Hang on for a power surge...

"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...Eph. 3:20

Is there a more mind-boggling verse in the Bible? Or a more challenging one?

What would happen to our personal and corporate lives if we took God up on this promise? When I was a middle-school teacher, a common frustration was the student who fell into sort of a comfort zone, a zone marked by minimal thinking, ambition, and activity. Once settled in to this mental pothole, it was extremely hard to pry the kid out. If one had no goals or aspirations, it was fairly easy to accept failure.

It seems Paul is telling us that we should guard against low expectations and minimalist thinking when assessing our spiritual lives. In essence, we sell God short. A friend has pancreatic cancer and our thought process becomes, "Well, I'll just pray that God gives him comfort and peace in his final days." After all, almost no one recovers from that disease. Somehow we forget that God parted the Red Sea, healed Naaman, and fed thousands with a few leftovers. Why assume there are situations too hard for God?

We frequently settle for less is assessing our spiritual potential. We become a modern-day Moses, pleading with God not to give us something to do we can't handle and hoping He will find some Aaron out there to do our spiritual heavy lifting. Paul wants us to realize how we cheat ourselves (and Him) when we don't tap into the ultimate power supply. He wants us to think big and make big plans. He wants churches that dare to make challenging decisions, based not on what they can do, but what He can do.

Let's take God for his word here and expand our vistas. There's a lost world out there, one that seems to give Satan easy victories. The challenge is to realize that we are the extension cords, if you will, of God's unimaginable power, and to flip the switch!