He Goes Beyond Our Beyond

“I want my life to radiate what happens when God has a person’s heart at His full control, when every event or circumstance is simply another avenue to know Him better and show forth His glory.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Life Interrupted

Well, hi y’all.
It’s a privilege to have an opportunity to be with you from Dallas, my family and I love, love, love this incredible church and we love this gathering of women together.
Um I am so blessed and encouraged and stirred and challenged by what it is that Miss Debbie just shared with us because she basically gave us a different vantage point with which to look at our trials that it doesn’t mean that that after this conference is over, we will all be out of our trials.
It means that even while we’re yet in them, we can look at them differently and we can be different while we’re in them.
I was thinking about this while she was well, Pastor Debbie was speaking, I was thinking about the fact that my three boys, uh they, they do travel together with me a lot.
We hang out together a lot and um when they come on ministry trips with me, I’ll be honest with you and tell you that the last thing they are really concerned about at this stage in their lives is ministry.
What they want to know is, does the hotel have a pool, all they want to know, they love swimming.
It’s their thing. And so I remember a couple of summers ago they were swimming.
My little one had just learned really how to be under the water for an extended period of time.
So they were really all enjoying being under the water.
All three of them being able to swim and, and I noticed that their eyes were clothes while they were under the water.

And, and so my husband said to them, hey, guys, you know, I’m gonna get you some goggles so you can feel comfortable opening your eyes up or seeing underwater so you can see underwater.
And so we gave them these goggles that we bought on sale at the local Super Walmart down the street.
Anybody believe in the power of Walmart? Can somebody say amen?
So we gave them, this gave them these goggles, they put the goggles on, they went under the water, they were swimming under the water and one of them came back up and said, I, I really still can’t see.
My husband looked at him and said, did you open your eyes?
My son said, oh, he went back down under the water.
This time, eyes open came up and said, I can see, I can see.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t have seen underwater before he had exactly what he need.
He was fitted with the right equipment to be able to see. He just had to open up his eyes.
Pastor Debbie just helped us open up our eyes.
Each and every one of us that have placed faith in Jesus Christ. We have been given the equipment.
You have got the power of the holy ghost living on the inside of you.
And when you are in over your head, when you are in deep waters, when the trials and troubles of life come your way, my friend, all you have to do now is activate the equipment that you’ve been given, just open up your eyes and you’ll be able to see it all from a different vantage point in a different perspective, which is why I could not wait to get up here because I wanted to share with any of you.
And that is all of us who are in trials in our life.
By the way, every single one of you under the sound of my voice are in one of three places.
You need to know that even if you are not in a trial right now.
First of all, we would like to tell you, we are happy for you, but every single one of us is in one of three places.
You’re either right smack dab in the middle of a trial on your way into one or on your way out of one because the nature of the world in which we live.
Jesus said, John 1633 in this world, you will have trouble you don’t have to go looking for it, just keep living and the trouble will come and find you.
Can I get one witness knows what I’m talking about.
But in the midst of that, we can believe in the truth that is told to us in two of my favorite verses in all of scripture.
I was sitting there listening to Pastor Debbie, still mulling over in my mind what I might share with you.
And as she started talking, I knew for sure that I wanted to encourage you with these two verses from Ephesians chapter three, verse 20 and 21.
Now onto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you can ask or even think according to the power that works within us, to Him, be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, somebody ought to say amen to that.
That’s so good. I think I’m gonna read it again now unto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you can ask or even think according to the power, Holy Spirit that is at work on the inside of all of you to that great God, be the glory from generation to generation in the church and in Christ Jesus, both now and forever.
Somebody ought to say amen to that. That means there is no trouble that you are facing.
There is no difficulty that you’re in. There is no pit you have dug for yourself.
There is no situation or issue or drama that is currently unfolding in any of our lives that his power is not greater still, you may feel overwhelmed, but you need to know that your God does not.
I love these two verses so much. They are a doxology.
A doxology means basically an outpouring of praise and worship to God.
This is one of the pinnacles of all of Paul’s writing.
Paul, the apostle that gave us the majority of the Old Testament.
Scholars say that of all Paul gave us really, Ephesians is the crem a creme of all of his writing.
And of all that he gave us in the book of Ephesians where he talks about the lavishness of God’s grace toward us and all that we have inherited as daughters of the most high king.
They say of all the beautiful language that he gives us in theology. He gives us in Ephesians.
Really the the cherry on top of the cake is this doxology, this outburst of praise and worship to God.
And here’s the thing y’all when he wrote the book of Ephesians, he was in prison.
He was basically on Roman house arrest.
He is in a situation he does not particularly care to be in.
He is in a trial and right there in the midst of the trial, he has an outburst of praise and worship to God two verses a doxology where he stools and worships just like you did just a few moments ago.
Some of you stood to your feet and you said I’m just like Paul, I’m in the middle of a trial, but in the middle of your trial, you did exactly what Paul did.
Pastor Debbie had to stand up and worship God.
Anyway, it’s one thing to have a doxology while you’re not in a trial.
It’s a whole, another thing captures God’s attention in a whole another way when you are in a trial and yet you choose to have an out burst of praise and worship to our great, amazing God.
That’s what Paul did. He gave us this doxology kind of seems like he’s off track a little bit.
He’s been talking about so many other things in the book of Ephesians and all of a sudden out of nowhere.
He seems to just kind of start talking about how Great God is about His amazing power and, and he can barely find the right words.
Did you notice that? It’s like he keeps just piling more big words, words on top of more big words on top of other big words because he can’t seem to find the exact right words that he wants to use.
He builds this huge picture for us about how great and grand and amazing and uh magnificent.
The power of God is to every single one of us in our lives.
I wanna walk with you through these verses because if you can walk out of here and if I can walk out of here seeing with our eyes open, seeing our, our trials and tribulations with a brand new perspective, it will literally change all of our lives.
I want you to look at these verses like a pyramid except the pyramid is turned upside down.
So you’ve got the smallest layer on the bottom and then another that builds a foundation for another and then another and then another, this is how Paul gives us these verses, the very beginning.
He gives us just a little nugget and then that little nugget lays the foundation for the next and then the next and then the next until he has built for us, a monstrosity about the greatness of God.
We’re gonna take that journey right up that pyramid.
I want you to see the progression, the journey that Paul takes us on in these two verses.
He says now now onto him.
Now unto him, who is able to do it now unto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond.
Now unto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you can ask.
And if you can’t ask it because your brain can’t even figure out the right words to verbalize what you’re trying to ask.
He says, that’s all right. Just think it and I can do past that.
Now unto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you can ask or think according to some power that’s supposed to be working on the inside of you now onto him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you can ask or think according to the power that’s supposed to be working on the inside of you, to him be the glory in the church that’s us.
And in Christ Jesus, both now and forever. Somebody say, amen.
All right, we’re gonna take every single one of these steps together. Are you guys with me?
The very first step in the progression through these two verses that are gonna change our perspective, the way that we look at our trials, just like Pastor Debbie described to us a few moments ago, the very first step seems like the most significant, but it really is the hinge on which the rest of it turns and it is the word.
Now somebody say now Paul says, I want you to start thinking about the greatness and the power and the amazing ability that God has toward you that he wants you to experience in your regular everyday living as a single woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a person, working in corporate America, as a person, working in full time ministry, as a volunteer, as a parent at the school, as a teacher, as an accountant, as a lawyer.
He says, I want you to start thinking about God’s power and I don’t want you to have thought about it yesterday.
We’re not talking about yesterday. He says, I don’t even want you to think about it in your tomorrows.
He says there is a time to consider how great God’s power is to you.
And that time is when He wants you to think about it right now while you’re sitting in this room, while you’re at this conference, exactly what the Lord has allowed to happen in your life in the days leading up to this conference.
He says now is the time for you to make a connection between what’s happening in your life and how God wants to express His power to you in that specific situation.
Y’all, this is important because if you’re anything like me, sometimes there is a disconnect between my reality and my relationship with God.
Sometimes I forget that the stuff I’m learning on Sunday is supposed to apply to Monday.
Sometimes I forget that all the stuff I gathered from the women’s conference that the encouragement that I, that I gleaned that the word of God that was spoken over me, that the fear that was prayed out of me, that the salvation that I received when I came down at the altar.
Sometimes I forget that this is not supposed to be compartmentalized in some little corner of my, I’ve saved for a rainy day that he wants to be involved on my Monday.
And then at work on my Tuesday and then at home on my Wednesday and then while I’m trying to figure out another way to cook chicken on my Thursday and then on my Friday and on, while I’m running errands on my Saturday that this is supposed to apply to my right now.
Paul says, would you please make the connection?
A woman came and stood up on this platform.
at the end of the evening, a woman that happened to have a little car accident and then that car accident led to there being an extra ticket that was so graciously given by the woman uh who got hit in the other car.
And so she gives her a ticket and she ends up here last night and she comes forward to accept Jesus Christ is her savior.
Paul says, would you know that what happened to you yesterday means everything in your today that it’s connected that I planned it or I allowed it that I fully intend as Pastor Debbie said to walk with you through it.
That the only reason why I allow circumstances in your life is because sometimes when we are flat on our back, that’s the only time we ever take a breath and look up and see him for who he really is.
And so now all the circumstances of our lives, obviously, they are not good.
A car wreck, not good, but somehow he works all things together for our good.
My mom, um my mom is a master chef. Actually.
She’s not, she’s not, she’s just my mom and she’s a really good cook and you know, there’s just no cooking like your mom was cooking, right?
I admire my mother so much for many reasons.
Um One of them is that, you know, she’s a great cook and I remember on Sundays when I was growing up, y’all, there was none of this go out to eat dinner business after church on Sunday.
That was like a treat. But I grew up in the kind of house where you ate at home on Sunday.
Does anybody know what I’m talking about? Like that was the best meal of the whole week.
My mom started, started planning for it on Saturday.
Sometimes she was cooking like the roast all night on Saturday and we would just smell it all night.
Then the yeast rolls would be rising and, you know, she might do a couple of dishes the night before.
So she didn’t have to worry about it all, you know, all this home cooked stuff.
I mean, we would smell it all night. We would wake up. We hadn’t even been to church yet.
We were already ready for Sunday dinner. We would just hungry.
I remember that we would have this huge wonderful dinner on Sunday.
And now as a mother of three, I know how much work that was. I appreciate it.
Even more. I still even can’t figure it out.
Honestly, I cannot figure out how with one oven because I only have one oven. My mom had one oven.
I cannot figure out for the life of me how you get all that stuff on the table hot.
At the same time, I cannot figure it out for the life of me.
So I appreciate her now even more.
And now I also understand why on Monday and Tuesday she didn’t cook nothing.
This is too much work.
But what she did do was go into the refrigerator and she would see what was left over.
So she’d have a little leftover chicken.
A little leftover macaroni, a little leftover broccoli, whatever, she’d pull it all out, she’d start chopping and dic and put everything together.
Stir it all up, pour a little cream of mushroom soup in there because, you know, that makes everything better.
Right. She’s that in there and then she’d Sprinkle some grated cheese on top, you know, put it in the oven for about an hour or so, maybe less at 350°. And she would bake it.
She’d stand there and at just the right time she’d pull it out, she’d set it on the table and she’d give it a French sounding name.
We thought it was something brand new and spectacular, but it really wasn’t.
It was just leftovers in the hands of a master.
Let me tell you what God does with your life.
He takes this piece and that piece and, and this little leftover piece and the part you thought would be valuable for absolutely nothing in this season of your life that you just wonder why you even went on that detour in the first place.
And he takes all of this stuff and he chops it and he dices it and he reconfigures it and he stirs the cream of the Holy Spirit in it.
And then he sprinkles a little grace and mercy on top because grace and mercy make everything better.
And then yes, he puts you in the oven of fire and trial for just a little while.
But like any good master chef, he’s standing there watching not to allow you to overcook not for just even one minute.
And at just the right time he pulls you out and listen to me.
He gives you a brand new name and he serves you to a loss in a dying world that needs to see that he is mm mm Good.
And so when you’re in the trial, when you’re in the fire, when you find that things are difficult that you’re having issues that there is a surprise AAA something that has met you in your year that you were not planning for when you find that that has happened, just know that the masterchef has got his eye on you and he wants you to know that right now is the time, now is the time that He wants you to begin to consider.
Don’t disconnect connect the present tenseness of God’s ability with your current circumstances.
Not for yesterday, not even necessarily for tomorrow.
Paul says today, I want you to think about the fact that now is the time for you to make the connection.
So he says there is a time and the time is now and he says this is the time for us to do some turning and the turning is unto him now unto him.
He says, I’m gonna tell you exactly what to do right now in the middle of your trial, I’m gonna tell you.
He says to divert your attention to turn it 180° away from focusing on your trial to focusing on him.
He says, you’ve got to turn your attention.
You have got to discipline yourself, instruct yourself not to concentrate on and nurse and uh pay attention to the issue.
You gotta pay attention to God. He’s the one that deserve your attention, not the problem.
And if you are anything like me, you know how difficult this is because when you are having a little drama in your life, somebody say drama.
I love when I’m speaking to women because if I say drama, everybody in this room knows exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?
Yeah. When we have drama that unfolds in your life.
If you’re like me, your tendency is to stay up a few extra minutes or a couple of hours at night, going over the issue that you are facing or you walk through the bookstore and it seems like every single book you are passing on the shelf has to do with your drama and you pull those books off and you take them up to the register to buy them so that you can read more about your drama And then you walk through the magazine stand and they’re on the magazine stand.
Every single feature that is on the cover has to do with your drama.
And then Dr Oz is talking about it too.
And so is Dr Phil and then you know, Oprah is not on anymore, but she’s still got that network and she’s talking about it too.
Everywhere you look, you are face to face with your issue.
So you give it inadvertently, we don’t mean to, but we give it the attention that is supposed to be given to our God.
You know what worship is, don’t you?
Worship is attention and some of us are worshiping our issue instead of worshiping God, we are giving to the drama.
What’s supposed to be reserved only for our God.
So we do what Miss Debbie just had us do not just corporately with 7000 other sisters, what we do in our bedroom when we wake up in the morning and the tears are about to form in our eye or the sweat is about to form on our brow.
We’re just about to get concerned because we feel that discouragement welling up on the inside of us, we do the exact same thing in our bedroom to an audience of one that we did in this room with 7000 other sisters.
We stand up to our feet or down on our knees or prostate on the floor or you lay there still in the bed sometimes.
Can I tell you that? I know once my feet hit the floor, it’s over.
The boys are gonna know I’m up, people are gonna know I’m up. It’s over.
So sometimes I lay on that bed and I say, Lord, today I present myself a living sacrifice to you.
This bed is the altar, Lord and I lay myself upon it.
And today, Lord, I fix my eyes on you.
Paul says now is the time to do some turning.
You got to turn your attention on him. Jesus had to do it.
Do you remember um when he went to the cross? Y’all? He wasn’t particularly fond of that idea.
He didn’t go to the cross looking at the cross.
It says that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
He didn’t endure the cross looking at it.
He was looking past it to the joy of knowing that there would be women gathered in Springfield in the year 2014 and that there would be an opportunity for them to have a relationship with the father through him.
He looked past the trial to you and the joy set before him is what allowed him to be able to endure.
The challenge that was on his plate to endure. And the same is true of you.
And I, you know, when you’re watching, when you’re watching a movie and there’ll be something in the foreground, you’re paying attention to this person or this conversation or this thing, this dynamic that’s happening.
And then all of a sudden in cinema, cinematography, what they will do sometimes is not necessarily show you an entirely different, different um uh screen or a different shot.
What they will do is simply blur what was in the foreground.
And then all of a sudden something comes to life in your eyes that has always been in the background.
You just didn’t see it because your perspective had not been changed. Paul says, listen, it’s all about perspective.
It’s not that the issue is not there anymore.
It’s just you command it to be blurred in Jesus name and you look past it to what the joy is that is set before you now is the time to do some turning onto him.
And he says the reason why you can do this turning is because of that third step.
And it’s the truth and the truth is this, he is able to do it to do.
I’m giving that one a little time to sink into the heart of somebody that is here today.
And you’re just about at the end of your rope because you’ve been on your knees a long time about that one.
And you have started to wonder whether or not it can be done.
The Holy Spirit says to you today through this little simple one phrase in this passage, God can do it.
Listen to me whether or not He will is a question of his sovereignty.
It is not a question of his ability, believing that he can.
That’s our business, whether or not he will. That’s his business.
Pastor Deby did not come up here on this platform and say, I prayed for healing.
And the next time I went to the doctor, the report said I was free and clear.
That’s not what she said. She came up here and even said to us at the end of the message, I’m still walking out my healing.
I’m still trusting God with the completion of my healing.
So whether or not He will do exactly what you’re praying for him, for do.
That’s his business. But believing that he can, that’s our business, putting a stake in the ground and saying to the enemy who seeks to speak fear and discouragement over our over, over our lives or like David, just encouraging yourself in the Lord.
You know, sometimes you got to just encourage yourself, you got to look in the mirror and say, you know what?
I don’t care what’s going on. Sister today. You serve a God who’s got your back.
He can do it.
There are not many things that you can count on anymore in this world.
There just aren’t, everything is changing everything around us.
Change our bank account statements is going to change, are going to change our job positions or status gonna change just when you think you know your husband, he goes and changes your kids.
You got their schedule figured out, then they grow up one more year and got free. Figure it out again.
Everything changes. There’s little you can count on anymore.
Paul says I want to give you one thing that third step that no matter if there’s anything else in this world you can count on.
There is one thing you can take to the bank and that is that your God can do it.
He can do it.
I’m saying to you that your God can fix your marriage.
I’m saying to the one who has got the diagnosis, your God can turn that diagnosis around.
I’m also saying to you that when you get the diagnosis that your God can come in like a flood and give you such an anchor of peace and hope and his presence with you while he walks you through it, he can do that too good.
You need to know that your God can lift the depression, that the addiction that that you’ve been wondering whether or not you’ll ever be able to be free from that addiction.
You have tried everything, you know, to try and you’re wondering now if it’s even worth it.
You need to know today. The Holy Spirit says to you through a man that wrote a passage 2000 years ago.
He wants you to know that your God can, can loosen those shackles today.
He wants you to know mother that that adult, adult child of yours that is breaking your heart.
He wants you to know he can bring that child back home.
He wants you to know for the one who is searching for a job.
You have not, your spouse has not been able to find a source of income.
You need to know that He is the God that can cause the right resume to cross the right desk at the exact right moment that there is the exact right position open.
He can do it, you know, need to know that your God is a God of masterful miracles that He is pulling off stuff that your mind cannot even imagine.
He can do it in the original language.
There is one word that Paul used that is translated is able to do in our um in our English language.
That word is somebody say Duna, I want you to see how much that sounds like what we derive later.
Our English word dynamite. It’s almost like we need to be clear on what kind of power that we are talking about that.
It is not some weakling feeble power, it’s not the same power you have or that the strongest person in your life has.
It’s not that kind of power because even their power is not able to get you out of that issue.
But you need to know that the power he has is a dynamite power that in an instant it can completely change or alter the structure of a thing in one fell swoop, swoop.
It can completely alter the molecular structure of an object.
It can make and form and produce and bring about and cause and restructure and flatten and erect and rearrange and accomplish anything in the blink of an eye.
That’s the kind of power that our God has.
And you need to know about this Junius power y’all that the way Paul used it in the um in this particular verse that the way it’s used in the sentence implies that it is an inherent power.
Let me tell you why this is important because then it tells us that power is not something God has power is who he is.
It means that he does not have all power in his hand. He is the all powerful one.
This is good news because it means when you see your girlfriend who got God’s power released in her life because a miracle came into her circumstances, we don’t have to, uh, kind of quietly internally feel a little insecure that maybe now that God gave some of his power away, there’s a little bit less left for us.
We don’t have to be a little bit jealous or envious that God gave it away over there.
So there might not be enough left for the 6999 others of us who are left in this room.
We don’t have to worry about that because when he gave the power away, he is now no less powerful than he was before he gave it.
Your God is not just a big us.
He’s not a big version of us.
He doesn’t need a good nap before he can handle all of us.
We don’t have the capacity to wear God out all the power that you will ever need to be dispensed to your life, to live the victorious Christian life that he has called you or I to live all power is always available to every single one of us all of the time.
And that’s the truth. Paul says you can hang your hat on, take it to the bank.
He can do it, but he doesn’t just do it.
He doesn’t just do it in some regular normal kind of way from there.
He does it exceedingly abundantly above and beyond.
He does it big, go big or go home.
That’s the way he does it. He does it beyond your wildest imaginations.
I wrote down some different translations of this segment of the verse.
The new living translation says, he can accomplish infinitely more than you ask.
Or think the English standard version says he can do far more abundantly than you ask.
Or think the amplified Bible says abundantly is not good enough.
He can do super abundantly far over and above infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams.
And then the good old message Bible says, God can do anything, you know, far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams.
Any translation you read it, however you slice it. The bottom line is God is able.
He does it big.
It’s very interesting to me because didn’t it sound like when you, when we, when we read those different translations and we hear them, it sounds like Paul can’t really find the right words to use.
He’s trying, I want you to picture him those 2000 or so years ago as he is sitting there in a Roman prison and he is over the parchment paper and he’s there with his quill and ink.
And he is trying to figure out when he gets to this segment of the verse.
How do I describe to people for generations to come the power of God?
And he tries one word that’s not good enough. He writes another word, huh?
That one doesn’t cut it either.
He gives us another I want you to see the sweat pouring down his brow as he gets that writer’s block that any writer always gets when they’re trying to find the right word or the right combination of words to, to correctly describe something.
And he tries word combination after word combination, but he can’t quite find the, the words that are big enough grand enough, huge, enough, lavish, enough, extravagant enough to really help us to get how magnanimous the power of God is.
So he takes a whole lot of big words and puts them together when he gets all these huge Greek words that I will not even begin to try to describe or to pronounce for you.
When he gets them all put together, he stands back, looks at them and realizes that they are still not doing a good enough job of describing how great the power of God is that is available to believers in Jesus Christ.
So he does one more thing. He takes this little prefix in the Greek language. The prefix is hyper.
Somebody say hyper, hyper basically means beyond.
He takes two hyper and he puts them on as a prefix to two of those long words.
Hyper basically means I’m trying to say this, but that’s not good enough.
So what I really mean is beyond this hyper means beyond it’s kind of like how you can extend your elbow or you could need to go to the hospital because you hyper extended your elbow, right?
You can go to the grocery store, you can buy white light bulbs or you actually can buy hyper white light bulbs.
That means they’re like for real white. Some of us in the room have active Children.
Others of us have hyperactive Children. It means beyond the norm.
Paul says, I want you to know that what your God is capable of doing in your life is not just what you ask because honestly, Paul says, you would be selling yourself short if God just did what you asked that your brain can’t even come up with a prayer request, a solution.
It can’t even devise something that even touches the fringes of God’s capability.
So he says, I want you to know that God does not just do what you ask.
He does beyond it. And then just when you thought that God had done more than you could ask or imagine God doesn’t just do one level of beyond.
Remember, he put hyper twice. God does beyond what you would have already thought was beyond God does well past you’re way past.
He takes what your brain can’t even begin to imagine. And He does beyond that.
And then in His infinite glory and sovereignty and omniscience and omnipresence, looking at the generations that are to come looking and considering and strategizing of His entire kingdom agenda.
He does beyond your beyond way past your way past, which is why when we pray Yes, we make our prayer requests known.
But let me tell you the smartest prayer we can ever pray. Lord. Yes, here is what I want.
Please do it or do something better.
It’s relinquishing ourselves to his sovereignty.
Can I just tell you guys that one of the things I’m most grateful for in my life is unanswered prayers.
Because if God had given me half the stuff I have begged him for in my life, I’d be in a world of trouble right now.
Can somebody say amen? I’m so grateful that in his grace and in his sovereignty, he looked beyond all my begging and all my tears and all my Lord.
This is what I really need right now.
He looked past all of that to what was to come and he gives us what we don’t even know we need.
He does beyond your, beyond way past your way past.
I want to describe this to you because when you get a handle on this, it does change the way you pray.
It causes you to stop praying. Um kids meal snack pack, number 1 McDonald’s kind of prayers.
It causes you to take God to the best steakhouse in town and say, Lord, I want this because you know that when someone has what it required to take care of it, then it changes what you request, makes your prayer life bigger.
So God does beyond the beyond way past the way past um uh, if you were, when you left here or when you left home, rather you came here, let’s say you have a teenager at home and you told your teenager before you left the house.
Listen, when I come home, I want your room clean. That’s the expectation. That’s the request.
So when you go home tomorrow night or Sunday night, whenever you’re going home, you go home and you walk into the house, you haven’t gone to the bedroom yet.
You just walk into the house and the smell of cleaning pro products is assaulting you on every side.
You look over to the kitchen, the kitchen is completely clean and the, the dining room is completely clean and the living room is completely clean.
The whole house has been cleaned by your teenager. I’m just saying it could happen.
We’re just talking in hypothetical situations. I’m saying it could happen.
So now your teenager did not just do what you asked. They did.
They did beyond what you ask. You’re already impressed because they’ve done beyond it.
So you are just smile on your face. You’ve already given him a hug, a big hug.
You are so excited because they just did more than what you could have even thought they would do.
And so you walk into your bedroom and, and uh you walk into your, your bathroom to just start unpacking.
And when you walk into your bathroom, there is a hot bath that has been drawn for mama. Don’t laugh.
It’s possible is what I’m saying. It’s possible. A hot bath.
There’s a note right there by your sink that says mom enjoy your bath.
And after you’re finished, I’m gonna have a hot meal for you that I’m gonna serve for you in bed tonight.
I’m saying it could happen.
So now your teenager didn’t just do what you asked and they didn’t just do beyond it.
They did beyond the beyond. Ok. I got another one for you.
I got another one for you. Ok.
So Jerry and I live in a fairly rural part of the Dallas Fort Worth area.
We like it that way because, um, we got three boys.
They need to kind of run around, have room to play outside.
I love that kids can still play outside in this day and age.
I make, I’m one of those mean mothers that make them stay outside and I put water bottles outside and then I lock the door and I look at them through the window any time they come to me and say, have the nerve to say to me that they are bored.
I say, oh no, you’re not. You see that tree right there. Go play with it.
You can eat it, you can play tag with it.
I don’t care what you do with it, but you are not coming in to play video games today.
Boy, not on my watch, not today. So they play outside.
We like it that way out in the country behind our house.
There’s a big backyard and then there is this kind of steep drop off to a creek.
It’s one of the reasons why I almost didn’t want to buy that little house. It’s a little small house.
We like the yard and I almost didn’t wanna buy it because of that creek at the back.
Jerry said, don’t worry about it. We’re just, just like a man. Don’t worry about it.
We’re gonna put up this little knee high, you know, chicken wire fence.
We will tell them since they were little. Um, and, and it’s worked great.
We just told them that fence line, you just don’t go past that fence line.
We’ve never had a problem six years that we’ve been there.
They know the fence line is the expectation if I were to look outside of my window one day while I’m washing dishes and see that one of the boys has gone down into the creek, they are standing up on the other side waving at me.
Now, my boy has not just gone to the expectation. He has gone beyond it.
Now, on the other side of the creek, there are tons of trees. There’s a neighbor’s house back there.
Actually, my sister lives back there now.
And, um, I can’t even see my sister’s house in the, um, spring time or in the summer because all the leaves are on the trees, but in the fall and winter when all those leaves come down, you can kind of get a little view of the house back there.
And if, if my sister called me one day and said, hey, are you missing one of the boys?
Don’t worry about it. He’s over here sitting on my front porch.
We’re just having some lemonade. Well, now my boy is not only going to get a spanking, but my boy has not just gone beyond, he has gone beyond the beyond.
Way past what I already thought was way past. Ok, I got one more for you.
One more question. Got a friend named Maria, her husband’s a great husband, but he’s not the most romantic guy ever.
It’s just not. She said to me last year, she said Priscilla, you know what, for my birthday?
If that man can just get me like a real good card. Not one.
He just ran through the drug store real quick and picked up.
But one he read, he knew it means something to me and he writes in it.
That would just be what I want. That’s the expectation.
She said she came home there on her pillow, there was a card and a box.
She didn’t even have to know what’s in the box.
Just by the mere fact that there is a box, he has already gone beyond the expectation.
Good thing.
It didn’t matter what was in the box because she opened it up and it was an umbrella but it didn’t matter because he has gone beyond.
So she opened up the sweet card and it was a great card and she, she read all the things that were printed in there and then read all the things that he wrote and right at the bottom of what he wrote to her, he said, oh, by the way, I hear it rains a lot in Paris.
Oh, I knew y’all would get that one.
Now, he hasn’t just done what she’s asked.
He’s done beyond what she would have thought was already beyond. This is what God does.
He hears your request. Then he takes into consideration stuff that your brain can’t even imagine.
And he does beyond what would have already been your wildest dream.
And so we as his daughters in our trial, we trust him as the God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond now onto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond according to or in regards to all that you ask or think.
I just got to take a quick second to tell you about this all business, all that you ask or think we’ve got, we’ve got the truth that He can do it transcendently above all you ask or think and it is about the totality, all this power of God that we’re talking about.
It’s about the totality, everything that concerns you all of it because when we start talking about the grandeur and the greatness of God’s power, sometimes we’re thinking about such big, big issues.
We forget that he also cares about your little issues that as Pastor Debbie said, if it’s your problem, if it’s your drama, it’s really not little to you.
Is it never compare what you’re going through with somebody else and think, well, God’s too busy doing that to be concerned with what I’m going through.
He cares about everything that is on your plate. Everything that’s in your heart, everything that is on your mind.
I’ll close by telling you guys this, that I, um, two days ago, um, we were driving somewhere.
I had my laptop with me was doing some work.
Jerry had his ipad, some other things, his cell phone, things like that.
We, as we do, we got out of the car, we put our things underneath seats, places where they would not be easily detected.
We thought we did a good job.
We went and ran our errand, came back to the car to realize someone a couple of days ago broke into the car, took my laptop, took his ipad, took whatever was valuable in the car, took everything out and actually didn’t, obviously it’s unsettling but it didn’t bother us too much because my husband’s got these codes, he’s locked his computer down.
So you got to know the code to be able to get to all the information, our personal information, my computer is the only one that doesn’t have a code.
So all of our family pictures or on any manuscripts that have been writing anything is just completely available for anybody to see everything.
And, and my prayer request yesterday morning at 8:15 was Lord, would you help that person? Whoever’s got it.
Could you just help them at the very least, Lord to just log on to wifi Because see if they connect to wifi, my husband’s got it set up that immediately the apple people somewhere will lock the computer down so that now the folks can’t get into all of our personal stuff.
That was my request. Lord, I just need him to log on, just need him to wanna get on wifi so that at least all of my personal information isn’t exposed.
Gosh, I feel so much better about that.
I prayed with the girls in our office, drove back home after praying, I walked in the door into the kitchen.
Jerry said, oh, I just got an alert.
The computer’s been locked down while you were praying about it.
God was already up to doing it. Yeah.
And y’all in that moment, can I tell you what? I thought?
I thought I should have prayed bigger.
So my next prayer was Lord, you know that little message that came up that when, when it’s locked down, that message comes up that says, hey, this computer has been stolen.
Here’s, here’s a phone number you can call to return it.
My next prayer was Lord, would you forgive me for praying so small?
I’m praying that that person that stole it will have a change of heart, call the number and return it because God can do what you think is the most unbelievable, unreasonable, irrational thing.
You would never pray because how could that ever happen?
God says pray that one, I’ve got your back, Lord Jesus, I pray over my sisters today.
I am praying over every single one that is in a trial specifically today, but all of us are, are in the midst of life.
Lord and stuff happens. And God, I pray that you would help us to be women that believe in your power that know you are able to do beyond what we ask or think.
And then Lord, would you help us to trust you?
Would you help us God not to be satisfied with a mundane relationship with you that doesn’t trust or believe or have faith or step out on water?
Lord, in the midst of the struggles in the midst of the battles, would you help us to be an army of women that stand firm on the great grand power that our God has?
Lord, we trust you today. Somebody say, I trust you?