Ephesians 3:20 “Never doubt God's mighty power to work in you. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” This episode talks about how important it is to have goals so that you can live your life more intentionally. It also talks about how incredible it is to have God's mighty power living inside of us and what it really means for us. It reminds us that God wants more for us than we want for ourselves. The episode also reminds us that we need to call upon this power. We need to ask the Lord for help. We need to let Him know that He has our permission to work in our lives. He believes in free will and will let us go at it alone if that is what we want. What if we took a few seconds each day and invite the Lord into our day? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God Has Infinitely More For You Than Your Most Unbelievable Dream!
Ephesians 3:20 “Never doubt God's mighty power to work in you. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.”
I know I have mentioned it before, yet I will say it again. I really love the passion translation. It gets the point of the verse across in a very passionate way. I talked last week about how the ladies in my mentoring group always pick a word and mantra for the year. This helps them remember throughout the year what they want that year, and then when they have to make a decision, they can hold all the choices up to their wants and needs for the year and see which choices align best. The other thing I recommend you do each year is to come up with some goals at the beginning of the year.
I think it is important that everyone has at least a few goals, as it gives us some direction. I am not talking about New Year's Resolutions that you set on December 31st and have already forgotten about two weeks later. I am talking about taking some time to think about where you want to be at the end of 2024. What would have liked to accomplish? I am not just talking about one area of your life either. Where would you like to be in your job, your relationship with the Lord, your relationships with your family members and friends? Where would you like to be financially? Once you know where you want to be at the end of the year, you set goals that help you get there. Time goes by so quickly, and we only get one life here on Earth. If we don’t live it intentionally, it will pass us by, and we will just go through it on autopilot.
The verse above is a great verse to think about when you are thinking of where you want to be at the end of this year. It is a great reminder that God’s mighty power is at work in you! I think this is so important to remember. Remembering this one thing could be the key to so many of our worries. If we can remember that His power is at work inside of us, then it takes the pressure off of us to think we need to do it all. We don’t have to worry if we are strong enough to handle this upcoming surgery because God’s mighty power is at work in us, and that is surely strong enough. We don’t have to worry about whether we are good enough because God’s mighty power is at work in us, and He is definitely enough. We don’t have to worry if we are brave enough to do the thing we need to do because God’s mighty power is at work in us and that will make us brave enough. Do you see my point?
There is one catch, though, we need to ask Him to help us. Our heavenly Father believes in free will, and he wants us to ask Him for help. He wants us to give Him permission to work in our lives. Have you done this? Have you given God permission to do whatever He needs to do in your life? What about starting each day with a simple prayer? God, I give this day to you, do with it what you want. Imagine what your days would look like if you put God in control of them. Imagine the amazing things that could happen. Imagine how much less trouble we would get into if we weren’t steering this boat we call life. Yes, God’s mighty power lives in us and works in us, and yet we need to call on that power. If we want to do life on our own and we don’t want God to interfere, then He will let us do that. Unfortunately, that is our choice. I say unfortunately because sometimes I wish we didn’t have free will. I think our free will gets us into all sorts of trouble.
However, without free will, we wouldn’t be free to love the Lord truly. It is not true love if it is not freely given. So, we do the best we can with our brokenness. God is there, and He wants to help us. All we need to do is ask. All we need to do is let God know He is welcome in our lives. We want Him here. We want Him right next to us, guiding us and helping us. If we do this, we can call upon His power to work in us at any time. It is always available without any notice, and it never runs out. What else in this world can you say that about?
The next line of the verse says, "He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” I love this!! I know this to be true as it has happened in my own life, and yet I don’t think many others know this to be true. God is telling us in our prayer group week after week that we are not asking for too much. We are asking for too little. Yet, I think we all continue to feel as though we should just be happy and content with what we have, and we shouldn’t bother the Lord by asking for more. We think if we ask for more, then that means we are ungrateful for what we have already received. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
We are honoring the Lord when we ask for more because we are showing Him that we believe He can give us more and also that we know what we have came from Him. Our desires, those down deep in our hearts, came from the Lord; he put them there. He is not going to put desires down deep in our hearts and then not help us achieve those desires. This verse reminds us of this. God will not only help us achieve those desires but also help us achieve infinitely more than we request of Him. Has this happened to you before? Have you asked for one thing and yet received something so much better? My sister was praying for a job once. She wanted part-time, but that is hard to find in her line of work. She made a list of all the things she really wanted this job to have, and yet she knew she would probably have to compromise on some of the things as this job she created in her mind would be impossible to find.
She got offered a lot of jobs, most were full-time, or they required travel, or they didn’t pay enough. She was starting to get frustrated and was getting ready to give up on finding a job that fit her criteria. However, her word for the year was trust, and so she kept asking the Lord for a job that would be perfect for her, and she kept trusting He would provide. Finally, a job became available that was more than she could have asked for. It checked all the boxes she had written down and also had several bonus things that she didn’t even know she wanted, but God did! If we can trust Him long enough, He always comes through. Sometimes, we get tired of waiting, and we choose one of the options that we don’t really want. This verse could be a great reminder to look back to when we are tempted to settle for less than we desire. "He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” Write this down somewhere that you will see it every day and read it every day. Remind yourself that you are a child of the one true King, and you don’t have to settle. God has so much more in store for you!
The last line of this verse says, “He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” This is an important one for us to hear because it seems we could all use some extra energy, especially during the holiday season. We can rely on the miraculous power of God to energize us. I am betting we have all experienced this miraculous power over the years in our lives and yet maybe we didn’t realize where it came from. If you have children, think about how you stayed up all night with a crying baby or teething toddler and then still had enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. Anyone who has lived through that can tell you that is miraculous. How do you think doctors, nurses, police, and firefighters make it through their shifts working overtime? God’s miraculous power gives us energy to get out of bed when we really don’t want to. Think about a time when all you wanted to do was curl up in bed and never leave it. Did you eventually find the energy to get out of that bed? Was it miraculous?
I feel God has tasked me with two missions. One is to help as many people in the world as I can come to know that God is Love. He loves us all unconditionally and freely. There is nothing we need to do or even could do that would make Him love us any more or any less than He already does. Our past does not matter to the Lord. We are always just one good confession away from being right with Him again. Repent and turn back to the Lord; that was the message of all the prophets of old. God’s message hasn’t changed. You have never done something so bad that He can’t forgive you or that would make Him stop loving you. You are in His heart forever!! The second thing I believe He has called me to is to help everyone understand the power they have living inside of them. This verse is a great one for that. I think if we all knew exactly how much power we had living inside of us, it would blow our minds. The enemy wants us to feel we are weak and we can’t do anything. This is a lie. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. He strengthens us because His spirit is literally living inside of us. How can we be weak with the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Can you imagine what the world would look like if we all started to live in this power?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, I ask you to bless their families too. Lord, we ask that you help us all to realize that you want more for us than we want. Help us to see that we are now asking for too much but, in fact, too little. Help us to believe with our whole hearts that this verse is true. Help us take this verse into this upcoming year and expect great things to happen in our lives. Help us to expect your power to help us. Help us expect the miraculous energy when we need it the most. Lord, help us remember to invite you into our lives each and every day. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk more boldly with Jesus. As we get closer and closer to the new year, I want to invite you all to think about how you want to grow closer to the Lord over this next year. We must be intentional, or it doesn’t happen. If we are waiting for more time to pray with the Lord to appear, we will still be waiting next year. We need to make time. Do you want to read more books, listen to more podcasts, read the Bible, spend more time with the Lord? What can you do to intentionally grow closer to the Lord? Would you like some help learning to grow closer to the Lord this year? With my new mentoring program, I will teach you lots of ways to grow closer to the Lord. You will also have a set time each week devoted to learning and coming up with a plan about how you will check in with the Lord over the upcoming week. Planning in advance is the key to being successful. If we fail to plan, then we plan to fail. Let’s all go into the New Year with a concrete plan on how we will grow closer to the Lord this year. Whether it is in my mentoring program or some other way, have a plan. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God’s word from my Prayer Group today is: “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you; I love you because you are my friend. My children, I have so much more for you. I have more for you every single day — more for yourself, more for you to give away, and more for you to enrich the world around you.”