Let God tell you who you are

He created you, He redeemed you, He calls you by name, He equips you, He empowers you, He rewards you

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1 Chronicles 4:9-10

The name Jabez means 'Pain and Trouble'

Can you imagine walking into a room and hearing someone say "here comes trouble" or someone describing you as "a pain" and what's more Jabez's mother labelled him that way the day he was born, because she gave birth to him in pain, but Jabez refused to wear the label or let that name define him. Instead of looking back at his past and listening to his critics, what did he do? Because he was more honourable than his brothers he turned to God and prayed,

"Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory, that your hand would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain"

Jabez's most important action was to conquer new territory with divine action. So God granted him what he requested. See God will grant us what we ask if we trust him and ask in faith. Regardless of what others may think or say about you.

In life things can go one way or the other, we can choose to live with what people make us to be or we can change the label and trust God to do it for us.

The label on the outside of a bottle tells us what's inside the bottle, and when you let others label you, they make your world to be so small. That's why Jabez asked God to bless and enlarge his territory. And once you accept the label they place on you, you start to believe that's who you are, and that you'll never amount to anything more than that.

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No, only God can tell you who you are, so do what Jabez did go directly to the source (God) He created you, He redeemed you, He calls you by name, He equips you, He empowers you, He rewards you. So when people try to limit you by putting labels on you, God steps in and says in Isaiah 43:1 "Fear not, for I have redeemed you I have called you by your name, you are mine" The truth is that God loves and accepts you as you are and His approval makes everybody else's disapproval as nothing. "Since you were precious in my sight, you have been honoured and I have loved you, therefore I will give men for you, and people for your life". Isaiah 43:4.

Jabez conceived in pain, delivered in victory, we learn why he was more honourable than his brothers. More importantly, we find a man with whom many of us can identify, a man with a painful past and no hope for the future. He was a man who struggled to find meaning and significance in life. He was a man who was desperate to be accepted by his fellow man. But even more importantly most of all he was a man who craved a relationship with God and trusted God to guide him, bless him and give him freedom in life.

We are so precious to God that His desire is to always give us abundantly more than we can ask or think, as His promise words in Jeremiah 29:11-13 "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you" says the Lord "Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope, then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you, and you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart".

Author: Herbert Jean

May God bless and enrich your life

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