Ephesians 3:20-21 (NKJV-bold mine)
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
James 4:31 (NKJV-bold mine)
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Heavenly Father, You ask that I pray about things that are beyond my pleasures, so that my selfish motives displaced by awe of You. In the “above what we ask”, our petitions are turned into declarations of expectation You put the insignificant and significant on the same track in your sovereign workmanship. Of course “above us”! In the “more than we think”, our reasonings shift to acknowledge the Almighty’s own, for: “By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many” (Isaiah 53:11 bold mine).
Within this justification, we find the answer to why our prayers mean so much to God, and should cause us to be confident in how God manifests the response, aka “answers”: “30 ...whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Within our prayerful caution to not ask amiss, we must abandon ourselves to the confidence that when we pray in the right way, God, in turn, gives back in an unreserved and generous way.
Let us dispense with what if’s, and’s, however’s and but’s. When Jesus declared “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29 NKJV), this divine assertion pertains to our accepting Christ in His redeeming and resurrected being, our kneeling to His lordship, and our trust in his wisdom to receive the grittiness of our earth-sent prayers in order to mediate with the Father for our ever—including now, eternal benefits, some of which become tangible to us in this life and most assuredly in the resurrected one!
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
James 4:31 (NKJV-bold mine)
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Heavenly Father, You ask that I pray about things that are beyond my pleasures, so that my selfish motives displaced by awe of You. In the “above what we ask”, our petitions are turned into declarations of expectation You put the insignificant and significant on the same track in your sovereign workmanship. Of course “above us”! In the “more than we think”, our reasonings shift to acknowledge the Almighty’s own, for: “By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many” (Isaiah 53:11 bold mine).
Within this justification, we find the answer to why our prayers mean so much to God, and should cause us to be confident in how God manifests the response, aka “answers”: “30 ...whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Within our prayerful caution to not ask amiss, we must abandon ourselves to the confidence that when we pray in the right way, God, in turn, gives back in an unreserved and generous way.
Let us dispense with what if’s, and’s, however’s and but’s. When Jesus declared “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29 NKJV), this divine assertion pertains to our accepting Christ in His redeeming and resurrected being, our kneeling to His lordship, and our trust in his wisdom to receive the grittiness of our earth-sent prayers in order to mediate with the Father for our ever—including now, eternal benefits, some of which become tangible to us in this life and most assuredly in the resurrected one!
