Prayer of Jabez

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. Last Saturday afternoon, right towards the end of the program, after we had numerous callers, and we appreciate having callers, of course, but that got us onto many other issues, and we did not have the opportunity to do anything really meaningful in commenting on the book that has been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and it's found in every Christian bookstore, it's found in stacks at Barnes Noble, etc. etc. etc.

There is a book called The Prayer of Jabez, and written by Bruce Wilkinson, and the book is all over the place. I have even been in situations where I was speaking at a church that was just about to begin a study of The Prayer of Jabez, and they were passing them out amongst everybody, and I guess I live a little bit of a lead mine.

I did not hear about this until just recently. Obviously, I don't keep up on the bestseller lists, and I was unaware of the multi-million dollar marketing strategy that was going on, the fact that you can now buy follow-up books, you can buy devotionals, you can buy The Prayer of Jabez for Teens, The Prayer of Jabez in leather, you can get it, you know, just all sorts of stuff.

I'm sure that there, if they're not already, there will be Prayer of Jabez calendars, and Prayer of Jabez soap, and Prayer of Jabez jammies, and you know, you name it, it's gonna be there, because the the Christian community doesn't mind shelling out money when it comes to something like this that promises blessings.

The problem, of course, is what kind of blessings, and last week, I just very, very briefly began to just mention something concerning the subject of The Prayer of Jabez. I did not have an opportunity to do almost anything at all about that, and so I'd like to spend a little more time because there have been many evangelicals who've read the book and and have not really seen anything overly terrible in it, simply because the fact that, you know, it's based on a biblical passage, it encourages daily prayer, it encourages us to seek God's best for our lives, and they basically just see that, and that's about all there is to it.

The problem is, if you go to the Internet, and this isn't, you know, I recognize, I noticed immediately upon going to it, that this particular website says we are not officially dealing with Dr. Wilkinson's book, etc., etc., but, you know, we aren't, you know, associated, but still, it is a place where you can post blessings to you.

When someone I know sneezes, the whole world stops for just a moment, especially when the door is open. Anyways, if you go to www .theprayerofjabez .com, which is a single word, you will find all sorts of testimonies of people who have prayed the prayer of Jabez.

I was scanning through it this morning, and one that caught my eye was a fellow who was was racing, well, he wasn't racing, he was driving down a road, got an impression that he should slow down, and came over the next hill, and there were two trucks in the way, and he attributed this to the prayer of Jabez, and another lady who started praying the prayer of Jabez, and she got an opportunity to earn some money here, and her son got to mow a lawn, and you just read through there, and there's stuff on, you know, pets being saved, and found, and healed, and all the rest of stuff.

It's all due to.

Repeating the.

Prayer of Jabez from 1 Chronicles 4, 9, and 10. And what I'd like to do today is I'd first like to look at the text, because one of the first criticisms I have of the book is that while it allegedly bases itself upon the text, it makes a few passing comments about the text.

Much of what the text is really all about is missed, and in fact, the basic premise of the book is flawed. 1 Chronicles 4 is a passage not overly well known to most of us, and you will find, if you take a look at the passages, that in 1 Chronicles chapter 4, we have a listing.

It's basically genealogies. For example, the sons of Helah were Zareth, Ishar, and Ethnon. Khaz became the father of Anub and Zobabah, and the families of Aharhel, the son of Haram. So in the middle of that, we have 1 Chronicles 4, 9 through 10, which says Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him Jabez, saying, because I bore him with pain.

Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm, that it may not pain me.

And God granted him what he requested. And then it just goes on. Cheilub, the brother of Shuhah, became the father of Mehir, who was the father of Eshton, etc. etc. etc. So it does sort of stand out that in the midst of a whole list of genealogical citations, there is, just briefly on the part of the individual who was writing for us in 1 Chronicles, this recording of this man named Jabez.

Now Jabez comes from the Hebrew term that refers to sorrow or pain, and that is, in fact, why we have the statement in 4, 9, his mother named him Jabez, saying, because I bore him with pain. And this is briefly mentioned in the context of the Prayer of Jabez book by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson.

But it does end up coming out rather importantly in his prayer. In fact, the prayer is understood by a number of the commentaries as not so much a prayer, oh, please do this, but a covenantal type thing, if you will please do this.

If you will do this, then I will do this, the type of a situation. And in essence, the entire prayer can be boiled down to one thing. The phrases, that you would bless me and enlarge my border and your hand might be with me, are those, all those three phrases together are just three different ways of asking for God's blessing.

These become extremely expanded in Dr. Wilkinson's work in a way that I don't know the text actually supports this, because the fact that, for example, the phrase enlarge my border is used numerous times in the Old Testament to refer to God's blessing the people of Israel.

If you are obedient to me, I will enlarge your border. I will enlarge your territory. I will protect your borders. For example, in that passage where we have the promise from God, which I've always found to be a fascinating example of the providence of God, the providential control of God, even over the desires of men, we have the statement from the Lord that He will not only expand the borders of the people of Israel, but He will even keep the people who are around the Israelites from desiring the lands when the people, it's a, let me just read it to you, Exodus 34, 24 says, for I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders.

There's the phrase we're looking at. And no man shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God. This is a passage that I think demonstrates that God can actually control the very sinful desires of man.

I'm not sure how an Arminian would understand that, but we Calvinists don't have any problem with that particular passage. That's not what we're talking about today, but it is one of those many questions that always makes me wonder when I look at passages like this, if God can, in point of fact, even control a man's coveting, so if the neighbors would not even covet the land when the men left, all the men of Israel are supposed to go up to go up to the tabernacle and worship, and no one's left to protect lands, just the kids and the wifey, and yet God says, you're faithful to me and your neighbors across the way who are not God-fearers and who, in fact, you have to keep your sword ready most of the time to fight them off with.

They won't even, they'll look across the way, they'll see your men leaving, they know they're gonna be gone for a number of days, and they'll go, yeah, yeah, big deal, and they won't even want your land.

Wonder how God can do that. Well, anyways, there is the phraseology we're looking at. Enlarge your borders. I'll drive up nations for you and enlarge your borders. It's a phrase of blessing that is used of the people of Israel, and that's exactly what we have in the prayer of Jabez as well.

He is requesting that God's blessing would be upon him, that you would bless me indeed, enlarge my border, that your hand might be with me. Those are all prayers for general blessing, and that you would keep me from harm that may not pain me.

That sort of gets lost a little bit in the translation, because the phrase that's translated, pain me, there uses the same Hebrew root of his name. And so in essence, this is a prayer, even though I have been named sorrow or pain, my prayer is that my life would not follow my name, that you would keep me from harm, that it may not pain me, that I might not be pained.

In fact, if you look at scholarly commentaries on the particular passage, let me read you, for example, what Kylen Delitzsch say concerning this particular passage. It says, in terms of the vow, so that sorrow may not be to me.

Notice they take this as a vow, not as a plea, but as a vow. In terms of the vow, so sorrow may not be to me, there is a play upon the name Jabez. But of the vow itself, only the conditions proposed by the maker of the vow are communicated.

If thou wilt bless me and enlarge my coast, and thy hand shall be with me, and thou wilt keep evil far off, and not bring sorrow to me, without the conclusion, then I vow to do this or that. But with the remark that God granted him that which he requested.

The reason of this is probably that the vow had acquired importance sufficient to make it worthy of being handed down, only from God's having so fulfilled his wish, that his life became a contradiction of his name, the son of sorrow having been freed from pain in life, and having attained to greater happiness and reputation than his brothers.

And so here is this element of the prayer, and possibly this is what exactly why the writer provides us with this information. But the important thing, I think, for us to recognize, is what is said in verse 9.

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. And this particular phrase, I think really, if it were to be given its honest place, would undo the majority of the argumentation in Dr. Bruce Wilkinson's book.

And the reason is this, as you open the prayer of Jabez, and it can be read in a very short period of time in point of fact, and the story begins with the rainstorm in Texas-sized raindrops pelting the window, so on and so forth, and a chaplain has told Wilkinson that he needs to be a gipper, and a gimper, I'm sorry, a gimper.

A gimper is a person, sign up to be a gimper for God, is the phrase used on page 9. A gimper is someone who always does a little more than what's required or expected, etc, etc. And so he had given him 1 Chronicles 4, 9 through 10, and then we have this particular, let me just read you a section.

Lord, I think I want to be a gimper for you, I prayed as I looked out the window at the blustery spring rain, but I was puzzled. What exactly did Jabez do to rise above the rest? Why did God answer his prayer?

I wondered, for that matter, why did God even include Jabez's mini profile in the Bible? Maybe it was the raindrops running down the window panes. Suddenly my thoughts ran past verse 9. I picked up my Bible and read verse 10, the prayer of Jabez.

Something in his prayer would explain the mystery. It had to. Pulling a chair up to the yellow counter, I bent over my Bible and reading the prayer over and over, I searched with all my heart for the future God had for someone as ordinary as I.

The next morning I prayed Jabez's prayer word for word, and the next and the next, 30 years later, I haven't stopped. If you were to ask me what sentence, other than my prayer for salvation, has revolutionized my life and ministry the most, I would tell you that it was the cry of a gimper named Jabez, who is still remembered not for what he did, but for what he prayed and for what happened next.

Well, it's the beginning, and I don't think anyone would argue with me that that is the foundation of the argumentation provided by Dr. Wilkinson in this book. But immediately I have major league problems.

I have major league problems. He was puzzled by the citation. He said, what exactly did Jabez do to rise above the rest? And my immediate question would be, why do you assume that it was something Jabez did?

Why would anyone assume that it is merely the actions of the man? Do not the actions of the man represent what he is in himself, and is not what he is in himself, the work of God, the gift of his grace?

It says, why did God answer his prayer? Well, the question there I would have is, first of all, why does God ever answer anyone's prayer? And secondly, what does it mean to answer prayer? A resounding no is most often the answer that God gives to many of our very self-centered and selfish prayers, which are based upon gross ignorance of the future and gross ignorance of what is best for us.

And so, what if it was not God's plan for Jabez? What if, in God's providence, God had something else in store for Jabez that would be much better for him? Maybe to live a life of obscure service, so that he might have great reward in heaven.

Would that not be an answer to his prayer as well? I see a fundamental flaw in the very thinking of what constitutes an answer to prayer in the first place, right off the bat. But then, and this has been pointed out by many others, in fact, I'm not really sure if this is real, but someone pointed me to a book, I believe by Douglas Jones, up there in Moscow, Idaho, called The Mantra of Jabez.

I'm not sure if it's a real book or not. I guess it is. I've seen it offered. I haven't followed the shopping cart to the point where maybe it pops up a screen and says, ah, you're a fool. But there's an excellent article put out by, I believe it's Douglas Jones, it might be Douglas Wilson, one of the two, absolutely shredding the prayer of Jabez.

He, of course, makes the same point that I'm making right at this point, and that is, I picked up my Bible and read verse 10, the prayer of Jabez. Here's the line, something in his prayer would explain the mystery it had to.

Why?

Why?

You see, what is skipped over in all of this, especially in answering the question why God granted him what he requested, was, it is assumed from the start that the phrase, Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, is not and cannot be the basis for why God granted him what he requested.

The idea of being a man of character, a man of obedience, of concern for God's glory, of concern for God's law and his righteous commandments, that's just skipped over. Somehow there must be something in the prayer.

Well, maybe the prayer actually comes from the character of the man. Maybe the prayer reflects the fact that the man himself was more honorable than his brothers. Because he didn't pray a prayer, Oh Lord, give me riches and give me more money and give me more opportunities to be out front, and things like that.

Maybe that's why Jabez prayed the way he prays, because of his character. Hmm, maybe, well, but that, it started right off the bat. It can't be. It just can't be that. You know, in the preface of the book, Dr. Wilkinson says, I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers.

Well, I.

Think God always answers every prayer of his redeemed children. But the question is, how does he do so? It's not always with a yes. It's very often with a very loud no, and sometimes I think it's with a very loud heavenly chuckle.

Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what you would do if I gave you that? And we, you know, muddle along and, you know, are confused and so on and so forth, and we don't even know how to pray. We don't know what to pray for ourselves in many, many situations.

And I'm awful glad that God is not a genie in a bottle. And I am awful glad that there are many times that things that I prayed for, God just gave me the heavenly chuckle. Because if I had gotten them, I'd be ruined.

I would be destroyed. I'm very glad that God is not someone that I can simply come along and I can, I can, you know, rub the bottle and poof, out comes whatever it is that I want. Because sometimes what I want would resound greatly against God's glory, and I don't want that.

I don't want that. So there's some issues right off the bat. The book doesn't address the nature of prayer in the sense of, well, when you talk about answered prayer, what does that mean? What does that mean?

Well, there's much more here. I've marked a few things that go along, and I really want to get to a specific area, and I may end up, you know, talking way too much and maybe preaching way too much. We will be taking your phone calls.

I would like to, if we can, at least at the beginning here, if you do wish to call, keep calls to the subject of the prayer of Jabez. I mean, maybe you're in a church where this stuff's going around. Maybe you have some some insights you could share with us concerning some situations that have arisen as a result of that, 866 -854 -6763, 866 -854 -6763.

Maybe you'd just like to make a comment on evangelicalism that has become so incredibly surface level that it can embrace this kind of.

Pop.

Theology.

To the point of dropping everything else in the life of a church and focusing upon this kind of stuff that doesn't answer many of the most important questions at all. And yet people just buy into this stuff, and we spend literally millions of dollars.

I can guarantee you, if someone wrote a 90-page book on, well, the prayers of Paul, and the prayers where Paul, for example,.

Paul.

Specifically prays that believers would understand the true knowledge of God, that they would understand what it means to enter into the sufferings that are ours in Christ.

That book.

Really wouldn't do well. I don't think a book based on Mark chapter 8 and Jesus' call to, in essence, die to self and to be crucified. I don't see that quite getting the same type of response as the prayer of Jabez is.

What do you think? 866 -854 -6763.

After,.

At the end of the quotation I read you before, this ends on page 11, we are told that, I would tell you, that it was the cry of a gimper named Jabez who is still remembered not for what he did, but for what he prayed.

May I suggest that Jabez should be remembered for who he was or who God made him to be? The prayer comes from who he was, not the other way around. I think there is a fundamental bad spin on this particular perspective that is being promoted in the book.

Now, the book does not pretend to give.

An.

Argumentation concerning the exegesis of the text. There really isn't much in the way of exegesis in the book, and there's a lot of personal stories. Personal stories work well. There's nothing wrong with personal stories, except when personal stories become the very substance of one's argumentation.

So,.

I haven't marked something on every single page because, you know, when someone tells a personal story, it's a personal story. Now, when that personal story then becomes part of the exegesis, it becomes part of the argument, that's different.

Then we have to say, well, wait a minute, how does your personal story become relevant to my particular situation? But a little description of Jabez is found on page 14. What was the secret to the enduring reputation of Jabez?

You can search from front to back in your Bible as I have, and you won't find any more information we have in these two brief verses. Well, that's correct. That's all we have about Jabez. This is 1 Chronicles 4, 9, and 10.

Then we have some bulleted points where he summarizes what he's seeing here. Things started badly for a person no one had ever heard of. He prayed an unusual one-sentence prayer, things ended extraordinarily well.

That's the bulleted summary on the part of Dr. Wilkinson on Jabez. You notice what's missing?

Yeah.

The thing that's missing all the way through. It should have been, things started badly for a person no one had ever heard of, and this mother had difficulty in giving him birth, but that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about what his upbringing was about.

Point two, God caused him to be an honorable man who was concerned to live a godly life. Point three, as a result, he prayed a not-so-unusual at all one-sentence prayer that flowed from his life of integrity.

And point four, God graciously granted to him what he requested, in line with a New Testament passage that says, the prayer of a righteous man avails much. Not that righteous men boss God around, but because righteous men pray in accordance with the will of God.

Maybe that wouldn't sell well either, and hey, you know, I've written 17 books, and if you put all of my books together and then multiply them all by 10, they haven't sold as many as this, so if that means something,.

Then,.

Then he must be right, and I must be wrong about everything.

But I.

Sort of get the feeling that maybe, possibly, it'd be really hard for anyone to argue in a one-on-one situation, that what I just said isn't a much better summary of 1 Chronicles 4, 9 through 10 than what is offered here.

And again, it is that element of integrity in Jabez himself that has to be removed, because you see, there's really no emphasis in this book upon that very biblical precedence, and that being the prayer of a righteous man avails much.

You see, Jesus himself talked about praying in accordance with the will of God. Now that gets real complicated, and it probably isn't going to sell as many books, and so we don't want to talk about that, but if we really want to talk, if this is being sold to somebody other than Jews living at the time, maybe, of David, who only have a portion of the Old Testament, don't even have all the Old Testament, maybe 400 years before Christ, if this is being sold to evangelicals who have the New Testament, shouldn't we, like, have a balanced view of prayer, maybe?

Maybe we should take into consideration what the New Testament teaches about praying in accordance with the will of God, and the fact that, hey folks, guess what? Very frequently, for the believer, the will of God involves.

Suffering.

Yes, suffering. What if it was God's will for Jabez.

To suffer?

Then God would have granted him what he requested in a different way, and maybe God wouldn't have granted him that at all. In fact, I remember a fellow named Paul, and Paul had something that pained him, a thorn in the flesh.

We don't know the exact nature of it. It may have actually been something that caused pain in the flesh. We're really not certain, but we know he had a thorn in the flesh, and three times he prayed. Maybe he didn't know about the prayer of Jabez.

Maybe Paul just, you know, it was early on, and he hadn't done his yearly Bible reading through First Chronicles, and hadn't run into this. In fact, I don't see anybody in the New Testament saying, just pray the prayer of Jabez.

But maybe that was what it was. But he kept praying, and God kept saying, nope, nope, nope. My grace is sufficient for you. And if it was God's will for Jabez, that he experience his own name in his own life, pain and suffering, would Jabez's prayer have changed God's plans?

Good question. 866 -854 -6763. I've only started on the prayer of Jabez. Ready for your comments as well. 866 -854 -6763. We'll be right back. And welcome back to Dividing Line. My name is James White.

We're talking about the prayer of Jabez today, and I've only begun looking through a couple of the statements that are made in this particular book. Specifically looking at page 16 now, and we will be taking some phone calls.

We have one caller online, and we'll be taking your calls at 866 -854 -6763. On page 16, we have, right after being informed of Dr. Wilkinson's teaching, an audience of 9 ,000 in Dallas, the prayer of Jabez.

We have afterwards a gathering together, and people talking about how many years they've been praying this prayer. And Dr. Wilkinson says, I told them, friends, I've been praying Jabez for more than half my life.

And I immediately stopped, and I go, what does it mean to pray Jabez? I mean, pray Jabez. What does that mean? I mean, talk about something new. Pray Jabez. Maybe that's what it's all about, is this issue of finding something new.

Because I don't, again, I don't remember the New Testament talking about praying Jabez, or anything of the kind. I've been praying Jabez for more than half my life. I wonder, I wonder what that means.

I wonder what Jabez would have thought about that. I really, really don't know. Page 17, God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend. There is the, there is the assertion. God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend.

And in fact, later on, we're told a story. And let me see if I can find the specific pages for those of you who have this. Yeah, Mr. Jones goes to heaven, starting on page 25. And Mr. Jones goes to heaven, and he sees a, he sees a warehouse.

And.

Peter says, you don't want to go in there. Oh, yes, I do. So he goes in. And let's see. Finally, Peter relents. When the apostle opens the door, Mr. Jones almost knocks him over in his haste to enter.

It turns out that the enormous building is filled with row after row of shelves, floor to ceiling, each stacked neatly with white boxes tied in red ribbons. These boxes all have names on them, Mr. Jones muses aloud.

Then, turning to Peter, he asks, do I have one? Yes, you do. Peter tries to guide Mr. Jones back outside. Frankly, Peter says, if I were you, but Mr. Jones is already dashing toward the J-Aisle to find his box.

Peter follows, shaking his head. He catches up with Mr. Jones, just as he is slipping the red ribbon off his box and popping the lid. Looking inside, Jones has a moment of instant recognition, and he lets out a deep sigh like the ones Peter has heard so many times before.

Because there, in Mr. Jones's white box are all the blessings that God wanted to give him while he was on earth, but Mr. Jones had never.

Asked.

There is the assertion. Unclaimed blessings. What are blessings? Well, we're not really told. We're not really told in the book. I have heard from others who have heard Mr. Wilkinson speak, for example, at the recent CBA meeting, that in talking to bookstore owners, the blessing was listed as, if you will.

In fact, Dr. Wilkinson even had an altar call at the end of his two-hour talk, where he called bookstore managers and owners forward to commit themselves to praying the prayer of Jabez. Yes, we now have Jabez altar calls.

And the promise was that if they would do so, that when they came to CBA next year, their bookstores will have had the sales that they had the year before.

So,.

Maybe these prayers, these blessings, I'm sorry, maybe they're primarily good things. But isn't in the New Testament, the blessings listed and defined as things like, well, holiness and sanctification and the putting to death of the flesh, living in the spirit, patience.

Isn't it defined very, very differently than that? And in fact, if the real ultimate blessing of the Christian life is being conformed to the image of Christ, once you get to heaven, wouldn't that box be empty?

Because we are conformed to the image of Christ? This image of unclaimed blessings makes God look, well, like he does in the prayer of Jabez. It's a concept that basically makes God a big gift giver.

And.

Whether he's successful in distributing his warehouses, well, seems to be up to us, doesn't it? I mean, he wanted to give this stuff, you know. He really wanted to get that stuff out and he wanted to give it to us, but.

Hmm.

Now someone's saying, oh, wait a minute. James did say you have not because you ask not, but what was James talking about?

Oh,.

Things that wouldn't sell a lot of books. Stuff like the ability to control your tongue and to love your brother and to be unprejudiced in the ministry of the word and to, well, not backbite and, you know, stuff like that.

And that's not gonna, you know, who's gonna open up a book or a box and get all excited about to the fact that, oh, look, if I had just asked, I could have had my tongue under control. That's not really, I think, what we're getting at in the story, Mr. Jones Goes to Heaven.

Unclaimed blessings. So in other words, if you pray the prayer of Jabez, then you will open the doors of heaven and that, that old, those, that box with the red ribbon is gonna pop open and blessings are just gonna flow into your, into your life.

But.

If.

We are going to be wholly biblical about this, then those blessings might take the form of persecution. Anyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Sufferings, sickness, yes, even disease.

Oh, no, you don't mean that! Yes, even disease has been used by God to bring about his own glory. You might find yourself encountering all sorts of things that you would not necessarily define as a blessing in the Jabez format.

Yeah, that's what the whole Bible says. You're saying, oh man, you're just being too hard on this guy. He just wants you to pray that God would give you a greater ministry. What's a greater ministry? May I suggest that for a lot of folks who called themselves into the ministry, the greater ministry for them would be to get out of it and work at Circle K?

Maybe the greater ministry would be to not be that quote-unquote minister of music. Maybe it would be to be a janitor in an old folks home. I wonder how many people who are buying the prayer of Jabez and passing it out like candy to their friends would agree with the statement that having a greater ministry given to you might involve you stepping down from a position that you have and accepting a true ministry that actually fits the gifts God has given to you that no one in this world will ever see or ever say thank you for.

I wonder.

Something tells me that the book would not be doing as well if that was its real message. But I don't think that is its real message. I read to you a section about from last week, page 83, talks about levels of blessing, the cycle of blessing.

You have asked for and received more blessing, more territory, more power, and more protection, but the growth curve soon starts to spike upwards. Yes, folks, you too can cause God's blessings to be put on a graph and have a growth curve for yourself.

You don't reach the next level of blessing and stay there. You begin again. Lord, bless me indeed. Lord, please enlarge and so on. As the cycle repeats itself, you find that you are steadily moving into wider spheres of blessing and influence spiraling ever outward and upward into a larger life for God.

Well, what if that involves just being somebody that no one's ever heard of? Well, anyways, I sometimes get a little animated and we do have at least one caller, but it looks like only one caller, which means there's no one else out there who has any particular opinions on the subject of the prayer of Jabez, which means that after we get through with one caller, I will have to begin singing.

And in fact, someone told me that I think at mp3 .com you can find the prayer of Jabez song where you can sing the prayer of Jabez. And so I'm going to go over there and fire up the Explorer here in Explorer and we're going to go over to mp3 .com and I'm going to find the prayer of Jabez and if we don't fill up the old phone lines, I will start singing the prayer of Jabez and I think that will probably get a few of you to call because you don't want that.

You do not want to hear me singing the prayer of Jabez because that would... Actually, you don't want to hear me singing almost anything at all, but that would really be very, very bad if that actually happened.

Anyways, let's go ahead and take our first caller and give the rest of you an opportunity.

To.

To survive this. Let's go ahead and talk with Randy in Denver. Hello, Randy. There you go. There you go. Well, there you go. You just proved by the personal story. Personal stories always demonstrate that that's what's true.

Sadly, they are, but the amazing thing is for so many people, anecdotes are also extremely.

Extremely convincing. Well, I believe that I have a special high call to enlarge my territory to talk longer so we don't have to hear you sing.