When we pray, we may ask great things of a great God.
True prayer is not firing arrows at the moon or sending up Chinese lanterns to float into the never-never. We don’t make requests to a God who doesn’t care about us, for we’re kneeling before our Father.
Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about asking earthly fathers for all the things that we need: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt 7:11).
Likewise in his prayer for the Ephesians in chapter 1, as Paul begins to pour out his petitions for this congregation, he prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you…” (Eph 1:17).
Who is the chief recipient of our prayers? It is “the Father of glory.” And He is glorious, because He is perfectly wise and just. He is glorious, because He is eternal. He is glorious, because He is almighty.
When you’re a child, you typically have a keen sense of how strong your father is. It seems like there’s nothing that Dad cannot do, and there’s almost nothing around the house that he cannot lift or move with his brute force. Children will sometimes even boast to one another about the muscles of their dads, and who’s stronger than whom.
What about God the Father in whom we trust, the “Father of glory”? Scripture says that we’re allowed to know “what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power (Eph 1:19). We should underline those words about the Father, for in our lives He reveals the “exceeding greatness of his power” and He lets us daily marvel at “the working of mighty power.” This is a Father we can boast in, a Father we can be sure of, One on whom we may depend upon, always.
To this God we can pray:
Father, nothing exceeds your power.
Father, nothing is too great for you to do.
Nothing is too good for you to give.
Infinite is your might,
boundless your love,
limitless your grace,
glorious your name.
So I ask great things of a great God. [1]
[1] From The Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, page 6.
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