Praying God's Will

I've been thinking about prayer today... how my ideas about prayer have changed (I hope grown) over the years. For me there's always existed a tension between praying boldly in faith and praying according to the will of God. There have always been times when those two concepts were in sync, but there have also been times in my life when I felt the tension... praying fervently... not sure my prayers were in God's will. Maybe you've felt that tension as well.

The last few years I have learned to think of prayer as way God wants us to partner with Him in His work. To do that... to partner with Him in that way... makes it even more important to pray according to His will. That, of course, raises the importance of Bible study... in order to understand the kinds of things God thinks are important so I can pray that direction.

It seems to me that we usually use that phrase "according to God's will" as a limiter, a way put a caveate on bold prayers, a reason prayers are not answered the way we want. However, I was looking at Ephesians 3 today, and it hit me in the face... Paul writes:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
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, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Paul is so confident in God's power... in prayer. It dawned on me that praying in sync with God's will is definitely not a limiter. He can do so much more than we can even think of praying about, that if we can actually get beyond ourselves to the point we are actually praying in the center of His will... WOW!! There is no telling what God can accomplish through our prayers "according to the power that is at work within us."

May each of us grow in our ability to think and live and pray in step with Him.