Ephesians 3:20 Meaning and Explanation

Paul stretches language to its limit. God is able, he says, to do above all that we ask, and then he piles word upon word: exceeding abundantly above. Our prayers reach high, our imaginations reach higher, and God overflows them both. We can scarcely think of a request large enough to crowd Him. Whatever we picture, He is able to go beyond it.

Then comes the tender detail: according to the power that worketh in us. This is not far-off, theoretical power. It is the same strength that raised Christ and now lives in His people, working quietly within us. So our confidence does not rest on the size of our faith but on the greatness of the One we ask. He is able, and He is already at work, doing more than we know how to request.

Read the verse where it stands, at the seam of a prayer. Paul has just knelt and asked that his readers be filled with all the fulness of God, and now, catching himself, he confesses that even that towering request falls short of what God can give. The doxology is the overflow of intercession. Notice too that the power is not held in reserve for some future crisis; it worketh in us, present and continuous, the quiet pressure of resurrection already stirring inside ordinary believers. The One who called light out of darkness and raised His Son from the tomb is not straining at the edge of our need. Our smallest prayer draws on a limitless supply, and the limit is never Him.