A Dream-Big Prayer

In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul is praying for the Ephesian church, and his prayer is for us too. We see two themes emerge as he prays, and the first is for strength: “He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (v. 16). He’s saying, Deep in your very being, I want you to be strong in the Spirit.

Then in verse 18, he prays that we would “have strength to comprehend” with the whole church, the fullness of God’s love. The world is in opposition to the kingdom of God, and it’s fighting to pull you away, to lure you back into its kingdom. You need strength, endurance and steadfastness to increase in your knowledge and everyday experience of the love of God. So, the second theme is God’s love. In verse 17, he prays that we would be “rooted and grounded in love,” and in verse 19, that we would “know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.” Paul wants you to experience God’s love, not just know that it exists. We need spiritual strength to increase our experiential knowledge of God’s love.

I listen to the Huberman Lab podcast, and one episode discussed the science of muscle growth. For a muscle to get stronger, it has to be stressed; there has to be weight, tension, exertion. Likewise, our spiritual heart—our spiritual strength—needs the same thing. God wants to stretch our faith, he wants us to seek him, to live daringly, to put our hands to the plow. Paul is essentially saying that our spiritual strength needs to grow to receive all that God is doing—to be filled with all the fullness of God. Jesus is ready to call you into something more than you can even ask or think or imagine, but maybe you’re not ready yet to receive it.

There’s a prayer from the Valley of Vision (a collection of Puritan prayers) that says, “There is still so much unconquered territory in my heart.”[1] Are there corners of your heart that are not given over to him? The book, Why Revival Tarries, asks something similar: “Can the Holy Spirit be invited to take us by the hand down the corridors of our souls? Are there not secret springs, and secret motives that control, and secret chambers where other things hold empire over the soul?”[2] That phrase, where other things hold empire over the soul, haunted me when I first read it. Likewise, the great theologian Augustine pleaded with the Lord: “Set love in order in me!”[3]

Your spiritual heart needs to get bigger to contain all that God has for you. Dreaming big is an invitation to hand over more of your life—more of your heart—to him. And we can dream big because God loves us.

Big Dreams

What does it look like to dream big for the glory of God? Paul continues in his letter to the Ephesians, “Now to him who is able”—that is, the God who spoke creation into existence, the God who parted the Red Sea, the God who raises the dead is able—“to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (3:20).

Far more abundantly.

Some of your translations will say “immeasurably more” or “exceedingly abundantly.” It’s a double superlative. It’s not good grammar; it’s like saying “most bestest.” But we’re exhausted for words when trying to describe the ineffable, infinite, unimaginable power of God! One commentator wrote, “The Father’s giving exceeds our capacity for asking or even dreaming.”[4] We dream big because we have an abundance mindset. We have a God who is able to do abundantly more than all that we can pray or dream.

Do you have a scarcity mindset (an expectation that there won’t be enough of what you need) or an abundance mindset (an expectation that there will)? Depending on your upbringing, you may lean one way or the other. But when we’re talking about the kingdom of God, we should all have an abundance mindset. If you have a scarcity mindset about the kingdom of God, you have a theology problem—not a money or time or people problem. If we don’t think that Jesus has an overabundance of whatever we might need in his back pocket, then our problem is that we don’t really know God, not that we don’t really know if we can do it.

Do you have a scarcity mindset? It’s a disposition that I think we all seem to have to some degree. We operate in life from this place that says, We don’t have enough yet and we’re not sure if we’re going to get more, so we can’t give.

We don’t have enough friends yet—we aren’t in the inner circles, we haven’t been accepted fully; we need more applause, more people liking us.

We need more money—we can’t give, we can’t be generous, because we don’t have quite enough.

We need more time—we need space to do the things we want to do, so we must protect how we spend our days.

Until we realize that God is able to do “far more abundantly” than all that we can pray about or dream, we’ll keep operating in the kingdom of this world. We’ll develop a scarcity mindset that leads to anxiety and fear and exhaustion and apathy and impotence toward the kingdom of God.

We can risk our money by giving generously to what God is doing. We can risk our own reputation because God already delights in us.

Christians should be the most entrepreneurial, the most risk taking, the most audacious people in the world—because the Bible promises that God can do far more “than all that we ask or think.” So we pray or dream or imagine something, and he’ll do us one better!

You want to plant other churches? Wait till you see what I’ll do.
You want to saturate your city with my glory and grace?
I’ll do even more than that.
You want to see your neighborhoods transformed by the gospel?
I’ll do that and more.
Ask me, church . . . Ask me to do something for my glory,
and you’ll see . . .

God’s dream for you is bigger than your dreams for him. Surrender your dreams for his.

Remember, you are predestined to be conformed into the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29). You will be like Jesus. So may the Spirit strengthen your heart with power. Would the Son rule on the throne of your whole heart. Would the Father’s love be apprehended and comprehended by your inner being.

And, with your church, would you know all the fullness of God.

This article is an adapted extract from Send by Jim Essian (The Good Book Company, 2024). In the book, Essian helps believers discover how to play their part in God’s great plan to build his church—whether by praying, giving, or going.

[1] Arthur G. Bennett, “A Minister’s Praises” in The Valley of Vision (Banner of Truth, 2003), 345.

[2] Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries (Baker Publishing Group, 2004), p 33.

[3] Augustine, City of God XV.22.

[4] Peter O’Brien, Letter to the Ephesians: Pillar New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 266.