Track 20: New Prayer of Jabez

Some weird stuff happens here. As I mentioned, a very short book called The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life was published in 2000. It soon reached the New York Times Best Seller list, arousing a furor that it was promoting a “greed prayer”: I found out about the book, its author Bruce Wilkinson and said furor through a 2001 NYT article.

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
Oh, that you would bless my friends indeed
And enlarge their territory
That your hand would be with them
And that you would keep them from evil
That they may not cause pain
Oh, that you would bless our family indeed
And enlarge our territory
That your hand would be with us
And that you would keep us from evil
That we may not cause pain
Oh, that you would bless our band indeed
And enlarge our band’s territory
That your hand would be with our band
And that you would keep our band from evil
That we may not cause pain
Oh, that you would bless everybody indeed
And enlarge everybody’s territory
That your hand would be with everybody
And that you would keep everyone from evil
May nobody cause pain
May nobody cause pain
May nobody cause pain

The first verse is the original prayer. The four verses about friends, family, our band and everybody else are my additions.