In chapter two, when we jumped into what it means to be a Christian, we learned that the only way to truly be a Christian is to first and foremost become a disciple of Jesus.

Discipleship is a term that is used to describe the process of being and becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. As we have learned in previous chapters, this is exactly what Jesus is calling us to be and become. To be His disciples. Those who follow His way.

This process of being and becoming a disciple of Jesus is truly a journey for a lifetime. But just because it takes a lifetime doesn't mean that it has to be hard, complex, or near impossible with zero immediate results. God can produce dynamic transformation in your life faster than you can blink your eyes three times and shout “hot dog.” He is God. Don’t minimize this reality or try to downplay what God can do in your life. 

Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:20, where he tells us that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20). What power? HIS POWER!

Exceedingly abundantly. Exceedingly means “more than.” Abundantly means “more than enough.” Now, lock this in your heart and never let it go: God’s power that is at work in your life is able to produce more than whatever is more than enough... far beyond whatever it is that you can even request of Him or conceptualize in your mind.

Think about that for a moment. Don’t just pass over it. Let this reality of God become real to you. Believe it. Embrace it as your doctrine, and let the limitations of your mind dissolve into the possibilities of faith in Jesus. He can literally do anything!

Every day with Jesus is a day spent walking in miracle territory. Instead of wondering what may go wrong today, what if you began to think about what God might do today? Instead of, when things go wrong (and they will), wondering how in the world you are ever going to get out of whatever struggle it is that has come upon your life, think, I wonder how God is going to show up in this situation?. Have faith. Believe. And when you do, you’ll notice far more God-activity in your life than ever before. Why? Is it because God is now all of a sudden able? No. It is simply because we have chosen to believe.

Remember… what we experience with God is often limited by what we believe about Him.

But don’t just take my word for it. Take Jesus’ Word. Let’s take a brief detour for a moment to talk more about all of this.

I love the statement that He makes in Matthew 7:8–11:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

Jesus can. Will you ask?

Here’s another amazing statement about Jesus that I hope ignites your faith:

“So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” it will be done. And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive’” (Matthew 21:21–22).

Amazing.

The apostle James, however, brings a balance to this. Not a contradiction. A balance. And he did so because then just as there are so many today some were trying to abuse the words of Jesus to mean something that they don’t, as if Jesus is somehow a genie in a bottle ready to grant your three greatest wishes. That is simply not the case. Here is what James says:

“Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:2–3).

James is helping us understand something and bring greater understanding to what Jesus said in Matthew 7 and 21, and Paul explains further in Ephesians 3… that God is able to do anything that we ask, but He will not do things just so that we can fulfill our own personal will. As a matter of fact, God is able to do anything, as long as it fulfills His will and purposes in our lives and in the earth.

God can do anything, but He will not do what He does not want to. Only what accomplishes His will.

Teaching His disciples how to pray in Matthew 6, Jesus include a statement that helps even further explain this when He tells them to pray in this way:

“Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Jesus is helping His disciples understand that what they are to go before Him in prayer asking and seeking is for His kingdom to come, and His will to be done, among them and in their midst here on earth as it already is in Heaven. Whatever is true in Heaven, which exists at the will of God, they are to pray for that heavenly reality to become earthly reality. But how? By praying according to His will.

Even Jesus, in His humanity (He was fully man and fully God all at the same time), understood this when He prayed in the Garden at Gethsemane, after asking for something that was 100 percent His personal human will, by finishing His prayer with “nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

This was a picture of Jesus suffering as a human. And it was the will of God for Him to do so. As God, He was able to deliver Himself, but as a man, He had to submit to the divine will of God.

I want to make a brief sidebar here and say this while we are on the subject: there will be times that you ask for something, and God may not do it. Even something that you want or feel very deeply that you need. Does this mean that God is not able? No. It means that God is not willing.

Why?

Because God is sovereign. He knows all things, sees the end from the beginning, and from His perspective sees things differently than we do.

Sometimes it is the will of God that we walk through a hard thing. Just like Jesus needed His disciples to pass through a storm and in fact led them into it on purpose in Luke 8 to help build the depth of their faith and trust in Him, Jesus will at times allow storms to come into our lives to produce greater faith and trust in our hearts toward Him.

Above all, “we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Pay attention to the key words in this statement from Paul.

All things work together for the good of those who love God, for His purpose.

All things. Good. His purposes.

Once again we are reminded that everything is for His purposes. Even hardship and suffering that we may walk through. I have often said this to our church, and I am not sure if it is original or I heard it somewhere, so if you are somehow the originator of this quote, please forgive me for not giving you credit: “It’s not always good while it’s working, but it’s working for your good.”

Paul says this in Philippians 3:

“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10–11)

Paul is saying that meeting and following Jesus will include both amazing power and immense suffering. But the suffering is meant to produce within us the working of His great power, and ultimately, the complete salvation of our souls.

Some people think that the only thing that God wants to give them is a gift, provision, deliverance, and more of the same. But what if I told you that God sometimes wants to just give you grace for the trial?

Because Paul was becoming so enriched in revelation from God, the Lord provided Paul a trial that would serve as a means to keep him humble before God and others so that Paul would not try to take personal glory from God in the depth of these revelations that God had given him to share in his ministry with others.

Let me just say really quick that pride is a huge stumbling block for us in our walk with God and ought to be avoided at all costs.

The Bible says that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6). In fact, pride was intricately involved in the fall of Lucifer (the guy that is often referred to as “Satan” or “the devil”) who was expelled from his place in Heaven as a high-ranking, beautiful angel of God.

Wild, huh?

So back to Paul. He deals with a “thorn in the flesh” as he called it that God has given to him. Here is what Paul says about this “thorn”:

“Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:8–9).

Pay attention to this closely. Paul sought deliverance, but God gave him grace.

There will be times that you ask for one thing that you think you need, but God will give you whatever thing it is that He knows that you need.

All of that can be summed up in this one passage of Scripture written by the pen of Isaiah the prophet:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).

So ask, seek, knock. Pursue the more of God that is available to us in faith. Even when that means the complete sustaining grace of God that is available for us as we walk through trial. And in all things… believe. All things are working for good, for those who love God and are the called according to His purpose.

Reflection Questions: