Are you living under the weight of a difficult beginning?

Maybe your family circumstances, your financial situation, or your past mistakes have convinced you that a small life is all you can expect.

Well, today, on Insight for Living,

Chuck Swindall introduces you to a man who refused to accept that lie.

In just two verses tucked away in an ancient genealogy,

we discover someone who dared to ask God for something extraordinary.

What happened next challenges everything we believe about limitations,

destiny, and the size of our prayers. Chuck titled his message, J. Bez, the Unknown,

who became well-known.

My Bible is open in the Old Testament to the book of First Chronicles, Chapter 4.

Just a word about the times in which they lived.

Kings were weak at this time in Hebrew history.

Times were hard. The talk of war was always in the air.

And there was a sleeping giant called Babylon or the Chaldeans that was soon to arise and come out of his slumber and invade the land and take captives,

all of those who were Hebrews.

It is a period just before what is commonly called the Babylonian captivity.

Jeremiah the prophet told the Hebrews that this would happen, and of course they were in such

indifference, they could care less. They went right on living their lives as though he wasn't even

telling the truth. But it's coming. It is right around the corner. Now as far as this immediate context is concerned, 1st Chronicles Chapter 4,

we have in these first nine chapters, forgive me, some of the most boring reading in all the scriptures.

And what we really have in these verses is a series of epitaphs. It is like taking a

stroll in the darkest time of a nation's history through a cemetery and reading the epitaphs that are on all

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