I Started Asking For Less On Purpose

You used to pray big and everybody in that building knew it.

Not showy. Specific. You would name the actual thing, the whole of it, the amount and the person and the outcome, and people would say afterwards that when you prayed it sounded like something was going to happen.

And then somewhere in the last couple of years you started trimming.

You would not have called it that. What it feels like from the inside is being reasonable. Instead of asking for the whole thing you ask that He would help you cope. Instead of naming the outcome you ask for peace about it. Instead of the door opening you ask for grace to accept whatever is behind it.

Every one of those is a real prayer. Every one of them is in the Bible somewhere. That is exactly why nobody has noticed and why you have never had to explain yourself.

But you know what you are doing.

You are lowering the ceiling so that if it does not happen, there is less of a drop.

Now, before anything else.

I am not telling you off.

There is no rebuke here and nothing you have done wrong. Asking for peace is not a lesser prayer and I would never say that it is. And I am absolutely not going to tell you that the big thing has not come because you started asking small. Nobody who knows anything would say that to you.

I am saying I noticed the ceiling coming down. That is all.

Whose measure it is

Here is the verse everybody quotes and almost nobody finishes.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.Ephesians 3:20

People stop at above all that we ask or think, which is the encouraging half, and they leave off the last clause, which is the load bearing one.

According to the power that worketh in us.

The measure is not your asking. That is the whole point of the sentence. Paul is not saying God matches your request and adds a bit. He is saying the size of the working is set by the power already at work inside a person, and the asking is not the ruler.

Which means the trimming has not shrunk anything on His side. The ceiling came down in here, and the room has stayed exactly the same height the whole time.

So here it is, said directly to you, in whatever room you are in.

You have a power working in you that did not get smaller when your prayers did. Not one day, not when the fire comes back, not once you feel able to name the whole thing again. Right now, on an ordinary evening, you are the us in that last clause, and the working is measured from Him rather than from you. That is not my flattery. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real woman in a real week.

Now, why did you start trimming?

Because there is nothing foolish in you, and the arithmetic was sensible.

You had noticed that the bigger the ask, the further the fall, and after a certain number of falls a person starts managing the height rather than the outcome, because the height is the only variable they control.

That is not unbelief. That is somebody who has been up and down that ladder enough times to have opinions about ladders.

But look at what the trimming actually costs, because it is not what you think. It does not reduce the pain if it goes badly. You will feel that the same. What it reduces is the size of the thing you are willing to say out loud in the presence of God, and that is a strange price to pay for a protection that does not work.

And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You are safe asking for the whole thing, and you would be held if it went the other way. The word says exceeding abundantly above, three words stacked on each other, and then it grounds the whole measure in the power already at work rather than in the volume of anybody's request, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real chest that has learned to ask small.

Ask for the whole thing. Not because it guarantees anything. Because the ceiling was never yours to lower.