In our Bible studies we’ve been
looking at Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. In preparing for that, I
bumped into a favorite doxology. It connected with a desire of mine to have one
more sermon on prayer. Here’s the doxology.
Now
to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians
3:20–21 [NASV]
Obviously, there is a lot going on
here. But the thing that I want you to notice is how this doxology starts.
Now
to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
Paul is praising God for His power to
act, His power to do. And he ties that power to our prayers, our asking. What
impresses me here - and what I want to impress you - is that our God is able
not just to grant our requests, but to go beyond our requests, to do far more
abundantly beyond the things that we ask and even beyond the things that we
might even think to ask. This is something worthy of doxology.
So, what do I want you to do with
this? It seems to me that this is an invitation to make large requests of the
God we worship, very large requests.
I want to stress this because it seems
to me that Christians these days tend to be too timid when it’s time to pray,
to make requests of God. The tendency is to make what I will call ‘small
requests’ of God. But why should that be, in light of this ‘far more abundantly
beyond’ that Paul wrote about? It seems to me that we are encouraged to make
large requests of God.
What I’d like to do today is help you
to believe the part of the Gospel that is in the Scripture that is before us. I
want you to believe that God really is able to do more, far more, than any
small request. And then, I want you to act on that belief. I want you to make
large requests.
The way that I’ve decided to do this
is to offer to you a list of things that you might ask of the Father, a list of
what might be large requests. None of these is anything exotic. A large request
doesn’t have to be a dramatic request. But it is a request that will stretch
your faith a bit.
It may be that none of my suggestions
fit your situation. Fine. Then, create your own large request. And then,
present it to the Father.
Here’s a bit of Scripture that
explains why I think this is important.
The
effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. James 5.16
The Church in America will do a better
job of advancing the kingdom of God when it learns to make large requests.
Now, on to my list.
Here’s the first suggestion. Pray to
grow in wisdom.
I think that it is fair to say that
most Christians pray for wisdom only when there’s some crisis moment
confronting them. And the bit of Scripture that they often appeal to is this
from James.
If
any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without
reproach, and it will be given him. James 1.5
That’s a great verse, and it’s
certainly right to ask for that wisdom when you’re in the midst of some crisis.
What I’d like to do, however, is to rescue it from being used only in those
crisis moments. I’d like you to see this growing in wisdom as a regular part of
your life.
Let me remind you of the definition of
wisdom. It’s understanding God, other people, the situation and yourself. A
quick read through the book of Proverbs will support this definition. Today, I’m
only going to talk about one of those. I’m going to talk about understanding
yourself.
Few people, these days, understand
themselves at all well. They don’t ask and answer some rather important
questions. What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What are the ruts
that I let my life fall into, and why do I let that happen? What are the idols
of my heart that I appeal to in different situations? How do I respond to bad
news? These are questions that really need some clear answers. If you don’t
understand yourself well, your life will be filled with confusion.
There are quite a few benefits to
understanding yourself. Here’s just one. There is a certain calmness that you
will enjoy when you understand yourself and how you are responding to what’s
going on. It is easier to be a faithful disciple when there is this calmness
about life than when life is spinning in and out of control.
So, make a large request of the
Father. Ask for wisdom. Ask for answers to those questions I mentioned. Ask for
the ability to understand yourself better and better. Ask for that kind of
wisdom so that as your life makes more sense, you can do a better job of living
well as Jesus’ disciple.
But don’t expect the Father just to
zap you and - presto changeo - you’re amazingly wise. He uses means. So, maybe
your prayer should include the request to be given the discipline to pursue
those means. And the means that God uses includes things like quiet reflection
and deep friendships. The first is about having honest conversations with
yourself, and the second is about having honest conversations with someone who knows
you well.
Bear in mind in all of this that,
according to what Paul wrote, the Father will surprise you with how wise you
will become. But that will happen only if you ask Him to act.
Let’s move on. Here’s something else
to ask the Father for: endurance. I mentioned this quality a few weeks ago. I
want to build on what I told you then.
Life is hard. And it’s not uncommon
for us to see someone’s life stalled on the side of the road. They’ve
encountered something that stopped them in their tracks because they had
nothing left to deal with it. There wasn’t sufficient endurance.
To endure includes being able to
absorb those problems and keep going. To be sure, there will be those times
when you keep going in pain and with tears. This is not a call to live without
honest emotions about the evil that you encounter. It is a call to understand
that there will be some hard days, and some days that are even harder than
that. But notwithstanding the difficulties of life, we are called to keep
going.
Let me explain why this is important.
We are a people who are on a mission as Jesus’ Church. Each of us, pursuing our
respective callings, has an important role to play when it comes to that
mission. So, we need to be able to take the hit and keep going. We need to be
able to fulfill our part of the mission. We may be limping for a while, but we
need to continue. Endurance.
I mentioned in that previous sermon
that the kind of endurance that we are called to is patient endurance. I want
to mention another qualifier of this endurance: joy. The endurance that we are
called to is joyous endurance.
Now, please remember that there is a
big difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is based in the situation.
There are situations that are so very pleasant, and we are happy in them. And
thanks be to God for those situations. But happiness fades away when those
pleasant situations end. However, joy doesn’t fade away. And that’s because joy
isn’t rooted in a passing situation. It is rooted in Jesus. Remember what we’ve
been commanded.
Rejoice
in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Philippians 4.4
Please note some important words here.
The first is ‘always’. The command is not to rejoice just when the situation is
good and pleasant. We are to rejoice always. The second is a phrase that
explains how you can do that: ‘in the Lord’. Your rejoicing is in Jesus and in
what He is doing. And He is always doing something. It may not be clear to you
what it is that He is doing, but He is always up to something. And that something
has to do with His plan to conquer the world with the Gospel. So, even as we
struggle with some hard situation, even as it really hurts, we can still
rejoice. Jesus is at work in that hard situation, using that hard situation. He
is doing something that will result in much good. We can always rejoice in
that.
Sadly, many of us have been taught
that rejoicing is for when life is good. And we have been allowed to mope when
it isn’t. If that’s you, then here’s a request to present to the Father: ‘Make
me want to rejoice in what Jesus is doing, and to do that when life is good and
when it is horrible’. Ask for this so that you can endure in the way that Jesus
calls for, a joyous endurance. Ask for this so that you can do your part in
accomplishing the mission.
The next item on my list is boldness.
But that’s a church word. So, let me translate it. Pray for fearlessness. Note
the assumption of that word. The assumption is that there actually is something
to fear. And let’s face it. There is plenty to fear, plenty that is out to get
us. So, from one perspective, it seems right to fear. But what does Jesus say?
And
do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him
who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10.28
The only thing for us to fear is God
Himself. And if we fear Him, there is nothing else that we will fear. Ask for
fearlessness.
Let’s go back to that church word, ‘boldness’.
There’s more here that will help. There’s another way to translate the Greek
word behind ‘boldness’. Listen.
Therefore
do not throw away your confidence,
which has a great reward. Hebrews 10.35
That helps. What is boldness? It’s
confidence. When a person is confident, he will be fearless. But everything
depends on why that person is confident. All too often, a person is confident
because of what he thinks of himself. ‘I can do this. There is no reason to be
afraid. I can take care of this.’ In one way or another, that way of dealing
with life, being confident in yourself, will fail. But being confident in the
Father - that’s different. That kind of confidence is based on who He is for
you and what He promises to you. Being confident in Him because of those things
always works because your Father always comes through.
So, here’s the large request I’m
suggesting. Ask the Father to make you bold, confident, fearless, but only
because of your reliance on Him. And what will help here is understanding
yourself, understanding the things that you currently fear.
Now, one more. And you’ll need to ask
for this if you’re going to ask for any of the others. You need to ask for a
growing faith.
Sadly, faith and its companion verb,
believe, have been re-defined by the world. In doing that they have eviscerated
the word of any real meaning. ‘Faith’ has become this vague feeling that’s
supposed to encourage you. ‘Believe’ has become a word that stands all alone -
and likewise means nothing.
But that’s not what Christian faith
is. Faith is not a feeling. It’s an act. It’s trusting the promises of the
Father, someone whom you consider trustworthy. And believing never stands
alone. It always takes a direct object. You believe what the Father has told
you.
So, faith is trust in the Father for
the things that He has promised. And it’s important to tie your faith to those
promises. Faith doesn’t come to God with a list of things that just seem right.
Faith is always rooted in what the Father has said in the Scriptures and is a
response to that. The examples of large requests that I have mentioned are tied
to what God has promised in the Bible. Many Christians become confused with
their prayers because they don’t remember this, and they ask for things that
the Father never said He would do.
Timid prayers, with their small
requests, are the result of a timid faith. You will need to believe the promise
of what Paul wrote, that your God can do exceedingly abundantly beyond, if you’re
going to make any large requests. And you will need to believe that promise
more as you continue to make those requests. And I say that because every step
forward, every improvement granted to you because of any of those requests,
will be met by more resistance, more opposition. And that means that you will need
to have more faith, a surer faith, a bold, confident faith, so that you can
make even larger requests.
But again, the Father will not just
zap you with more faith. It is something that grows, bit by bit. And one way
that it grows is when you respond to the situations that come your way with
however much faith that you have. The Father sees your efforts at believing Him
and responds by blessing you with more faith. So, in each situation believe His
promises as well as you can, and remember what happened to that father who was
honest with Jesus and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief’.
So, what have I done this morning? I’ve
called on you to believe a part of the Gospel. And the part that I’ve called
you to believe is the part that says that the God we worship is able to do far
more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. I think that the only way to
show that you do believe this part of the Gospel is by making large requests of
Him and then being amazed when He exceeds even those large requests.