The B family worships in our church. S, the daughter, has been working in Adelaide for over a year and this morning, she was in church. She was going to travel overseas for a bit before coming back to Melbourne again so the church had her out in the front this morning, for prayers. J, S’s mom, prayed for her and one of the phrases used was to “expand her territory”. This was an obvious reference to the prayerof Jabez in I Chronicles 4:10, which has become a bit of a trendy thing for believers of the prosperity gospel or variations of it. Bruce Wilkinson’s book of the same title was much trumpted, even in my previous church in Klang and for a while, many in that church openly prayed that prayer and no one batted an eyelid (or opened an eye…)

I have been having trouble with the prosperity gospel for many years now. The obvious examples were Job and Lazarus.The example of Job may be a bit problematic in that he eventually came good and God blessed him in even greater terms than he started out with but what about Lazarus? He died a sick and hungry pauper. There are numerous articles (see for example, this, this or this one) on the problems with this branch of the prosperity gospel and I hope those who promotes this line of teaching read and think a little more about it.