Multnomah's The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson has been a fixture on PW 's monthly religion lists since publication in November 2000 and is now #12 on our weekly general list; it's Multnomah's first appearance on the latter. Copies in print for the first two months totaled about 850,000 after 12 trips to press, and about 25% of sales have come from parishioners whose pastor recommended the book. The publisher, an independent religion house nestled in the shadows of Oregon's Cascade Mountains, has just gone back to press for an additional one million copies, bringing the total to 1.9 million. Wilkinson is founder and president of Walk Thru the Bible Ministries, and he challenges readers to say the titular short prayer every day (he has been doing so for about 30 years), noting that "the power of the prayer is in what you believe will happen as a result of the prayer, and the action you take." The prayer's text is simple and can be found in I Chronicles 4:9—10: "And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, 'Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.' So God granted him what he requested."
With reporting by Dick Donahue.
