THE JABEZ SYNDROME
We find this man Jabez in the Bible in 1 Chronicles 4:9, 10. He is from the Tribe of Judah, but nothing is said of his family connections other than his mother and brethren. He lived about 1400 years B.C. In later life he was an eminent lawyer and so prominent that he had a town named after him. The scripture gives only a short account of this man, but reveals a powerful operation of the Spirit of God on his life. He stands as a type of any person in similar circumstances, and I share it with you if you need Jesus to heal you from hurts in your soul just as Jabez had. Do not just intellectually read this but allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you. Most of us have hurts deep within us bought about by people or the circumstances of life but often they lie deep within us and like Jabez, we are grieved and are never able to be free. Only Jesus Christ can set us free.
V 9 tells us that his mother bore him in sorrow and pain, and because of her negative emotions she called those over him by naming him Jabez, literally “he makes sorrowful”. In Biblical times people’s names denoted their nature, so here we have his mother labeling Jabez as a man who causes sorrow and pain. This would have seared into his soul as he matured and understood what his mother had done. She had put on him a burden in revenge for the sorrow and pain that the childbirth caused her. Of course it was false as he was not consciously guilty as a baby for the pain of the birth. But here we have a man carrying this identity of himself into his adult life as a result of what was falsely said of him. It says that she called him Jabez because “I bare him with sorrow”. This was about her not her son.
In the book of James chapter 3 it says that the tongue, or words spoken, can kindle a great fire. The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. It can set on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell. An ungovernable tongue no man can tame, it is unruly and full of deadly poison.
Maybe like Jabez, evil, false, unkind, or ungodly words have been spoken over or about you that you may have heard of or not even be aware of. These can have a lasting negative effect on your soul and can prevent you from being the true person that you are. They can effect relationships with people and be a barrier in your walk with the Lord. I have counselled many people caught in the “Jabez Syndrome” and it is alarming to see the reality of what I am speaking of in people’s lives and the effect on their outlook on life and more particularly themselves.
BUT OUR PRECIOUS SAVIOR HAS AN ANSWER FOR YOU.
There was a very popular ministry particularly in the Pentecostal churches concerning the “healing of the memories”. Most people have hurt and bruised emotions of some sort and whilst I am not questioning the work of the Holy Spirit, I think that there has been a lot of “flesh” in this area.
Let me open to you what the Lord showed me in the Jabez Type, and if you have a need, allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you. Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Now, back to 1 Chronicles 4:9, 10.
There was something about Jabez that was his strength. It says that he was more honorable than his brethren. It could mean that he had a higher social standing, but I believe that it was to do with his heart to the Lord. He had the understanding, boldness and faith to cry out to the Lord himself. The Lord will honor this type of heart. It is not so much that God has favorites in people, but that some people favor God more!
Jabez in his oppression, called on the Lord. Note that his mother “called a name on him saying” and he “called on the Lord saying”. He didn’t attack her, nor did he seek somebody to pray over him, not that this is wrong. This man WANTED TO BE FREE from the words called over him, which were affecting his soul. He had boldness to call on the God of Israel! He spoke five things:
1. Oh that Thou wouldst Bless me indeed
2. Enlarge or make greater my borders. He needed the Lord to enlarge his life. He had a barrier to growth. Maybe you feel stunted and diminished in your life. There may be a burden holding you back. Cry out to Jesus, He will set you free. A key to growth is to break the barriers which enclose you. These may be emotional, evil and even religious. I believe that today, Christians are locked into religious prisons unable to grow. Leaders and pastors building unto themselves try to control people for their own purposes. This is not the Spirit of God and I urge you to break the shackles that hold you captive. When you were born again you were a new Spiritual person, but what about the mind and emotions? Did they die then? Probably not. Jabez saw that he couldn’t go on with this thing over his life. In February 1986 American evangelist Bob Mumford made a statement in which the Lord really spoke to me. He said “Place a Statute of Limitations on the past”. The Lord said to me, “that at a time and place, to actually bury the thing holding me down”. I personally wasn’t going to let my past rob me of my inheritance in Sonship. If you need to do this, DO IT! Let there be a point of time where you say to past hurts “this is the statute of limitations; this matter goes no further than this point!” You can actually name the date which you do this.
3. He asked that the Lord’s hand be with him.
4. He asked that the Lord would keep him from evil. ie. that no evil would touch him.
5. He asked the Lord to keep him from grief and sorrow. ie. that no longer would he experience the grief and sorrow called over him by implication of his name. The memory of the circumstances of his birth was perpetuated in his name and he wanted it broken!
What a Glorious Saviour. We read that God caused to happen that which he requested. Blessed be the Name of Jesus. You see Jabez stood up and spoke words of Faith to the Lord which the Lord honored and brought to pass in his life because that which he asked was from the heart of God. Grief is the effect of sorrow and he wanted to be free.
His Faith triumphed over his name. His Spirit triumphed over his soul. He had carried this lie around in his life until he cried out to the Lord.
Whoever you are reading this word, I want to ask you to look into your soul. Are there words, hurts, bruised emotions or evil intentions that you have been dragging around in your life? Do you have grief which you have never been able to shed? Sorrow is destructive. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 11:10, to “remove sorrow from your heart”, and in 2 Corinthians 7:10, that” the sorrow of the world leads to death”.
You cannot carry grief and sorrow, and grow in the Lord. These emotions oppose Faith and will burden you. You can be like Jabez. Cry out to the Lord. Tell him the emotional burdens and request that He deliver you. The word “request” which Jabez used, literally means “demand”. This is the type of heart which pleases God. Some of you reading this have struggled for a long time with the Jabez syndrome. There have been issues in your soul which have held you back and which have even depressed and oppressed you.
I want to lead you to freedom in the Name of Jesus. We are told in Isaiah 53:4 that when Jesus was dying on the Cross, He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. Beloved, we are hanging on to things that Jesus has already dealt with. They went under His Blood and He arose Triumphant with our victory. Jabez realized this in his faith and he didn’t even have Isaiah’s prophecy to read when he cried out to the Lord.
I was speaking with a Christian friend Bill recently, who works in a physically demanding job. He said that he developed a problem in his knee and at the age of sixty this should have been a problem for his ability to work. I listened to a childlike faith as he told me that he simply said to the Lord, “this is your bad knee Lord, not mine”. The problem went and his testimony challenged me. Too often we labor over our problems with the Lord instead of acting with the faith which a child would use and just claim what our Father has promised us.
Our Father God has told us that His Son Jesus has already carried our griefs and sorrows on the Cross 2,000 years ago. If you need to be free of emotional burdens of the past, and the damaging effect of how people may have treated you, the Lord would say to you:
“My child, I am your loving Saviour and although you have not physically seen Me, yet I come to you by My Holy Spirit. I know your need before you tell Me, and I longingly wait for you to simply ask Me to Bless you and set you free. I died for the sin of the world, for your emotional and physical healing, and carried your poverty. I plead with you right now to simply believe this and with the faith which I have given you, ask Me and you will receive My Blessing as I grant what you request of Me.”
Beloved as I write this I feel in my spirit that there are some who will read this have lived with a feeling of isolation and that nobody loves them or cares about them. If this is you, then I want to tell you that I passed through a similar period in my life. Circumstances caused me to think this and I convinced myself that it was true. I lived in a little flat on my own and would walk around crying out and asking “will somebody love me”. So I understand your feeling. During my period of distress I hung on to a simple word in the Bible, “I will never leave you or forsake you”. At my lowest point I knew that Jesus loved me. I knew that even if everybody deserted me, He wouldn’t and He honored My clinging on to this word.
I wish that somebody had shown me about Jabez in the past to encourage my faith, but I share it with you. May you be encouraged and strengthened in your faith to call out to the Lord. He will never leave you or forsake you. He loves you. Ask Him right now to bless you, enlarge your boundaries, keep you by His hand, keep you from evil, and deliver you from grief. He will grant you by His Love and Mercy. Bless you.
ALL GLORY TO JESUS
LARRY WILSON
