Beyond our personal mission statement

In Acts 3:3 Peter and John are stopped on their way to pray at the Beautiful Gate by a man who could not walk from birth.  The man asks them for alms, and they look at him intently, and Peter says those famous words, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk."

On an ordinary day, doing what he did every hour or every day, this man got more than he asked.  We often hear  "You don't have because you do not ask"--true-- and that in this culture and in our relationship with God you have to ask for what you need and want.  Also true-depending.  I have heard many sermons encouraging me to ask for more of God, more blessing, more challenge, more wisdom, more growth.  It begins with the asking: my heart first recognizing my great need for God and the things of God.  I have encouraged many people myself to know what they want and ask for it in various situations.  We meet with others for clarity about what we want and need in life and how to move forward.  

In this story is another truth and one that I don't contemplate very much.

God is interested in giving us life beyond what we even know to ask.  We do not need the imagination or the vision to ask for what God has for us.   We don't need to have a full life plan or a mission-statement or a life vision or even an earnest prayer regarding the ways that we want to grow.  Those things certainly are helpful and the development of wisdom and discernment is a mark of maturity in Christ, but we are not limited in life-abundant by what we have eyes to see or words to name.

At the heart level, God desires to give us more LIFE than we could ever ask or imagine. 

Eph 3:20   [God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...

And as Hannah Whitall Smith says, "God wants to give us the kingdom more than we want to have it."

The man lame from birth on the side of the road got more than he could ask or imagine.

God has life for us like this too.  Beyond our asking. Beyond our thinking. Beyond our praying. Beyond our vision.

Perhaps the work is to recognize what in us is lame, crippled, broken-down, and in pieces. So that we can be intent on recognizing the marks of what is done in us that it is the name of Jesus.