If you could ask God to do anything for your family, what would that be? And what would it look like if God were to do immeasurably more than anything you could imagine?
Most of us probably have a ready answer to the first question. We have a mental list of unmet longings and desires: Heal my dad’s cancer. Let my niece get pregnant. Provide a job for my son…a husband for my daughter…a good friend for my child. Even if we’ve never spoken our prayer out loud or logged it in a journal, we know what we want.
That second question, though, is harder to process. What does “immeasurably more” look like in real life?
The thing is, we don’t know. The Bible says God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20), and that’s kind of the point: We can’t imagine how much God can—and will—do. Even Bible people found themselves taken aback by the “plus plus” of his power.
Think about Zechariah and Elizabeth, the couple Luke describes as “righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.” (Luke 1:6) They were godly folk, and we have to figure they’d prayed for a child. But Elizabeth was barren. And they were, as the Bible so graciously puts it, “well along” in years. They were old.
But then came Zechariah’s moment. He was chosen, by lot, to offer incense in the temple—a once-in-a-lifetime honor for a priest. Along with offering incense, a big part of the priest’s job was to pray for the nation of Israel, including a petition for the promised Messiah. Did Zechariah sneak in a side prayer for his own family, while he was at it?
We don’t know, but it sure looks that way. The angel shows up and tells Zechariah his prayer “has been heard.” And then he drops the joy-bomb: Elizabeth will have a son, a boy who will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:13-17)
In other words, both prayers—the official priestly prayer for Israel’s Messiah and the secret “I-just-want-to-be-a-dad” longing of Zechariah’s heart—found their answer in a single moment.
Immeasurably more than Zechariah was expecting.
An above-and-beyond love
What about Elizabeth? Was she still praying for a baby, after so many years?
Again, we don’t know; my guess is that her prayer might have shifted in her old age. Sure, she still longed to become a mother, but based on her response when she discovers she’s pregnant—she says that God has “shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people”—it seems like Elizabeth’s deeper hurt might have been the ostracism she experienced. As a barren woman, she was an outsider. She didn’t belong.
Here again, God does immeasurably more: He gives Elizabeth a baby and removes all traces of shame.
We see this pattern again and again in the gospels. For instance, when Jesus heals the anonymous woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years, he doesn’t just stop her physical suffering. He seeks her out—identifies her in the crowd—because he wants her to know that she is seen. That she is known. That she belongs in the family of God.
“Daughter,” Jesus says in Mark 5:34, “your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
The more I learn about God’s immeasurably more answers, the more I’m convinced that the whole point of him going above-and-beyond is that he wants us—all of us—to know how much he loves us. How much he understands us. How much he wants to remove any barrier—physical, emotional, or spiritual—that might keep us from knowing that we belong.
Last month, I was privileged to speak at The Pauline Chapel, a little jewel tucked just to the side of Colorado’s Broadmoor Hotel.
I’d been thinking about how God reads the unspoken cries of our heart—the longings we might not even be consciously aware of, the blessings that have yet to be formed in our minds’ eye—and how he responds. I wound up sharing one of my favorite “immeasurably more” answers to prayer with the Broadmoor community. I’ll sum it up here (and if you want more details, you’ll find the whole story in Praying the Scriptures for Your Children.)
What happens when we pray
Once upon a time, I was part of a Moms in Prayer group that met weekly to pray for our children, often with prayers birthed in Scripture. One week, we focused on Ephesians 5:15-16, asking God to help our kids be “very careful how they lived—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity.”
A few weeks later, one of the moms showed up and told us that that prayer had been answered—in a way none of us could have predicted—in the lives of two second-grade boys.
One of the boys, Eddie, was renowned for his misbehavior. Most kids gave Eddie a wide berth, lest he poke them with a pencil, pull their ponytail, or worse. But one little boy, Brandon, often went out of his way to be kind, and one day, when the teacher asked each child to write a persuasive letter to someone, Brandon picked Eddie.
When the time came to deliver the letters, the children who had written to parents or grandparents (trying to persuade them to buy a new bike or whatever) stuffed their notes in their backpacks to take home. Brandon simply dropped his on Eddie’s desk. Eddie was excited—but when he opened the letter, his face fell. He couldn’t read well enough to get past the first couple of words. Brandon asked the teacher—who just happened to be a Christian—if he could read the letter to his friend. The teacher agreed, telling him he could do it at recess.
That afternoon, the boys sat on a log under an old oak tree, oblivious to the shouts and games being played all around them. Eddie pulled the letter out of his pocket and leaned in to listen.
Dear Eddie, Brandon began. Please, please ask Jesus to come into your heart. Here are some reasons why:
- Jesus died on the cross for your sins.
- You will have eternal life.
- God (Jesus’ father) is maker and creator of all.
- You will go to heaven.
- You can have anything you want in heaven.
- I will be waiting for you.
- God will be waiting for you.
- Jesus will be waiting for you.
- You can do anything in heaven.
P.S. All you have to do is bow your head right now and say, “Dear Lord, I want Jesus to come into my heart so I can have eternal life.” Amen.
Eddie sat back. “Would you, Brandon asked cautiously, “like to pray?”
“Yes,” Eddie said.
Sitting together at the edge of the playground, the two boys bowed their heads as Brandon led Eddie into the kingdom of God.
Friends, we don’t know—we can’t know—how God will answer our prayers. But we can slip our hand into his, trusting that he really is able to do immeasurably more than anything we can imagine.
And that his deepest desire is to have us turn to him, just like Eddie did, and say, “Yes.”
Heavenly Father,
You know I am concerned about ______. Please do immeasurably more than all I can ask or imagine in this situation, and help me trust you.
Amen.
