The Task Ahead of You is Never as Great as the Power Behind You

Last Sunday at the close of the service, our pastor had us stand and pray aloud together the prayer from Ephesians Three for the people around us. I said the words as clearly as one can while choking on tears. The passage was intimately familiar and held a place on my bulletin board for years. If you look in my NIV Bible beside that passage, there is a handwritten note in the margin dated March, 1998. Thirteen years ago exactly. In blurry ball point ink, it says "Prayer for myself, Jon and the kids, drama team, and co-workers. If we really grasped how very much God loves us, everything else would fall into place."

      I still believe this with all my heart. It had been awhile since I prayed it, though, for myself or anyone else. I don't remember when it came off my bulletin board or why. Did I think I'd outgrown it, that it had gotten old somehow?

      This needs fixing. For as I prayed the prayer and let the tears drip off my cheeks onto my favorite green sweater, I knew that I and the people I love need this more desperately than ever:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

And if all that isn't enough, the rest of the chapter says...

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.