A daily devotional episode (day 13) from the Naked Marriage podcast where hosts Dave and Ashley Willis reflect on the Prayer of Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:10). They read and unpack the verse, relate it to marriage—emphasizing expanded influence, responsibility, and trusting God with resources—and share personal anecdotes and practical invitations to serve and be trained as marriage mediators.
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Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we are releasing a daily devotional episode for your marriage. And over these 66 days, we're going to pull out one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talk about how it applies to your marriage. So if you listen to every single one of these episodes, you're going to have a comprehensive understanding of God's plan for your marriage. We encourage you to listen to everyone. Let's dive into today's scripture. Hey, welcome to day 13 of Summer of Scripture. We're in the book of 1 Chronicles today to look at one of the shortest and most famous prayers in the Bible, especially for those of you who remember. Gosh, I GUESS it's been 20 years ago.
Yes.
A book came out, an entire book about this one verse and the character and the prayer in it. And the character's name is Jabez. It's been known as the Prayer of Jabez, which is found in 1st Chronicles, chapter 4, verse 10, which says, this Jabez was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory. Please be with me in all that I do and keep me from evil, keep me from trouble and pain. And God granted him his request. One of those translations of that verse says, keep me from evil so that I might not cause pain. Which I think is kind of a profound way of looking at that. Like, I don't just want a lack of pain for me, but help keep me from causing pain to others.
I don't want to be associated with the pain.
Right. Yeah. I want to help people, not hurt them. And there was a great book by Bruce Wilkinson, Prayer of Jabez, which was one of the most popular Christian books of that era. Really Just kind of unpacking this one simple prayer from Scripture and just kind of the blessings within it.
You know, as you were saying that, I think it's just. It's not by coincidence at all. If you guys listen to yesterday's I shared a story about God giving us what I refer to as a God wink of a little blessing of $200 at a time where we desperately needed it. And that was about 20 years ago. And do you know that that coincided with our church at the time they were doing this whole study on the prayer of Jabez. They were, yes, yes. And it happened to coincide. And this was just really cool. We were building a new children's wing, and they asked all of us to give you Know, over our tithe, basically. And I remember at this time, we're like, oh, my gosh, like, we're barely making ends meet here. We're desperately trying to claw our way out of debt. And I remember we came down, like we were having that conversation about what to ple. And I remember we had one number, but then we were like, no, we're gonna go above what we know we can do because we're believing in God to expand our influence. You know, that's essentially what Jabez is saying, expand my influence financially and influence in other ways, too. And I remember that it seemed. I don't even know what the number was, but it seemed like there is no way. I mean, literally, with what financially we were making at the time. But do you know, by the end of it, we were able to meet that. We were able to meet that commitment. And I remember that I loved how the prayer of Jabez study was happen at the same time. Because it's not even just about financial. It's way beyond that. I think it just got us thinking bigger thoughts about what God can do with us and the talents and the gifts he's given us, the opportunities he's given us, where he had us planted at that time. It just got us really dreaming and thinking about the purpose, like, why he put us together. And I think in marriage, so many times we forget that it wasn't just that we fell in love with each other and that we found each other hot and interesting. Like, it's way more than that. It's what God saw in putting the two of us together. And I think that having a moment where you remember Jabez talking about, like, God, expand my territory, expand my influence. How as a couple, we need to keep that focus on why God put Dave and Ashley together, why God put you and your spouse together, and the influence and the expansion of that influence that he has in store for you, but just dreaming together and really praying for God to open your eyes to that. Because I remember in really focusing in on that scripture, it caused me to really get out of my comfort zone a little bit, you know, Wouldn't you? Do you remember that time?
Yeah. I think God will consistently put us in situations that stretch us outside of our comfort zone. And oftentimes he will use, you know, our giving. Like, he'll say, do you trust me with your heart? Sure. Do you trust me with your money?
Well, that's right now to God, really, right now.
And the times that he's challenged us in that area, it's something like I've held tightly to, especially in those days where we just didn't have anything. And what little we had, I was just like, this is our security. And God wants you to know, no, I'm your security. I'm your provider. It's all God's anyway. And so when we trust him with it, I do think it's his way of seeing in us, oh, I can trust you with more influence. That doesn't just mean more money, but he can trust us to really be his ambassadors in the world. Because we can't serve God and money at the same time. It doesn't mean we can't have money. Money can be a great tool, a great. A great tool to do a lot of great things. But when it becomes our source of security, our source of identity, then things get way out of balance. And I think in this simple prayer of Jabez, this is so much more than just like a health and wealth prayer. God, give me more stuff. He's really saying, God, give me more responsibility, Give me more of a voice to go out into the world. Yeah, use me. Use me. God, help me develop the skills you've given me, the gifts you've given me to go out into the world on a greater scale, not for my glory, but for yours, and to occupy all the territory you want to give me that I can declare your kingdom there. And what I love about this prayer is God wanted to answer it. God wasn't rolling his eyes like, oh, man, this is a selfish prayer. He was like, yes, finally, somebody with some faith.
Yes.
And he answered his prayer. He expanded his territory. He kept him from evil, that he would not cause pain. And I think we should pray prayers like this, not just in a template, mindless way where we're not even thinking about the words. Like, it's just some chant that God's obligated to answer. But we should go to our loving father praying bold prayers to say, God, you know, help me think bigger thoughts, dream bigger dreams, have bigger vision to go out into this world and do more for your glory. Because God's dreams and plans for your life are even bigger than your own.
And I just want to say this. I think that sometimes if we've gone through hardship, we come out the other side of that, and we've been through the healing process, and we've seen what God has taught us. You know, we see a lot of couples through that and have maybe a small part in that, but then when they get to the other side of that, they Always come back to us. And they say, we want to, we want to do what you did for us. We want to be used by God to help somebody else. We want to keep this going and pay it forward. And I was reminded of this couple that we interviewed on the podcast. It was on an episode called Overcoming in Marriage. This amazing couple, I can't even do their story justice, but they just went through years and years of marital hardship for various reasons. And I mean, I want to say the whole journey was probably 20 years of, of their 30 plus year marriage. And now they're well on the other side of that. And they became certified exo marriage mediators and they now have their own business where they are, you know, going around and they're helping couples and mediating for these couples. And we just had a dinner with them and they had tears in their eyes as they were just talking about the excitement and, and how they're now seeing God expanding that territory. Because that has been their prayer is, lord, give us more opportunities to serve you. Give us more opportunities to pay it forward. Because we've been through hell. I mean, that's literally kind of how they look at it. Like, we've been in the darkness, we've seen the light, and we don't want it to be wasted.
Don't waste that.
Don't waste it.
He doesn't got it.
He doesn't want to waste it. Yeah. And he won't.
I love it. Guys, I hope that this simple prayer from scripture inspires something new inside of you and your spouse to just start praying bigger prayers together. Say, God, what do you want to do through our marriage?
Yeah. And I would say too, just to add to that, maybe that's you. Maybe you're like this couple that I just described and you're like, we've been there, we've been through it. We've healed. We're stronger than we were before. We want to help other people. Come and be certified as a marriage mediator. You can go to xomediator.com and you can come to one of our events here in South Lake, Texas. You can get certified over two days. You meet amazing people, hear from all these different experts on how to help people meet and mediate their marriage. And I'm telling you, it's life changing, not only for you, but for all the people that God has for you to influence as he does expand your territory and use what you went through for your good and his glory.
So good. God has got big things in store for you. So believe it. Pray big prayers and join us tomorrow as we wrap up week two. We'll be on day 14 in the book of Second Chronicles, and we will see you then.
