Superabundantly

Limitless.............................

Not many things are. In fact I cannot think of anything that is limitless? A lot of places have "endless" cups of coffee or soda but that can be a little deceptive because while the coffee may always be there our body can only take so much. Basically, in the end there is a limit to the limitless. Even if we could continuously drink, the place would eventually close. Again, big let down.

In Ephesians 3.20 the Message Bible states, "God can do anything you know-far more then you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!" I read this verse tonight and had to laugh.

"I don't know God, I can think of some pretty wild things."

Yeah, not exactly what you would call the most spiritual of moments but this verse kind of stuck with me in my readings tonight and I'm beginning to understand why. Interesting that the first thing that I think of are "things". I mean we all would! If we had God's credit card, which seems to be how many view this verse, what things we could be capable of! Yet, this isn't the point, no matter how much we may want it to be!

Anything that I dare think of is going to have limits. It is going to have an end. It will have an expiration date. It will eventually fade and start to miss the shiny exterior. No matter what it is, it isn't limitless. These are things that I can think of NOW, it does not include the things I may need LATER. I can't really know what I need in the future cause I'm never guaranteed to have the future. I can still ask but God is the one who knows. I like how I read this passage in a commentary. It goes something like this:

Now to the One who is able to do beyond all things, superabundantly beyond and over and above those things that we are asking for ourselves and considering,

Kenneth S. Wuest, Wuest's Word Studies from the Greek New Testament : For the English Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, c1984), Eph 3:20.

These are the words I like to hear. Not out of some selfish, prosperity motivation but out of the fact that not only can I sort of do things for myself, my God can do beyond all things. Not even just beyond all things but superabundantly beyond all things. Not even just superabundantly (which isn't an English word according to the red squiggly line underneath it at the moment) but over and above superabundantly and beyond. Basically, the verse is saying that while I can ask for a lot, God can do better. He can do superabundantly, over, above, and beyond all things which I could even ask myself or even THINK about asking! I stated that I have a lot of things which I can ask...God simply asks: is that the best I can do?

The catch then? Simply put, it is this: "He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." (vs.20) This does not mean God gives us His credit card to put anything on it, we have responsibility in it! God can do anything, we just have to do something! His Spirit works in us deeply and gently, leading us into the right direction, the way which He thinks will give us this superabundance. The life that we could never naturally find outselves because we could only chose things with limits. God offers more. The limitless.