"Cracking The Sky" Min. Barbara Florvil

1:39 So God granted him what he requested. Let us pray. dear God teach us how to pray amen you may be seated In line with our theme of the month, teach us how to pray. I'd like to preach on the subject, cracking the sky. I've had the distinct pleasure of ministering to our youth here at Alfred Street for a little time now, and there are some things that I've learned has not passed a single young person. There are some sayings that we used to say when we were younger, and for some reason, they're still saying. They drop a Cheeto on the floor, and then they pick it up, And they say things like, God made dirt and dirt don't hurt.

2:47 And a girl is on a full-on tantrum, and they're talking to each other, and they say, Big girls, don't cry. And there's always a teacher in a situation, and then somebody says, Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt me. and I think all three of those are huge lies. God made dirt, but it was a very long time ago.

3:26 I've met many a big girl and big boy who has cried and has rightfully done so and sticks and stones still break bones, but words can absolutely hurt us. I'd like to submit for your consideration this morning that not only can words hurt us, but they can affect and control our realities. That words can hurt or build. Words can construct and deconstruct. Words are not just amorphous, intangible things that we tell kids are real, just like the monster in their closets. I'd suggest that sometimes words require imagination, but don't stay in our imagination. Words can be the very stuff of the very real monsters in our world.

4:23 Words are the things that form stories and lack of stories. They create division and promote unity. They promote policies and lack of policies. Words have a very tangible way of impacting lives because of the stories we tell with words. We give some children a chance to excel in school and others who failed third grade reading exam a bed in jail. And words tell the census how many federal programs they should be funding. But then somehow, someway, these districts are redistricted so that it can benefit the few. Words can make marriages and break marriages. Words can speak life into existence or speak something into oblivion. In fact, even scientists are purporting that we can no longer afford to underestimate the power of our words. The cumulative effect of our careful words or our mismanaged words are extensive.

5:23 neuroscientists have written books on the power that words have to literally change our minds hostile language can disrupt specific genes that play a key part in the production of neurochemicals that protect us from stress they say that while positive words of peace and love can change expressions of genes, strengthening our frontal lobes and promoting brain's cognitive functioning. Negative words can send signals and activity to our brain, and specifically the amygdala, where our brain interprets fear and anxiety. Say words have power.

6:10 Which brings us to our text today. to a person who had every reason to fear, to a person who had an intimate understanding of the power of words and names and sticks and stones and the stories they produce. We meet Jabez. He was born into a faith and a culture where names and how they are given are considered sacred, where the first family of faith, Abram and Sarai, Sarai were given new names as they signified the journey that they were going on in their faith to Abraham and Sarah. A faith in culture where Jacob wrestles with God in the midnight hour for a blessing, and God renames him Israel, saying God prevails to commemorate the struggle and celebrate the blessing. A faith where Moses asked the God commissioning him to save his people from a burning bush, and he asked, and who shall I say sent me?

7:08 What is his name to which God said, I am that I am. He lived in a culture where names didn't just matter. They conferred upon its subject identity and destiny. And though Jabez was considered more honorable than his brothers, because of his name, his identity and destiny was less than honorable. In Hebrew, Jabez's name phonetically sounds like the word pain and is literally translated to he causes pain. And if you doubted that someone could ever call their child pain, let's go back to the scripture. His mother herself said, I bore him in pain. and yet he was considered to be the most honorable among his brothers but was still called pain have you ever been good at something but something you had no control over casted a shadow on you has anyone in here ever been discounted before you could really be counted at all Here we are, we meet Jabez, and Jabez is literally good at life, more honorable than all his brothers, and even then, his whole identity is dictated by something he had no control over.

8:40 Jabez, I believe, one day had to have had a moment when he realized that his name was what he was going to be remembered for. He must have thought, this is what people are going to expect of me. This is the reputation that will precede me. These are the rumors that will follow me the rest of my life. And he knew that one day his name will be included in the record of names that chronicles the history of his family. He'll be remembered by the name he was given and the names that will probably give birth from that name. Failure, sorrow, grief, suffering, no good, low down, no count. Jabez would be counted in the number but would be relegated by the name he was given. I know Jabez is not the only one who's had this revelation.

9:38 Maybe your birth name doesn't mean pain. Maybe your mama didn't play you that way. But it was the reputation others tried to give you. It was the assumptions people made about you before you opened your mouth. It was the creative plot twist they put on your story before you even had a chance to tell it yourself. Yeah, maybe your name doesn't mean pain and you still know that someone in your family treated you like one. They treated you like a nuisance at worst and to be tolerated at best. Maybe your name isn't transliterated into grief, but your joy has been gone since you've been abandoned by the people who were supposed to love you. Maybe your name doesn't phonetically sound like sorrow in your mother tongue, but probably your joy was snatched away simply because someone decided your future wasn't worth waiting on. The biggest lie we ever tell our children is and will always be sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.

10:47 Because the right wrong words from the wrong right person will send you down a path you haven't been on since you got saved. The right-wrong words in a mama joke can have you ready to fight in a minute for your mama who wasn't even there in the time. The right-wrong words from the wrong-right person when everybody's patience is being tested can have you wanting to test the concrete for the baptisms of water. For someone who tried to try you and not try Jesus. Or even worse, the right-wrong words from the wrong-right person.

11:28 can have you discounting yourself out of your own future, out of your own possibilities, so much so that they got you using the right, wrong words against yourself. Don't let someone you love say, I don't want you. Don't let a job you sacrifice everything for choose to sacrifice you. don't let someone you rocked into healing turn around and use words of hurt and malice against you and don't let it be something you have endured for years you turn a new decade in the weight of those words form new neurological pathways and deeper emotional and spiritual grooves that may actually get you believing.

12:20 Maybe I am pain. Maybe I am sorrow. Because these people didn't see it in me, and because these people didn't see that in me, maybe there's some truth in that rejection. Maybe there's some fact lodged in that hurt. Maybe I really don't deserve the love I keep thinking I do. Maybe because injury after injury to my heart tells me that something might actually be inherently wrong with me. And because of this, even though good things may come our way, we assume that they came to the wrong doorstep. Even for the blessings that have found you, you question, it must be a hoax, or simply in transition to my neighbor, because surely I wasn't meant to have this.

13:23 Surely I was the second choice. Surely I was chosen out of convenience. Surely I was a placeholder for the next best thing because, after all, words, I can admit, hurt more than sticks and stones. And here we are in the life of Israel. The writer of 1 Chronicles is seeking to tell the history of the nation by going through its genealogy by listing the names of everybody and their daddy, starting with Adam, and to stop and look at a man with an ill-fated name and an ill-fated destiny, Jabez. Jabez shows us the difference one verse can make. In one verse, his fate is sealed by how others see him, and the next, He takes the power of words and turns it into the power of prayer.

14:23 And words don't just become prayer. Words become prayer when they are directed towards God and wrapped in belief that God can actually hear them. I see Jabez one day between verses 9 and verse 10 being fed up with the thought of not being enough, not having enough and never knowing enough. I see Jabez rolling up all of those words used against him and he throws it against the limitations of the world that was created around him. He takes that ball of words and he throws it at the world and he decides that it will no longer dictate who he will be. He rolls up those words and throws it against the confines of a life that wasn't meant for him. He rolls up those words and throws it against an invisible barrier in the sky that we often bump our heads against when we start to believe greater for ourselves. He rolls up those words and he wraps them in some faith and directs them towards the God of Israel.

15:26 I thought it was curious how in a book literally written to detail the history of the people of Israel and their relationship with God, the writer felt the need to say, Jabez called on the God of Israel. why did he need to say Jabez called on the God of Israel and I believe Jabez called on the God of Israel because Jabez just had to check and make sure he was sending the message to the right direction he had to make sure he was hitting up the right line Jabez had to check to see that his message was going straight to God maybe it was his first time talking to God in a long time maybe it was his first time praying at all or maybe it was his first time praying and believing that God can answer but sometimes you got to remind yourself who you're calling to the God of Israel to the God who was and is to come to the God of the Passover to the God who parts red seas to the God who sends a cloud by day and a fire by night to the God who sends manna to the ungrateful and quail to the greedy to the God of my foremothers and my forefathers God of Israel do not forget me in this long list of names of people who have come before me God of Israel Please do not forget me.

17:05 I'm here too. It is I, Jabez. It's me, pain. I'm in pain. I'm feeling hopeless. It's me. I'm wounded. I'm bruised. God, not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Not my father, not my mother, but it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. J-Bez teaches us that prayer is personal. Oh God, that you would bless me.

17:47 You think that the emphasis is on blessed. The emphasis is on me. to know that I'm worth praying for, even if I'm praying for myself by myself. Oh God, bless me. Bless me indeed that you really made me on purpose. Bless me. Bless me indeed that you really did send me. Bless me. Bless me indeed that you really did choose me. Bless me, bless me indeed That though my mother bore me in pain I am not a mistake Bless me, bless me indeed That I am not a filler for some space Oh God, won't you bless me To know that I am here And that I am here for a reason Someone needs to know how to pray like Jabez Because pain can teach us how to pray Pain teaches us that we need to come to a moment when we no longer ignore the source of our need.

19:06 That we are broken and we're in some pain and we need God to take all of it. Here's how we get prayer wrong. We think we need to clean up house before we even talk to God. stop cussing for a week be on your keto diet you need to be at work on on time every day stop texting so this person whoever that person is back and forth we are here deliberately leaving the debris of our lives we're deliberately leaving the debris of our lives outside of our prayers before an all-knowing God and all knowing God thinking he won't know what to do with this mess. We bring the things that made it out of the storm. We bring the things that made it out of the fire.

19:59 We bring the things that made it out of the flood. We bring the things that went through many toils and snares, that made it through the danger seen and unseen, but God wants what didn't make it. God wants the things we try to hide in our closets because they're too busted to share, but it still means something to you. The things that were burned in the ashes of your divorce, the trust that was mangled under the end of that friendship, God wants your honesty. God wants you to get personal. God wants you to get real. Your prayers might not feel like they're getting through because you're not the one bringing them. You've been sending some representative to God. You've been sending some phantom of your hopes and your dreams.

20:59 You've been having them bring your prayers to God. And God wants to see the ugliness of your doubts. And God wants to see the terrifying nature of your nightmares. Give it to God and bring it yourself. so God can give you beauty for ashes. So God can give you the oil of joy for your mourning. So God can give you the garment of praise for your spirit of despair. God wants your prayers and he wants it from you. God wants your prayers and God wants it to be personal. it's the gift of your authenticity that reminds God that God made you You trying to give your inauthentic self to God, that's an offense.

22:05 It's an offense to the masterpiece that the master created. You didn't think it was good enough, so you gave him another version of yourself. God wants your prayers to be personal.

22:29 So that when God answers that phone, when God answers and says, Jabez, child of mine, when God turns things around, you'll know that it was God who did it. not the manufactured self that you went before God as, the things that we have to do in the world to make sure that we show up correctly. God doesn't want that. God wants you so you can have God. So we learn from Jabez that prayer is personal. We learn that prayer is also powerful. Jabez prays a prayer and he says enlarge my territory let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain and for so long this text has been misused as a text of prosperity it has been a text that has been understood as the grounds upon which we can feel free to ask God for more in the material realm just so that we can feel blessed. The correlation between the material and blessings were tied too concretely as a result of the gospel of prosperity.

23:57 It's not hard to believe that some people may have come to that conclusion that this text promotes prosperity because as far as I can see, it's probable that the prayer of some churches who build 16,000 cedars and can close the doors to people in need of shelter can pray the prayer, enlarge my territory. Maybe enlarge my territory is the twisted prayer of those who see and claim and tax Puerto Rico as a territory of the United States and yet feel no urgency when they go through several earthquakes and thousands of people are lost in the masses. It's probable that this is the soul-stirring prayer of those who see gentrification as community revitalization by the displacement of the working class and the cultural annihilation of all things black and brown.

24:55 It is the case that these folks too have prayed enlarged my territory. that they too believed that God heard their prayers. It is the case that the theology of asking God to enlarge my territory is dangerous. But it is dangerous in the minds of those who don't see God's children in the land they seek to possess. It's dangerous because they choose to take it regardless of whether or not God gives it to them. But might I also suggest that it's also the case that enlarge my territory the way God seeks us to pray it is taking back what the enemy stole. Might I also suggest that the text is also enlightened by its context, that this prayer is grounded in the reality of J-Bez and J-Bez's people being a post-exilic community, a post-exilic community who knows what it's like to have things taken from them. A post-exilic community who know what's it like to have their identity demonized and minimized. A post-exilic community who knows that enlarge my territory means my children and my neighbor's children have a place to lay their heads.

26:18 Enlarge my territory means for an exiled people that you can buy back the block. enlarge my territory means addressing the food deserts in your community enlarge my territory means securing the bag so that everybody gets to eat enlarging my territory is a powerful prayer not because it promotes prosperity enlarge my territory is a powerful prayer because it conjures up audacity in the hearts of those who have been disinherited so that they can reclaim their inheritance. Prayer is powerful because it is audacious to think that after centuries or even just a lifetime of people telling you that you're not enough, that God says, ask for more.

27:14 People telling you you're not enough to believe this, but you actually deserve more space. You deserve more time. You deserve more health. You deserve more life. You deserve more love. You deserve more opportunity. You deserve more possibility. And you deserve to speak the language of possibility in your earthly tongue and your heavenly one. God's not scared of you asking for more. Thank you. because when God owns all the cattle and all the hill, because when God is a good father that gives good gifts, and God is just waiting on you to be audacious enough to ask for it, you ought not be afraid to go and say, God, enlarge my territory.

28:07 God just cares about your why. Prayer is powerful because it's not just a conversation with God, but it's also a simultaneous message being sent to the enemy. In the film Captain Marvel, you are not in church on a Sunday at Alfred Street if someone doesn't mention one of the Avengers.

28:49 The protagonist is bound by her enemies and she's having an internal conversation with this distorted voice of someone she trusted as a guide. They twisted her sound and her message, but kept the image so that she would be confused about who she was and who she was created to be. And the moment that it clicked for her, spoiler alert, y'all should have seen it already. And the moment that it clicked for her, that she had been calling, they'd been calling her by a different name. She stands up and says, I didn't know the power that worked in me. I'd been fighting all the while with one hand behind my back. But what happens if I fight with two? Prayer is fighting with both hands.

29:46 Prayer is fighting with your words and with your faith. Some of you have been fighting with just words and no faith, and God determines your identity. And because you didn't believe, you only used one of your hands. Some of you have been fighting with words and no power because you forgot to bring faith to the battle with you. So that you may have lost in those seasons, but God wants to bring you some increase.

30:14 We don't know how J-Bez's story ends. all we know is at verse 10 it ends with God granted his request And then the names continue. Chelum, the brother of Shuha, begot Mihir, who was the father of Eshton, and Eshton begot Beth Rafa. And all we know is that the genealogy kept going. We don't know how Jabez's story ends. But it's really good to me that the genealogy kept going. I don't know how your story's gonna end. But because of the prayers you choose to pray today, maybe your genealogy will keep going. Maybe your family faith will keep growing.

31:08 Maybe your descendants will catch a whiff of the audacity and the blessings that came to Jabez. Those descendants probably felt the reverberations of Jabez's prayer and the protection they felt. Generational curses must have been broken because of what Jabez prayed that day. I know he did not just pray for himself because of your prayers today. Know that your prayers are perpetual. Your prayers will outlive you. Because of your prayers today, your great-grandchildren will experience breakthrough. Because of your prayers today, your great-great-grandchildren may be able to say, I know of a God who still answers prayers. He did it for my great-grandmother, and he's doing it for me. Prayer. Your prayers will outlive you.

32:04 It will outlast you. And God keeps them in motion. All in the granting of the request. God granted him his request. Some of you might rightfully be thinking that God just granted his request. God just threw him a blessing, gave him some land Some capital, some stock, maybe God sent him some protection to understand What it actually means for God to grant We have to look at the Hebrew Granted, translated in Hebrew is bo You know, you gotta look at Dr. Judy for these things Meaning, to go in Thank you. granted means to go in to enter to come God granted his request can otherwise be interpreted God came in you're thinking that this is a prayer about securing the things that you desire.

33:23 This is really a prayer about God stepping in the midst of your life, in the midst of all the identity crises you've been having, of the midst of the devastating destiny you've been looking in the eye. God saying, I want to come in. God didn't just stay on his throne. He didn't just sit high and look low. God came in. God came in on the call of his child, broken in pain. God came in on his desire for something more in his life. God came in for something that Jabez desired, and it was actually God. I believe Jabez threw up that prayer to God and God heard it reaching for the heavens. That Jabez threw up that prayer to God and it made a crack in the sky.

34:19 And God stepped right on through the crack of heaven. And God came in. God came in in the midst of our mess. God came in in the midst of our pain. God came in in the midst of our stuff, the stuff we could control and the ones we couldn't. God stepped through the crack you've made in the sky because of your prayers. Just to show you that the true hope of the gospel is that potential meets promise in prayer.

34:56 The potential for your life meets its promise. through the intercessor of prayer. It's a familiar sound to God in perpetuity and all throughout history, the cracking open of a sky. The cracking open of the sky with someone's audacity to pray for themselves personally and powerfully. Someone who has the subversive belief that God, a God we can't see, can see our potential. That God, a God we can't see, can see our pain. The heavens cracked open when Hagar dared to name God El Roy. You are the God who sees.

35:53 The heavens cracked open when Hannah cried out in the temple for a child. The heavens cracked open when a dying Hezekiah asked God to remember his faithfulness and God added 15 years to his life. The heavens cracked open when a woman with an issue of blood wasn't afraid of admitting that she had some issues touched the hem of Jesus' garment. The heavens cracked open at the cry of blind Bartimaeus who saw clearly enough to say, Jesus, Son of God. have mercy on me and the heavens cracked open when God literally came in literally stepped in through 400 years of silence the heavens broke open with joy when a baby named Jesus cried his first cry and 33 years later released his last breath it is finished on a cross the heavens cracked open when the veil tore and he was laid in a borrowed tomb that heavens cracked open to make room for the one who descended into the pits of hell to tell death its new name temporary and its last name everlasting life and life more abundantly all so that we can see the gospel is really about the in breaking of heaven on earth the breaking open of heaven for everyone who's been down and down trotted broken and brokenhearted pained and in pain that they too would believe that the grave was robbed of its potential so that you would have the potential to live Who is this King of Glory?

37:51 The Lord God, strong and mighty. The Lord God, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates. The prayers are coming. And the King of Glory shall come in. So God, now that we know that you're here, I'd be remiss to not pray this prayer for myself. Maybe I'll do it on my own. I don't know if you'll be brave enough to do it with me. But oh God, bless me indeed. Enlarge my territory, God. Let my descendants, descendants, descendants know that I prayed a prayer today. That your hand would be with me. That you would keep me from evil. That I may not cause pain. God, please.