Thanks for the link :)

If anyone's interested in reading the whole thing it's available at http://www.derekwebb.com/journal_content.php?jid=2. It goes into a lot more detail about he specific reasons why the Prayer of Jabez gimmik is wrong.

(By the way... what's a "hoss"? ;))

I've read it and those thoughts never once crossed my mind. But reading them now and the additional comment above, it certainly does resonate. Thanks for posting that.

Tony, Amen.
This is one my beefs with modern Christianity, too.

Somewhat related is how discipelship somehow became a self-centered endeavor. People read the Bible and ask, "What does this mean FOR ME?" instead of first asking, "What does this mean?".

Tony - 1,000 amens!

Jared - reach over and slap Jonathan, will ya?

Tony, careful. You're sounding like a -- gasp! -- Calvinist.

Bill, my arm doesn't reach across the Atlantic.

You mean you are a -- gasp! -- Calvinist? My, that is -- gasp! -- interesting. I don't know why I would think it so -- gasp! -- strange. But it's good to -- gasp! -- have a "brother" around. Um, gasp.

Interesting Calvinist-related tidbit from my last small group meeting:

We had gotten off on some tangent about not judging other people's salvation (which I totally agree with). But anyhoo, one of our leaders said something about this guy named Charles Templeton. Apparently, Lee Strobel interviews Templeton in his book "The Case for Faith." Templeton was going to be "the next Billy Graham" before Billy Graham was ever Billy Graham, apparently. (This was all news to me, so I may have the details wrong. I got all this from my leader dude.) Templeton was an on-fire Christian, dedicated to the Gospel, etc. Then one day he saw a picture of a dying African child on the cover of a news magazine and had a change of heart. He decided that no god would be that evil to let that happen.
Now Templeton is a confirmed atheist who devotes his life to discreding the historical and truth claims of the Christian faith.

My leader dude's point was that he thinks Templeton is saved and he will see him in heaven one day.

I respectfully pointed out that, although I would never say for sure someone was not saved -- in my view, one's salvation is God's business and their own -- I thought believing a confirmed atheist would get into heaven based on some long ago confession was what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call "cheap grace."
Now, I wouldn't rule out Templeton eventually coming around and changing his mind. Perhaps this is all a (very) long "wilderness period," or an extended backslide.
But what if he goes the rest of his life doggedly insisting there is no God and that Jesus was just a man and did not rise from the dead and that there is no heaven or hell, and he dies still believing all of this? Again, his salvation is known only to he and God, but may I offer a guess? I think the Bible says a lot about perseverance and bearing fruit and how works are the evidence of our saving faith. If this guy goes his whole life without any of these, can he still be saved?

Short answer: I don't know. I wouldn't rule out the validity of any specific person's deathbed conversion, on one hand. But on deathbed conversions generally, I am dubious.

This is all just leading up to my Calvinist-related point, by the way.
So I mentioned my concerns with this "cheap grace" scenario. This other dude piped up in agreement. He is a middle-aged dude (probably late 40s), a very intelligent lawyer, a big time history buff (both world and Christian), and an avid reader of religious and theological texts. Obviously, we get along quite swimmingly. He's been teasing me about me "making" him read Calvin's Institutes. This despite the fact I've never brought them up and have never read them cover to cover myself.

Anyway, this dude said, "I tend to agree with Jared." He went on to talk about fruit and perserverance and how salvation is more than mental assent. While he had me going, he then stopped me in my tracks. He said: "You know the Bible talks about nothing can snatch us from the hand of God. But I wonder sometimes if we can't snatch ourselves out."
I politely interrupted. "Well, I don't necessarily agree with that," I said.
He laughed, "Well, of course not, you're a Calvinist."
Everybody laughed (goodnaturedly, of course -- I didn't feel made fun of or anything).
Then the leader who started the thread echoed a "Seinfeld" line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
I joked, "Well, just brand me then."
The other leader, my "new friend," the worship leader guy who wants me eventually help him write his script thing, cut in: "I'm a Calvinist too."

It was good to have a "brother" present.

"The grass looked greener
On the other side
So I tried
To snatch myself from Your hand.
Caught a boat to anywhere
But Nineveh
And well you know
I ended up on dry land.
I've done the work of Sisyphus
Trying to get myself over this hill
But the one thing I can't get over now
Is the force of Your will."
-- Caedmon's Call, 'There You Go'

Dude, I realized that RIGHT AFTER I logged off last, and I didn't want to log back on just to correct it.
I've said it before -- I'm terrible with song titles. "There You Go" is another good "Calvinist song," though.

I haven't read CforC, but I've long appreciated it since Strobel is an ex-Willow Creeker and one of the chapters in that book is an interview with hoss of all hosses D.A. Carson.