem is that our need is not intense enough at times, and that God needs us to cultivate our pain, in a sense, you know, and to reach a point where our prayer is like a fireball that shoots forth and reaches the Throne of God. Prayer requires passion, and until we reach that level of commitment to our dreams and our passions, we cannot receive anything from God.

I believe the problem with many Christians is that they do not dream enough, they do not conceive enough great things in their minds, they do not daydream, they do not visualize what they desire. You have to give a name and an address, and a surname, and specificity to the things you ask of the Lord; be specific in your prayers to the Lord.

And I believe that Jabez’s “oh” suggests that we must envision an alternative for our lives. Jabez’s “oh” suggests that he was not content with his condition; he wanted a change, he was tired of living under a sign of negativity. It is important for us to rebel against our situation and determine to change it once and for all, and for a moment to come when we say, “That’s it! This is as far as it goes! I am going to present myself before God.”

In his expression there is a vision of something new, there are dreams, there is the consideration of a different life. And what is interesting is that Jabez, instead of continuing to complain about his situation, turned to the Lord and brought his case directly before God. How important it is for us to pray when we have needs in our lives. How important it is for us to present our petitions before the Lord with all prayer and supplication.

There are four petitions, four things that Jabez asked for, and I want to go through them quickly. The first thing he said was, “That You would bless me”; he asked for blessing. Second is the key phrase, “and that You would enlarge my territory”—enlargement. Third, “that Your Hand would be with me”; there I would say the hand, the term the Hand of God. And fourth, “and that You would deliver me from evil”—deliver us from evil; here “evil” is the key word.

These four things—“blessing,” “enlarge,” “hand,” and “evil”—are four things that we should always keep in mind in our lives and in our relationship with God.

Look at the first: “That You would bless me.” I believe Jabez was asking for something general for his life. It was as if he were saying, “Lord, if only my life were under the sign not of the pain and sadness of my past, but under the sign of prosperity, well-being, and Your good Will; if only the wind of Your blessing were behind the sails of my boat all the days of my life, and everything I undertook bore, as it were, that seal of approval from You.”

Do you know that we have the right—and I even believe we have the obligation as children of God—to expect blessing in our lives and to ask the Lord for blessing? Brother, if you do not expect blessing in your life, you will not receive it. I do not know about you, but I live in love with God’s blessing, and I believe that my life is blessed, will be blessed, and has been blessed, and I want you to have that same desire. Do not allow anyone to kill your hope in God’s blessing upon your life, because I believe that blessing is a reality.

I could spend entire days here pointing out how God’s blessing has followed me all the days of my life. The psalmist David says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want, and the blessing of the Lord will follow me all the days of my life.” Ask the Lord that your whole life and everything you undertake may be under that seal, because there is a right there.

Many people want to take that idea away from Christians, saying, “Oh, this is prosperity preaching.” No. God calls us to prosper; God calls us to be blessed. Of course, times of pain may come in that process, but I believe that the net balance, when you combine the pain, the losses, the blessings, and the gains, is that in the end the child of God has a very positive net balance of blessing. And those sad moments and losses are simply the colors that make God’s blessings stand out even more, because without contrast there is only monotony; contrast is needed so that there can be clarity.

Look at what the Lord says to the Hebrews in Deuteronomy chapter 28: “If you diligently obey the Voice of the Lord your God, and observe and put into practice all His commandments that I prescribe to you today, then the Lord your God will exalt you above all the nations of the Earth, and all these blessings will come upon you and overtake you.” It is as though God throws blessings at you, and those blessings chase you until they catch up with you. God’s blessing is behind you, my brother; the hound of God’s blessing will follow you all the days of your life.

It says, “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed in the country—glory to the Lord. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, the fruit of your livestock, the offspring of your cattle, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading trough.” These were blessings addressed to an agricultural people. Today God would say: Blessed is your ATM and your bank account; blessed shall be your going out and your coming in; blessed shall you be at the university and at home; blessed shall you be when you wash the dishes and when you lie down to sleep, when you go out in your car and when you return home, when you are enjoying time with your family at home or when you are at work—God’s blessing will follow you.

When you have a chance, read Deuteronomy 28 and see what happens when a man or a woman pleases the Lord, and you will see that what the Bible tells us is that when—well, I do not know about others, but I have certainly had my share of pain in life, yet I can also say that this Word has been fulfilled in my life and in the life of my family; there is blessing. My ministry and everything else—God has been a God who has fulfilled His promise, so do not stop believing that.

Psalm 128, I believe it is, also has words of strength for us, because it is important: “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord and walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you; your wife shall be like a fruitful vine along the sides of your house, your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, thus shall the man or woman who fears the Lord be blessed.”

The Bible is full of these words of blessing, and that is what Jabez asked of Him. I believe blessing depends on two things. Number one: that we obey God; that is what it says there, right? We have to love God, include Him in our lives, prefer God above all things, be obedient in everything we can, and love Him above all things. That is very important, because wherever you see a promise, you also see that condition.

Where is your heart toward God? Do you love God above all things? Can you say that the Kingdom of God is your priority? If you live that way, I believe you have the right to expect a blessed life, and that was what Jabez asked of the Lord: Father, bless me; apart from all the specific things, give me Your blessing.

Second: “If You would enlarge my territory.” This is blessing, but even more specific. To me, what Jabez is asking for here is material blessing, prosperity, influence—that God would expand him. Perhaps Jabez was living in poverty; perhaps Jabez was without human companionship, lonely; perhaps Jabez was an anonymous person in his community. But he asked the Lord: Father, expand my territory; give me land, but not only physical land. Rather, Lord, help me dwell in something different; get me out of this rut, bring me out of anonymity, and bring me into a larger space for my life.

My brother, I believe that as Christians we must always be looking toward the next horizon. If you have reached a moment of success in your life, well, give thanks to the Lord, but from there, from that height, look toward a more distant land that you can reach as well. That does not mean you are selfish or anything like that; it means that is your right.

The image that comes to my mind is that of Abraham when he is with his nephew Lot, and after Lot leaves, God says to Abraham: “Abraham, look south, look north, look east, and look west. All that land you see around you, I give it to you.” And later He said the same thing to his descendant Joshua: “I have given you every place on which the sole of your foot treads.”

And brothers and sisters, we must live with the expectation of occupying larger spaces. I believe that God still has greater things for our church. You always see us building; it is not because we are obsessed with buildings, but because God calls us to expand and grow and do greater things.

The moment a church becomes stuck in a routine, it dies, you know? The moment your marriage remains where it is and the two of you are not seeking greater intimacy, greater companionship, and other things to do in your life, that is when monotony sets in and death comes. Those young couples who were up here, do not settle merely for what you saw in your parents—glory to God if they were a blessing, but no. You have the right to aspire to have better marriages than your parents, to have better children, to be a greater blessing, and to honor your parents through the greater achievements you are going to attain. Do you understand?

We Christians must be better than our ancestors. Ten years from now, our church must be more blessed than it is today. Our ministries, our fatherhood and motherhood, our understanding of the Word of God—we must always be seeking something more, reading new things, exploring new paths, developing new habits, enlarging our territory.

What does Isaiah chapter 54 say, one of my favorite passages as well, which I use as a motto for my life? “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your dwellings be stretched out; do not hold back. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes, for you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit nations and inhabit the desolate cities.”

Latino community, and all of you here from other nationalities: let us not settle for the space our ancestors inhabited; let us not settle for bad habits and limitations. Let us aspire to greater things, aspire to greater achievements, and invest. There is nothing wrong with asking God to enlarge your territory.

The third thing Jabez asks of the Lord is: “And if Your Hand were with me.” When I think of a hand—the Hand of God—I think of the Power of God over his life. Jabez was asking for the Power of God to be with him, for divine energy to be with him. Do you know that the Bible speaks of God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm? On many occasions, when the Word refers to the Power of God, it speaks of His Hand—for example, when it says that God brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

And Jabez, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was asking for the Power of God to rest upon his life. And brothers and sisters, as Christians we must be people with an appetite for the Power of God. I encourage you to be people hungry for power—but the Power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ told the disciples: “Do not leave Jerusalem until you receive power from on high,” because they already had the teaching the Lord had given them, they had experiences with the Lord, and they had seen great things, but they needed authority and power in their own lives. And that came through the anointing and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I encourage all my brothers and sisters, when your energy is waning, when your enthusiasm for the things of the Lord is waning, to go directly to God’s altar and spend some time in prayer, and not get up until you feel that you have received renewal.

This morning I was talking with a brother whom I love very much, and he was telling me about his need for something different in his life. I told him: Look, set aside some time, set aside half a day, go off by yourself, and seek an encounter with God. Fast, pray, cry out, worship. Because in the Christian life we need power and authority in order to prosper; good intentions alone are not enough, right? We need the raw Power of God. Sometimes we need the power to break patterns of poverty and stagnation in our spiritual lives. We are a Pentecostal church; we are a church that believes we come to the altar and God does things. We are not content simply to remain back there in our seats. We believe that we must wage war, that powerful things must be done, that we must be filled with God’s authority, that we must have an experience with the Holy Spirit, and that we must use the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The people of God are a people oriented toward matters of power. I encourage you to have that experience of encountering God in your life.

I have been talking with the pastoral team, and I want to take this opportunity to say this: I have been building momentum, as it were, and for various reasons it has not been possible, but I publicly commit myself here before the Lord, because God has placed it on my heart to invite a group of you to form a pilot group. I want to spend about three or four Sundays up there on the fourth floor. And my main problem right now, I confess, is how to identify those people. But I see many of you here who are new to the faith, and I believe you are the first in your families and in your generations to seek the Lord and attend a Christian church, whether up there in the balconies or down here.

And I believe that one of the solutions God has for us is this: many people come to church again and again and again, and they come and receive from the Word and all of this, but they need a face-to-face encounter with the Holy Spirit; they need the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And what I want to do—and I hope I can manage this, because I will probably have to miss the 9:00 service for two or three Sundays—is go up there to the fourth floor with you and spend about three or four Sundays exploring this dimension of power in the Christian life. Along with other brothers and sisters who have had that experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I want to help you with that aspect of the Christian life and seal you with that experience. I believe that will transform your lives.

Because many times we come to church, and we come and come, but our minds are dull and coarse. What the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Spirit do is open us to the Power of God and inject spiritual steroids and vitamins into our spirits. I commit myself before the Lord to do that very, very soon. Help me, and pray about it, because I know this will transform our church, and in the future we want to do it two or three times a year. But I am calling myself out, because sometimes so many obstacles arise in the Christian life that prevent this from being done. Yet I believe that for many of you, the solution for your spiritual growth, for getting out of the rut and entering a new dimension, is the Holy Spirit in your lives.

So, with the Lord’s help, at the next pastoral team meeting on Wednesday, please, I beg you, let us see how we can finally put this disgrace behind us and get to work on it, because I feel that God is hounding me to make sure we do this—and do it well.

So I believe that was what Jabez asked of the Lord: If Your Hand, if Your Power, if Your active favor were with me. We need that in order to live powerful lives in God. And the last thing is, it says, “If You would deliver me from evil so that it does not harm me.” What is evil? The devil, demons, the forces of evil, the demonic that seeks to do harm in our lives. And I believe that is where the importance of spiritual warfare comes in.

In our lives, we need to know that Satan is real and that this is why holiness is so important in the Christian life: because it is a defense against evil. We need to know how to rebuke Satan, declare God’s active blessing over our marriages and our homes, and stand firm when the enemy seeks to come and destroy our marriages. When he comes to sow doubt and depression in our hearts, we must understand what is happening, denounce Satan, and declare God’s blessing over our lives. In our next sermon, we will speak specifically about the importance of spiritual warfare.

What Jabez was asking was for the Lord to deliver him from the demonic force that sought to destroy his life and had done so much damage in his life. He said: Lord, keep me from evil so that it does not cause me pain, so that it does not harm me. And you know that when you ask for the Lord’s blessing, many times, when God is doing great things in your life, the trial will come as well. Many times, when God is beginning to work in us, that is when we most need to be alert, because the enemy will seek to do something to take your eyes off God’s blessing.

That is why the Word of the Lord says, right? “Let us be sober and vigilant, because our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” I believe that God wants to bless you. God wants to do great things in your life, but you must cover the doorframe of your house with the blood of the Lamb so that the angel of death cannot enter your house, so that it passes over, as it passed over the Hebrews in Egypt, and so that God covers your home. We must also be people of spiritual warfare, and therefore we must live in such a way that the enemy has nowhere to seize hold of us and no way to enter our lives.

So I bless you in the Name of the Lord. May this prayer of Jabez make a deep impression on our hearts and spirits, and may we be a people who believe in the Power of God, so that when difficulties come, we can answer them with that Word of faith and that Word of crying out to the Lord.

Let us bow our heads. Father, thank You because Jabez lights our way in the Scriptures, and we believe that You can change our destinies, and that whatever situation we may be facing at this time, Your Power is sufficient to pull our spiritual car out of the rut, to bring us, Lord, out of the miry clay and the pit of despair, and set us upon a rock, Lord—to set our feet upon the solid rock. And that is what we ask today for Your people: blessing, Lord, strength, the enlargement of their territory, Your mighty Hand flowing in our favor, and Your covering over our homes, Your protection from all evil. Fill us with that energy of Yours, Father, and I bless Your people today.

Thank You for such good attendance this morning, for new people, and for the families You are blessing, Father, and for whom You have good purposes. Thank You. We leave here strengthened, Lord, with our hearts filled with hope for the future, in the Name of Jesus. And the people of God say: Amen. I bless you, my brothers and sisters. May the Grace of the Lord be upon you. Amen and amen.