Since both of these prayers are in the Bible, both of them have their place in our healing from the bites we have received from others, but the intercessory prayers are the ones we need to strive to pray.
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Esther was unsure if Xerxes would extend favor to her, but God is already extending His favor to you even before you approach Him. He wants to turn your grief into joy.
Let your grief be a time you press into God’s presence. Like Esther taking her grief and her petition into the king’s presence, take your grief into the presence of King of kings.
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Last week we saw how the Israelites in exile had their time of grief—being targeted for annihilation—turned to joy when God granted favor to Queen Esther.
The books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are all written during this time period as the exiles are returning in waves to Israel. This is another grief-into-joy moment! More than likely, all four of these books were written by Ezra. Notice the note of joyful celebration that is repeated in the last words of 2 Chronicles and the opening words in the Book of Ezra (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-4). We don’t know which psalmist wrote Psalm 126, but it sounds the same joyful note.
Not all the exiles returned at once. In fact, the Book of Daniel shows us that Daniel likely stayed in his position of leadership to these governments until his death.
The exiles were returning in waves. As the worship practices at the temple were reestablished and as people returned to lands allotted to each tribe, it was important for the leaders to make sure the right people were in the right places. So 1 Chronicles opens with genealogies.
Beginning with Adam and Noah (1:1-4)
The spiritual fathers (1:34)
The family line of the Messiah (2:1-15; Matthew 1:1-6) through the family tree of David (3:1-24)
Then 1 Chronicles 4 lists more clans in the tribe of Judah. Of special note is the Calebite clan (2:9, 18).
In the Calebite clan we meet Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. His name literally translated is sorrow. I wonder: is this a nickname or his birth name? how did he even get this name?
His mother is quoted, “I gave birth to him in pain.” Did that mean it was physically a difficult birth? Did she die after childbirth? Was he born during the painful exile? His father isn’t mentioned, so maybe his birth reminded everyone of the father who was no longer there. The Amplified Bible says his mother named him “sorrow maker.”
Whatever the case, Jabez has become aware that his name or his presence is causing grief to others. There is a bit of a play on words here: “his mother named(Hebrew: qara) … Jabez cried out (Hebrew: qara) to the God of Israel.” In essence, Jabez is saying, “Since my mother cried out in pain—or thinks I am a sorrow maker—I have no where else to go but to cry out to God!”
I believe Jabez was a teenager at this time. One medical journal says, “Adolescents are physically, cognitively, and socioemotionally more advanced than children but prone to behave in ways that are inconsistent with adult values and norms. … Adolescents also frequently report greater self-consciousness, and are more concerned with and interested in others’ perceptions of self.”
This means that as the brain matures during adolescence, teenagers begin to look at themselves through the eyes of others. They are beginning to make decisions that will earn approval from their peers and their family.
This describes Jabez. He doesn’t want to be the sorrow maker any longer.
Grief happens when my reality falls short of my expectations. Jabez has become self-aware that he is a painful reminder to everyone around him. He is living in a place of grief
Jabez is called “more honorable than his brothers” (v. 9) because he turns his pain into his prayer. His brothers may either have not been as self-aware, or maybe they were aware but simply didn’t care. Jabez realized, “People have been calling me sorrow maker my whole life. There’s nothing I can do about it on my own, so the only thing I can do is call on the only One who can turn my grief into joy” (v. 10).
Look at his noble prayer:
bless me—God, You are the only One whose favor I desire
enlarge my territory—even out of this grief, bless me so that I can be a blessing
let Your hand be with me—only Your hand can restore my fortunes, can help me reap a harvest, and can allow me to sing Your songs of joy (see Psalm 126:1-6).
Let us follow this example from Jabez’s life and begin to turn every pain into prayer.
God doesn’t want to give us temporary relief from our pain, but He desires for us to know His never-ending joy (Isaiah 25:7-9; Revelation 21:3-4).
Hey, leaders, let me ask you a simple question: Is your workplace a safe place for people to make mistakes? It should be or else we will be limiting the potential of both our teammates and our whole organization. Greg and I unpack this in greater detail in this episode.
“You yearn for a simplified lifestyle, so that your communication with Me can be uninterrupted. But I challenge you to relinquish the fantasy of an uncluttered world. Accept each day just as it comes, and find Me in the midst of it all. … Remember that your ultimate goal is not to control or fix everything around you; it is to keep communing with Me. A successful day is one in which you have stayed in touch with Me, even if many things remain undone at the end of the day. Do not let your to-do list (written or mental) become an idol directing your life. Instead, ask My Spirit to guide you moment by moment.” —Sarah Young, Jesus Calling [1 Thessalonians 5:17; Proverbs 3:6]
“God is God, and since He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in His will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.” —Elizabeth Elliot
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” —Booker T. Washington
Pornography adversely effects the viewer’s brain, leading to a growing list of physical and emotional problems. Check out this post from Fight The New Drug, in which they report, “No matter what you believe about porn, ‘what is undeniable is that we’re consuming far more of it than at any point in human history, and the effects of this are yet to fully register.’”
I have always loved the fact of God’s laughter—the perfect joy He has must be expressed in perfect laughter! David Mathis writes about the encouragement in God’s laugh: “One way to enjoy the smile of our fiercely happy Father is to tune your ears to the wonders of His laughter.”
Scientists took a cubic millimeter of a mouse’s brain and mapped out the neurons and connections. The result is astounding! In Nature, they wrote, “A cubic millimetre might not sound like much—roughly the size of a grain of sand—but to neuroscientists, it is enormous. One cubic millimetre of a mammalian brain contains tens of thousands of neurons with hundreds of millions of connections, or synapses, between them.” Can you imagine what the human brain is like?! How amazing is our Creator!
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” —G.K. Chesterton
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Watermelon is a great summer treat. However, sometimes a nice green exterior can hide rotten fruit on the inside. When this happens we don’t say, “Well, at least the outside was nice,” but we throw the whole thing out! We can fall into a similar trap in our leadership, focusing on creating a great exterior while we let our vital interior development rot away. In this episode, Greg and I encourage you to focus first on your internal development, and through that your external image will improve as well.
[0:59] A lot of leaders are more interested in what’s on the outside than what’s on the inside.
[1:39] Why do leaders naturally gravitate to making the outside look better than the inside?
[4:10] Greg wonders if perhaps we enhance our exterior because we’re afraid to be vulnerable.
[5:25] If you have to tell people you’re a leader you’re probably not
[6:40] Greg and I discuss a list of things we usually recognize, alongside the things we should equally recognize
[6:48] 1. Talents and gifts alongside integrity and character.
[19:35] If we ignore the inside stuff what’s the inevitable result?
[20:51] Greg likes to ask the question, “What’s new?” as a simple way to assess growth in others.
[21:50] I share a discovery from my Bible reading in Romans.
[23:03] Greg tells a cautionary tale about a former coworker who didn’t know how to engage in deeper conversation with his team.
[24:24] “The best mirror is in a good friend’s eye.” Greg and I would love to be this good friend for you. Reach out to us at here if you’re interested in personalized coaching.
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You shall take some of the first of all the produce of the soil which you harvest from the land the Lord your God gives you and put it in a basket, and go to the place [the sanctuary] which the Lord your God has chosen as the abiding place for His Name [and His Presence]. And you shall go to the priest who is in office in those days, and say to him, “I give thanks this day to the Lord your God that I have come to the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. … And now, behold, I bring the firstfruits of the ground which You, O Lord, have given me.” And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 26:2-3, 10 AMPC)
When we give God the firstfruits, we acknowledge and celebrate His provision. When we wait to give God the leftovers, we signal that we believe we have to provide for ourselves. This isn’t just a one-and-done gift, but it should be ongoing.
And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish; and as their nets were at the point of breaking, they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and take hold with them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. … And after they had run their boats on shore, they left everything and joined Him as His disciples and sided with His party and accompanied Him. (Luke 5:6-7, 11)
It was immediately after Peter, Andrew, James, and John had the largest success in their careers that Jesus asked them to walk away from their fishing business.
And they did!
Following Jesus is worth more than anything that we might call “success.” Money, health, fame, and the like are nothing but brief shadows.
The Life that only Jesus can give is the soul-satisfying reality that increases in its enjoyment forever!
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None of us are strangers to grief—we’ve all experienced this dark place.
The dictionary defines grief three ways: (1) keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; (2) sharp sorrow; (3) painful regret. We sometimes define it with terms like at the end of my rope, down for the count, nothing but gray skies all around, or unable to see any light at the end of the long tunnel.
One psychologist recently asked, “Can you die of a broken heart?” And she meant it literally. She wondered if a person’s grief—what we sometimes call an emotionally broken heart—could lead to a physically broken heart. The answer was, quite simply, yes. Those who cannot get relief from their grief are more susceptible to heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and breakdowns in their immune system.
We need some good news to pull us out of our grief. The good news is that God specializes not just in removing grief, but in turning grief into joy. In the hymn O Holy Night, one of the lines says, “In all our trials, born to be our Friend. He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger.” Isaiah calls Jesus, “A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
Grief tends to wash over us in waves. When the waves hit, they often cause us to forget what God has done for us in the past. The apostle Paul said we should learn lessons from the history of the Israelites in the Old Testament. Let me zoom in on one particular story. Notice the waves of grief that follow one after another.
Israel was complacent about their sin (Amos 6:1, 4-7) and eventually was taken into captivity in Assyria. Soon after that, the Assyrians then defeated by the Babylonians. Meanwhile, instead of learning the lessons from Israel’s captivity, Judah had more evil kings than God-fearing kings and they were eventually defeated by the Babylonians (Psalm 137:1-4). Babylon was then defeated by the Medes and Persians.
Somewhere in this time of exile, a young Israelite girl named Hadassah becomes orphaned. She is adopted by Mordecai, who changes her name into the Persian name Esther. Queen Vashti is divorced and banished by King Xerxes, and as a result Esther is chosen from all of the eligible bachelorettes in Persia to become queen in Vashti’s place.
Mordecai is an attendant at the gate to the castle, giving him a good vantage point to stay in touch with Esther. It also puts him in a place to overhear an assassination plot against King Xerxes, which Mordecai relayed to Esther to tell the king. Sadly, Mordecai’s good deed, which saved King Xerxes’ life, is overlooked. Instead, Mordecai’s faith is attacked by Haman, the prime minister, and all of the Jews in Persia are targeted by Haman for destruction. Once again, Mordecai gets word to Esther to have her appeal to the king. Esther is put in a no-win situation here: to approach the king without an invitation could be fatal, but to do nothing would mean the death of all of the Jews.
How did all of this come to be?
Let me take you back to Deuteronomy 8:3. God allowed His people to be humbled and hungry so that they would learn that He is their only source. In the following verses we are told twice to “beware”: beware of forgetting that God is our Provider, and beware of thinking we are our own provider. If we do either of these, God will discipline us (Deuteronomy 8:5).
God isn’t mentioned at all in the Book of Esther, but He is so obviously at work. God said, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10). Before the Israelites went into captivity, God promised that His people would not be annihilated there but would return to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 31:10-17).
Esther did interceded before King Xerxes. Because of this, Haman was hanged, Mordecai was exalted to Haman’s place, and the Jews were saved (Esther 7:1-6; 8:1-2, 15-17; 9:20-22; 10:3).
God turned overwhelming grief into unspeakable joy!
Dick Brogden wrote, “Are you overwhelmed, out of strength, nowhere to go, out of resources, at a most critical time in your family, ministry, job, or life? Great! God allowed it so that all the earth may know that He is God alone. Don’t waste the crisis. It’s a great opportunity for missions, a great opportunity for God’s glory to be known in all the earth.”
Let your grief be a time you press into God’s presence. Like Esther taking her grief and her petition into the king’s presence, take your grief into the presence of King of kings.
Esther was unsure if Xerxes would extend favor to her, but God is already extending His favor to you even before you approach Him. He wants to turn your grief into joy.
God doesn’t want to simply remove your grief, but He wants you to be testimony for Him because of the way He moves on your behalf.
Follow along with all of the messages in our series Grief Into Joy by clicking here.
Why do Christians lift their hands to God? This is a clip from one of the sermons in our series looking at the worship songs that Israelite pilgrims sang as they ascended to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts.
“Civil governments are established by God [Romans 13:1] to restrain the criminal elements of human society—even though these officers are often filled and run by evil people. We must divorce our feelings about the people that hold these offices from the authority of the office itself.” —Dr. Henry Halley
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” —Sam Walton
This article opens with this thought: “Scientists will probably never fully understand photosynthesis as additional research uncovers even more fascinating mysteries.” It then goes on to outline how plants use quantum mechanics nearly perfectly to manage the flow of energy during photosynthesis. Truly this is more evidence of an All-Wise Creator.
In sharing a mini-biography of Henry Martyn, this article outlines how God prepares missionaries for the field to which He has called them. “God used [Martyn’s] classical education at Cambridge alongside his spiritual maturity formed by intentional mentorship to get him ready for his unique task of engaging Muslims and translating the Bible.”
T.M. Moore has an outstanding series for pastoral leaders. In a recent post, Moore wrote, “Paul’s vision was too vast, too all-encompassing, too transformative, too urgent, and too other-worldly to stop with, say, a vision that focused on more members, better facilities, larger budgets, additional staff, or regular ‘growth.’ None of these, nor any of a thousand other ways church leaders might express their hopes for their churches, is a proper vision for church leaders.” I was grateful for T.M.’s endorsement of my book Shepherd Leadership where I talk about the biblical metrics for church leaders.
“One of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give, and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God.” —C.S. Lewis
Since both of these prayers are in the Bible, both of them have their place in our healing from the bites we have received from others, but the intercessory prayers are the ones we need to strive to pray. 
Craig T. Owens 