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.”
Look at the things you have asked God for lately. If we are honest, many of us will notice that most of them could easily happen without Him.
In this chapter Paul has been measuring for a whole paragraph, so follow his measuring. He prays that his readers will grasp "what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height." He names four measurements and does not yet say what they are measuring. Only in the next line does he tell us: it is "the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." Paul is taking a tape measure to something he has just said nobody can fully measure, and he knows it.
Then he does the same thing with what God is able to do. God can do "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." In Greek, "exceeding abundantly" is one long word piled up from smaller ones, meaning something like far, far more than enough. Paul seems to have built it himself, because the ordinary words kept coming up short. God can do more than you ask. And in case you would only ask for small things, He can do more than you can even think of asking.
Then Paul turns the measuring inward: "according to the power that worketh in us." So the measure is first about what God can do inside a person, and only after that about your circumstances. It is exactly what Paul prayed for four verses earlier, that they would be "strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man."
So pray something the right size today, even if it feels uncomfortable.
Father, my asking has shrunk down to what could happen anyway. Make it wider. Do the thing in me that I have quietly stopped believing You could do. Do it by Your power that is already at work in me. I cannot imagine all that You intend, so go beyond what I can imagine. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 167 is Talking To Yourself (Psalm 42:5).