The prayer of Jabez in a short plea for prosperity in 1 Chronicles 4 that became a sensation 15 years ago. Bruce Wilkinson made a lot of money buying into the idea that if you have stuff, it’s because God likes you better than people who don’t have stuff. I did a presentation about this ten years ago in which I compared this prayer with the only prayer Jesus taught His disciples. It is my opinion that Jesus wouldn’t have done that if His followers hadn’t begged Him to; it came about because they told Him that John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray, so why wouldn’t Jesus? (Luke 11). If you look at the two prayers side by side, you will see that they are exactly the opposite of one another. Jesus wanted people to live every day generously because it might be their last; Jabez worried about having more in the future.
If you believe that God is in control of everything, it is a logical conclusion to think that success or failure is because God is making things happen. Jesus didn’t believe this at all; in fact, Jesus preached about loss and suffering being signs of faithfulness. The Apostle Paul did the same, urging followers of Jesus to be generous to others. Paul (or someone close to him) wrote, “those who do not work should not eat” in 2 Thessalonians, but that seemingly cold-hearted command was directed at members of the church, not the general public. He and Jesus believed that discipleship brought with it certain responsibilities, one of them being sacrificial love. Just like Jesus gave Himself for us, we should give ourselves for others. The first, He said over and over, should be last, and the last will be first.
When your god is success, all of that generosity and sharing and sacrifice goes out the window. You begin to think that everyone has to take care of themselves, and losers are that way because they are either lazy, dumb, or not loved by God. And if God doesn’t love them, why should we? The god of success is, by definition, idolatry, something both Jesus and Paul and the entirety of Scripture condemned regularly. Loving money is at the root of all evil, Timothy wrote, and Jesus said that it was really hard for rich people to get into heaven. Not impossible, just difficult. Success in life has nothing to do with God. Generosity, however, is all about the recognition that having more means giving more. You can do well as long as you do good.
Prayer – Holy God, urge us to help those in need, because that is the true blessing in life. Amen.
Today’s art is “Generosity” by Melanie Weidner.