God wants us to keep our focus on Him, on His goodness, willingness and ability to bless, do good and prosper us in every area. If we let our experience dictate our expectation then we effectively cap off our faith at the level of our experience instead of at the unlimited nature of God’s power, love and goodness.
So we might limit our prayers to people with headaches instead of boldly stepping out and praying for a missing limb to grow back, or maybe we will pray “God please allow this person to endure” instead of “God please demonstrate your power by radically impacting this person’s life, healing them, blessing them, prospering them, that they would be a world changer, shake a nation and disciple it for your glory!”
God wants us to pray in accordance with His awesome greatness, his unlimited power, the loving kindness bound up in His very identity. For this we need to truly know our God so that we can think like Him because that’s what Jesus did. He never needed a 12 step plan, everything He did was “from darkness to light, job done!”. If we believe that we serve a great God then we need to expect more from Him and begin to start praying bigger prayers. We need to smash through the glass ceiling of our experience, theology and at times the theology of our peers and even the theology established historically. This doesn’t change who God is but it puts and emphasis on His expectation that His bride should go from glory to glory. God’s nature never changes but He does a new thing every day.
Words without power is just dead religion, it changes nothing, inspires no one and leave a dying world desperate with a none-existent saviour.
Words with Spirit release the power to change nations, filling the world with hope, expectation and excitement.
This is why Jesus says we need the faith of a child. A child has no experience so they believe everything is possible until and adult tells them the contrary. Our “grown up” faith limits our belief to what we know. Maybe that’s why very few of us walk on water…