Let Your Hand Be With Me

Let Your Hand Be With Me

1 Chronicles 4:10 - "…and that thine hand might be with me…"

After asking God for blessing and enlargement, Jabez asked for something he would desperately need if those prayers were answered: the hand of God upon him.

There is wisdom in the order of his request. It is easy to pray for something when we are imagining how wonderful it will be to receive it. What we often cannot see beforehand is the weight that accompanies the answer. A larger territory brings decisions we have never made before, pressures we have never carried before and situations for which yesterday's wisdom may no longer be enough.

Jabez did not merely want God to enlarge his life and leave him alone to manage the consequences. He wanted God's hand with him.

The language of God's hand appears repeatedly in Scripture as a way of describing His active help, power and favour. Ezra repeatedly recognised the good hand of God upon him. Nehemiah spoke about the gracious hand of God upon him when explaining the favour he had received. The early church also recognised the hand of the Lord at work as the gospel spread.

Moses understood the importance of God's presence in an especially powerful way. In Exodus 33, after everything Israel had experienced, Moses told God that if His presence did not go with them, they should not be sent forward. Think about what that meant. The promised land itself was not enough if God was absent from the journey.

We can become so focused on the destination that we forget this. We pray for the job, the business, the marriage, the house, the ministry, the opportunity or the breakthrough, and sometimes we imagine that arriving there will solve everything. Then the door opens and we discover that answered prayers require wisdom too.

There are rooms you need God's hand to enter and God's hand to remain in. There are opportunities where intelligence alone will not be enough. There are seasons when you will need restraint more than acceleration, discernment more than enthusiasm and wisdom more than visibility.

This is why "let Your hand be with me" may be one of the most important parts of Jabez's prayer. It is the acknowledgement that enlargement without God is not the goal.

We do not simply need God to open doors. We need Him after they open. We need Him when the prayer is answered, when people begin to notice us, when the responsibility increases and when the thing we once desperately wanted becomes normal life.

There is no success worth achieving if achieving it slowly teaches us to live without God.

So ask for the territory, but ask for His hand even more.

Prayer

Father, let Your hand be with me. I do not want to enter any season where I lose my awareness of You. When You open doors, guide me through them. When responsibility increases, give me wisdom. When I become tired, strengthen me. When I become proud, correct me. When I am afraid, steady me. When I do not know what to do, teach me to seek You before I simply react. Do not allow success to make me independent of You. Let Your hand rest upon my home, my work, my relationships and everything You entrust to me. Whatever You enlarge in my life, remain at the centre of it. In Jesus' name, Amen.