Pray Big!

Have you ever seen the movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”?  It’s the story of a mad-scientist dad who accidentally reduces his teenage son and daughter and their two friends to the size of insects.  A wild plot unfolds with parents seeking “lost” children, and four micro-people desperately trying to make themselves known.  All good humor.

But not so funny when we shrink spiritual realities that are truly grand and immense.  I’m thinking of prayer—after Jim Rhodes’s reminder last Sunday from Ephesians 3, and how Paul prayed for believers, that according to the riches of his glory [God] may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,… [and] to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The Lord calls us to pray BIG prayers—heaven-minded, God-sized prayers!  But we tend to shrink prayer—and in three ways:  1) We reduce prayer itself to requests (trag­ically neglecting praise, confession, and thanks).  2) We reduce requests to physical/temporal needs (e.g., safety, comfort, health).  3) We shrink those requests by dwelling on our own personal sphere and the circle of those close around us.

I believe our heavenly Father is summoning each of us today—and all of us together as a church—to confess the smallness of our prayers, and to throw the doors wide open for a new day of God-exalting trust and petition!  Remember, God is able!  Here are a few biblical models:

Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:9-10).

Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph (2 Thess 3:1).

My heart’s desire & prayer to God for them is that they may be saved (Rm 10:1).

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,… that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints (Eph 1:16, 18).

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:20-21).