The Prayer of Jabez Bible Study: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life

Bruce Wilkinson was born in New Jersey into a loving and committed Christian home and graduated from Northeastern Bible College in 1970. He later earned a Doctorate of Divinity from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary.

In 1972, while still a masters student at Dallas Theological Seminary, Wilkinson devised a unique method for teaching the big picture of the content of Scripture book by book. Under the guidance of Drs. Howard Hendricks and Gene Getz, the young minister founded Walk Thru the Bible Ministries in 1976 with a teaching faculty of six that today has grown to 120 in North America and 2,000 lay instructors worldwide.

Dr. Wilkinson continues to serve as president of WTB Ministries, an international publishing and training organization headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and Fort Mill, South Carolina. The contemporary theologian has authored several books, including Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs, 7 Laws of the Learner, Almost Every Answer for Practically Any Teacher!, Personal Holiness in Times of Temptation, Victory Over Temptation, Talk Thru the Old Testament, Talk Thru the New Testament—as well as served in key editorial roles in the production of The Daily Walk Bible, the New King James Bible, The Closer Walk New Testament, The Open Bible, Expanded Edition, and The Family Walk Bible.

The author is a popular speaker at national gatherings such as Promisekeepers (addressing 350,000 men across America in the past three years), the Navigators, Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Fellowship of Companies for Christ, and Christian Schools, International—as well as BIOLA, Wheaton, Mt. Hermon, the Christian Business Men’s Committee, Moody Bible Institute, and many others.

Dr.Wilkinson serves as executive editor of eight publications, including The Daily Walk, Closer Walk, YouthWalk, LifeWalk and Quiet Walk. These Walk Thru the Bible devotionals maintain a distribution of over one hundred million.

Video seminars based on Wilkinson’s powerful conference teaching themes include: A Biblical Portrait of Marriage, Personal Holiness in Times of Temptation, Genesis, The Testing of Your Faith, Master Your Money, The 7 Laws of the Learner, Living Proof, and Husbands: Leading and Loving.

Dr. Wilkinson lives with his wife, Darlene, outside Atlanta, Georgia. They have two grown children, David and Jennifer, and two grandchildren, Andrew and Eric. He is listed in Who’s Who in the World, Men of Achievement, and Personalities of America.

My own story starts in a kitchen with yellow counters and Texas-sized raindrops pelting the window. It was my senior year of seminary in Dallas. Darlene, my wife, and I were finding ourselves spending more and more time thinking and praying about what would come next.Where should I throw my energy, passion, and training? What did God want for us as a couple? I stood in our kitchen thinking again about a challenge I’d heard from the seminary chaplain, Dr. Richard Seume. “Want a bigger vision for your life?” he had asked earlier that week. “Sign up to be a gimper for God.”

A gimper, as Seume explained it, was someone who always does a little more than what’s required or expected. In the furniture business, for example, gimping is putting the finishing touches on the upholstery, patiently applying the ornamental extras that are a mark of quality and value.

Dr. Seume took as his text the briefest of Bible biographies: “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers” (1 Chronicles 4:9). Jabez wanted to be more and do more for God, and—as we discover by the end of verse 10—God granted him his request.
End of verse. End of Bible story.

“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 miniprofile in the Bible?

Maybe it was the raindrops running down the windowpanes. Suddenly my thoughts ran past verse nine.

I picked up my Bible and read verse ten—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.

Thirty 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.