What is Christmas really all about? Is it just something more. What is that something more? Do you have the courage to open your heart with Expectation? To allow God to enlarge your Expectation? To enlarge your heart for all He has in store for your life?
An interesting cartoon shows a fourth-grade boy standing toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with his teacher. Behind them stares a blackboard covered with math problems the boy hasn't finished. With rare perception the boy says, "I'm not an underachiever, you're an overexpecter!"
Fear of pain can have a negative effect on our achievement. Achievement always involves pain. No one enjoys pain and sacrifice or suffering. A couple starting a small business works hard, sacrifices in the expectation that one-day the business will provide not only a living for them but also a retirement nest egg. It is hard work and sometimes all the pain does not pay off. A recent Harvard research poll revealed that 75% of all start-up business’s fail. Not only painful, it is also devastating to many.
One man in the Bible had courage to ask God for the extraordinary
9 Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez,saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)
Little is known of Jabez, other than he was a descendant of Judah, he was an honorable man, and his mother named him “Jabez” (meaning “sorrowful” or “sorrow-maker”) because his Birth had been a painful birth. In his prayer, Jabez cries out to God for protection and blessing. Using a play on words, Jabez, the “man of sorrow,” asks God to keep him from that sorrow which his name both recalled and foreboded.
His request included 4 parts:
1. A BLESSING
2. ENLARGE MY TERRITORY
3. THAT GOD'S HAND WOULD BE UPON HIS LIFE
4. THAT GOD WOULD DELIVER HIM FROM EVIL
If we are willing to open to God with expectation, He has wonderful things in store for us.
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