Daily Manna · Day 167 · June 16
Exceeding Abundantly
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”
You have noticed it yourself. The things you ask God for lately are all things that could plausibly happen without him.
Paul has been measuring for a whole paragraph, so let the measuring carry this. He prays that they may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. Four dimensions and no noun attached to them; he names the axes and leaves the object hanging until the next line, and then it turns out to be the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. He is taking a tape measure to something he has just said cannot be measured, and he knows it.
He keeps going in the same direction, because the next sentence is the same gesture applied to God's ability. Exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. In Greek that is a piled-up compound, beyond-super-abundantly, a word he appears to have built himself because the ordinary ones kept coming up short. Above what you ask. Then, in case you would only ask for small things, above what you are able to think of asking.
And then the measuring turns and points inward: according to the power that worketh in us. The measurement is not first about your circumstances. It is about what God can do inside a person, and it is exactly what Paul had prayed for four verses earlier, that they would be made strong on the inside by God's own Spirit.
So pray something the right size, and let it be uncomfortable.
Father, my asking has shrunk down to what could happen anyway. Widen it. Do the thing in me I have quietly stopped believing is possible, and do it by the power already at work in me rather than by rearranging my circumstances. I am not able to imagine what you intend. Go past it. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 167 is Talking To Yourself (Psalm 42:5).