This past Sunday in our church’s PfP prayer time, several pray-ers shared ways—unique ways—the Lord was moving in their prodigals’ lives. Here are two, anonymously written:

• A woman shared a testimony regarding a mom who was praying and fasting to know if her estranged son was alive. God moved on a young guitarist to go to a homeless guitarist and ask him if she could “jam” with him. He said yes! Someone videoed it and posted it on Facebook, and a friend of the mom’s saw it and sent it to her! It was her son!
• God miraculously moved a prodigal from a dark and toxic place to a place run by a Christian woman, with details the pray-ers could not have imagined!

Since then, I’ve been told of other answers to prayer that pray-ers couldn’t have imagined as outcomes.

That is the kind of thing our creative “but God” God does. He reaches each prodigal in creative ways! I’ve heard some doozies!

The Word confirms this: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20 NKJV).

Exceedingly is good. Abundantly is good. But exceedingly abundantly, more than abundant—exceeding abundant—is so much better. We can’t even imagine the ways He is moving in their lives, the ways He has planned to save them. He is much wiser than us and much more creative than us. Just look around at the people you know, and you will see God’s creativity; and His plan for each of those people, as well as for us, is just as creative.

I have a photo of an iceberg as my screen saver. It reminds me that what we can see God doing in the lives of prodigals is beautiful and wonderful and majestic, like the iceberg visible above the water line. However, there is so much more going on beneath the surface, and God is doing so much more that we cannot see or even imagine in the lives of our prodigals.

Even though we know He has plans, and even though we agree with Job when he said to the Lord, “I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You” (Job 42:2), we still pour out our hearts to the Lord in obedience to God’s Word, which says: “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). We tell Him about our cares, including those for our prodigals, but because He said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:9), we refrain from telling Him how to answer our prayers, how to do His part, even though it is very tempting. I know I still try to tell Him how to do His job sometimes and have to repent.

The great news is He cannot be denied in anything He endeavors to accomplish. He “[declares] the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure’” (Isaiah 46:10). “‘For the Lord of hosts has purposed, And who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, And who will turn it back?’” (Isaiah 14:27).

What a promise Ephesians 3:20 is to us: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” And what creative and perfect plans our Creator has for every prodigal!