(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

Notice the final part of his prayer.  He cried, “…keep me from evil.”  This reminds me of the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation.”  Lord, do not let me be led into temptation.  Temptation is everywhere.  You cannot buy a quart of milk at the convenience store without seeing the suggestive and the sensual. We live in a world that is polluted by filth.  And there is something about this prayer that grabbed at my heart.  I almost did not read it through.  The Lord said, “Wait a minute.  Read it all.”  Jabez cried, “…keep me from evil.”  Just because God is blessing us and great things are happening does not mean we can be soft on sin.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Have you ever watched a marriage being torn apart as by a vicious animal because of sin?  Have you ever seen a happily married couple with everything in the world going for them, but one of them began to play with sin; one of them began to believe a lie of Satan? And two happy, beautiful people that have the world at their feet, see their life begin to fall apart because of sin.  Unfortunately, there is not much preaching on sin anymore.  According to Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” When you play with sin it produces death.  When you walk with Jesus the result is life. If you are going to keep your marriage relationship strong you must walk in righteousness.

A strong marriage is very important to me.  Joy and I have worked at having a strong marriage over these many years, and I thank God for it.  Someone has to stand up and say, “It can be done.”  Every time some silly, little nonsensical thing goes wrong you do not run out and slam the door, and go berserk!  That is not life – that is television!  That is hellish.  That is sin!  “Well, I can get a divorce for $49.50.”  No, you missed the point.  It could cost you forty nine thousand dollars and it would still not reflect the true cost of breaking a marriage covenant.  I am not speaking words of hurt to those that have had problems in their marriage.  Keep your marriage strong.  Divorce is not worth it.

If Satan has put a little thought in your head or if there is a little temptation working in you run from like you would run from a wild beast.  You do not play with those things, I have dealt with so much of it the last few years.  I have seen precious marriages torn into a million pieces because of sin.  I have seen precious teenage lives broken in pieces.

Girls, I do not care what a man may promise you until you are married keep your purity.  Every man out of matrimony that wants to do anything ungodly to your body is a liar and you tell him I said so!  It works both ways, seduction is a two way street. Young people the smartest thing you will ever do is keep your minds and bodies pure.  Young woman no man is worth missing God’s best in your life.  Young man no woman is worth missing God’s best in your life.  Five minutes of pleasure is not worth ruining your life.

I am not trying to be sensational.  If I could instant replay the things I have gone through trying to help people you would understand.  To me sin is not funny!  Sin will make you stupid.  Sin will take you further than you intended to go and it will cost you more than you ever intended to pay.  Sin does not just hurt you; sin hurts everybody.  You say, “It is my business what I do.”  No, it is everybody’s business because sin hurts everybody.  Anybody who sins hurts more than just themselves.

The Psalmist, David, whom I love dearly, was a man after God’s own heart.  Thank God that when Samuel pointed his finger and said, “Thou art the man,” David was man enough to fall on his face before God and pray the powerful prayer, “Have mercy on me, O God.”  There is forgiveness for sin.  The tragedy is that so many people say, “Well, there is forgiveness, so what?  Big deal! I will sin and get forgiveness later.”  But before long their conscience is seared as with a hot iron.  Then they think they can sleep anywhere, drink anything, do anything, watch anything, and feel that they have a biblical excuse for it.  The devil will provide an excuse if you are looking for one! It is not about what you can get away with!  Just because God has not let the sky fall in on you does not mean you are getting away with what you are doing. The Bible says, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Psalms 24:3-4). I say to every minister and every young couple: keep yourself pure.  What you fantasize, you will get involved with; Satan will see to it.

If you have seen the ravages of alcohol, like Joy and I have seen in our families, you would stay far away from drinking.  I had an uncle that could have been anything in life.  He was one of the most talented men that I ever met, but he died at age 55 because of alcoholism.  My uncle had a good heart, but he gave himself to things that destroyed his life.  I could tell you a lot of stories much like this.  It all started with compromise, a little slip, a little slide, a little drink here, a little drink there and ended up with another shipwrecked life.  If you drink a little, you will drink more.

You can feel temptation coming on.  Just a casual meeting, a casual glance, conversation and chemistry kicks in.  You know what is going on.  Do what Joseph did! Run if you have to!  Do not stand there and wallow in it and then say, “I just do not know what happened to me.”  Someone else might say, “Well, I do not know what I would do if I was caught in that situation!”  I will tell you what you are going to do.  You are going to take the path of least resistance.  Make your decision now what you are going to do.  I have had to walk away from certain friends in the ministry over the years because I have made up my mind I am going to have God’s best.  Satan has every kind of a trap in the world to trip you up.  Get smart!  Be wise!  Jabez said, if I am ever going to break out of this born-to-lose syndrome; I need God’s hand to be with me.  Oh, God, deliver me from evil and the grief that it brings.

(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

The hand of God in a person’s life could be seen as the anointing.  When the anointing is on a person it produces results.  “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” Acts 10:38. When Jabez prayed “…that thine hand might be with me…” he was asking for God’s anointing to face a difficult task.  Some commentators believe that the occasion of Jabez’s prayer was the expulsion of the Canaanites from his territory. The only thing that was going to get him through that situation was the anointed direction of God.

We all face situations where we need to hear from God.  Many times God will speak to us during a church service where the Word of God is being preached.  I have heard of this happening to business people in my congregation more times that I can recall.  They were just sitting in a service and the Spirit of God would give them direction for their business.  He would show them what adjustments to make to get out of financial crisis.  The message preached that day would not even be about finances, but the anointing on the Word brought them direction.  That adjustment would not have been thought of without the anointing touching their life.  I love God and want to please Him. I want the hand of God on my life!  The anointing on my life will help me be a good husband and father.  Let the hand of God be upon me!  Anointing, fall on me – live big within me!  Touch me!  Anointing of God take this piece of clay and do something with it.

(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

I have not been able to figure my church out.  We have always done what we are not supposed to be able to do.  We have always been able to go where we are not supposed to go.  We have been able to buy where we are not supposed to buy.  We have been able to do things that others say, “will not work.”  When we moved to downtown Fort Worth, Texas in 1976, several people said, “You have committed church suicide because everybody is going out to suburbia.”  I do not have any criticism for that, but God said, “Go downtown.”  Sometimes, I wondered why He wanted us to go downtown.  But now I can see it, because the downtown area was going to become a focal point for our city. Praise God!  God put us where He wanted us.  God wanted the anointing and the power of the Holy Ghost in downtown.

Can you imagine Jesus sending out forms all over Fort Worth to determine what people wanted church services to be like? I cannot imagine Him walking around and saying, “Now, just why are you so discouraged with churches?  What kind of a church would you like us to be?”  And then we all go in the back room and say, “Oh my Jesus, we need to have sad singing.  We have to change everything around.  We cannot preach over twelve minutes because people do not have the mental capacity to handle over a twelve minute message.”  You know, that would insult my intelligence.  I make no apology that the Spirit of the Lord God is upon us and God has anointed us to see blind eyes opened, to see broken hearts healed, and to see marriages that are shattered put back together.  We are seeing those whose lives that have been ravaged by cocaine, alcoholism, pornography, and filth being set free – praise God!  There is nothing on this earth like the power of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to turn people’s lives around.

(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

So, what do you do when the deck is stacked against you?  What do you do when everything says you cannot make it? When life is against you, you can do what Jabez did.  He prayed. He prayed to the Lord his God. And I am telling you, you cannot keep a praying man or woman down.  He prayed.  That is what the Bible says, “And Jabez called on the name of the God of Israel”  (I Chronicles 4:10).

One has wisely said, “Until I pray nothing significant is going to happen, but after I pray the options are unlimited.” So when everything seems to be against you, what can you do?  First of all, you can pray about it.  I want you to notice the flow of his prayer in verse 10.  He prayed: “that thou wouldest bless me indeed” – not a little bit – but God bless me abundantly!  It is okay to ask God to bless you abundantly if you are going to give tithes and offerings to Him and bless others in the process.  It is selfish to pray, “God bless me abundantly,” and do nothing to help others.

God bless me indeed. I am a blessed man.  I am a blessed pastor.  My wife, Joy, is a blessed woman.  We’re blessed! And we have learned that we stay blessed by blessing others.  God said to Abraham, “I am going to bless you and make you a blessing.”  If your motive is to bless others God will see to it that you are blessed.

Jabez prayed, “Lord, enlarge my coast.”  In other words, expand and enlarge my influence.  Enlarge my ability to help others.  As a church we can pray, “God, multiply our outreaches. Multiply the workers for our outreach. Give us more territory and give us more people to help us take that territory.”

(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

When I was in school very few students owned cars. I remember a certain student, whose father was a doctor, had a brand new Ford convertible.  That young man always had more money than he knew what to do with.  He had a brand new car when everyone else was walking, but he was given too much too quick, and it ruined him.  He became an alcoholic.  The last time I heard about him he was on his last leg and I pray to God that something turns his life around.

You can be born with a silver spoon in your mouth and turn out to be a zero. This young man thought his future was made because he had wealth, but in reality he was heading toward disaster because he had no one directing his path. He was in need of a master and he chose the wrong one. As long as you are partners with God, you can make BIG plans. It is not up to chance, it is Jesus being the Lord and the Savior of your life that makes the difference. It really is!

(The following is an excerpt from Bob Nichols’ book, “How to Change Your Destiny.”)

“And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested” (I Chronicles 4:9-10).

You should be thankful that you were not born in Old Testament days.  If your mama had a bad day, she was liable to give you a negative name that would follow you to your grave.  According to Strong’s Concordance the name Jabez comes from an unused root probably meaning to grieve; sorrowful.  Here is this precious little baby that has never done anything wrong.  He just came into this life and because his mother had a bad day, she named him “sorrowful.”  You know it is just hard to conceive that Jabez’s mother affected the rest of his life by giving him that name, all because it was not a happy time in her life.

A precious baby being named Sorrowful.  Can you imagine that?  You would think she would have wanted to name him: happy child or blessed child.  But, because things were difficult when Jabez was born, because she bore him with sorrow, she passed that sorrow on.

As Jabez grew up he had a decision to make.  Am I going to let my mother’s decision ruin the rest of my life? Did you know there are people whose entire life has been ruined by a decision made by someone else?  If that has been your experience, the Spirit of God is bringing you to a point of decision: Are you going to trust God with all your heart and believe what God said about you?  Are you going to see yourself from God’s point of view?  Are you going to let someone else’s negative mindset ruin your life?

As I look at the story of Jabez, I find it intriguing that the Bible says that he was more honorable than his brethren.  The Bible does not say why he was more honorable.  Perhaps it was because he rose above his situation and he prevailed.  Some people just roll over and play dead, but he made a decision to let God remake and remold his life.  He refused to live with bad luck ruling and ruining him.  He refused to stay down.  It is no disgrace to be down – it is a disgrace to stay down.  It is not a disgrace to fail – it is a disgrace to wallow in your failure.  Everyone has had setbacks.  Everyone has had failures somewhere in their lives.  Jabez is an example that we can overcome no matter what the circumstances.

Some people give you their success story but they do not tell you the whole story.  But here is a man that had a name that should have ruined the rest of his life.  Nobody would expect anything positive out of a man whose mother gave him the name, “Sorrowful.”  As I look at this story, I see a child who had a “bad” name, but one who made good decisions.

Life is a decision.  It is not where you were born.  It is not how you are born.  It is not the color of your skin.  It is not the education that you have acquired.  Life is a choice and you either choose to win, or you choose to lose.  I have faced these kinds of decisions over the years.  Thank God I made the choice years ago that I can be everything that God has called me to be.  There are many reasons why I should not be doing what I am doing today as a pastor of an international church. I am here today because I did not look at those reasons; I looked to the One that called me. My head said I could not do it.  I had a school teacher that said I could not do it; but I have discovered I can do what God called me to do. I can be what God called me to be.  I am not destined to mediocrity.  I am not destined to failure.  I discovered that I could change the path I was on through the help of God.