80

Our church is studying Ephesians right now in our sermon times, and we just finished Ephesians 3:1-14. Verse 13 tells us that "in Him (Christ) and through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence." When I first heard this, I was very excited that I had the freedom and confidence to ask God to help me with things in my life that need work, help, etc. This is a reasssuring truth indeed. But this morning as I was going over the text again, I realized that with freedom and confidence can come boldness and even crazy prayers that we might not normally pray. If I have FREEDOM to ask anything and CONFIDENCE that God hears and loves me, why are my prayers so small most of the time? God spoke to me and told me that I need to ask Him for what to pray, because left to myself I will stop short of asking for the things that I think are too big to be done.

After that Sripture time, I opened a Word document entitled "80" that I had typed on April 26th and then not opened again, mostly (I have to admit) because it seemed so ludicrous. In a moment of crazy boldness and freedom, I typed a prayer, asking God to send us 80 tutors for this coming year, so that each day we would have 40 tutors for the 40 kids that we hope will come. Kids need one on one help to best succeed and many times in years past we have been one on three, one on two at best.

I opened "80" this morning, because today on email I received our initial database of interested tutors, and there are 83 on the list. Some of them may decide to not help (like, say. 3?), but as I looked at that list, which more than doubled the number that we had last year, I remembered "80" and how I was afraid to look at that document or share it with others because "what if God didn't answer".

We as God's children have FREEDOM and CONFIDENCE through our perfect access in Christ Jesus. We can ask the Father anything, no matter how big (or how small), and we know that He hears and He doesn't laugh us off or ignore us. And, surprise, He even answers despite the fact that our faith is maybe 64% sure that He will. Let's be a people who are bold and ask God to do more than we can ask or imagine.