In philosophy, a common question that is asked is, "Can we talk about things that are outside of our experiences?" In some ways, we can't. We always extrapolate our understandings of reality and place them on God or any kind of extra-reality we can conjure up in our minds. God is often a superhuman rather than holy, meaning apart, separate, or sacred*. (In this sense, God is the ultimate paradox because he is completely "other than us" and yet in Jesus he is "none other than us".)
Ephesians 3:20 is one of these places where God reminds us that he is holy. He is not like a human being. He is able to do more than we ask for. Think of this in two ways. First, he has the ability to do more than we ask for. We might ask for a house and he gives us a mansion. Second, and I believe more importantly, God is able to know what we haven't asked for and didn't even know what to ask for in the first place. So, not only is he able to give us a mansion when we asked for a house, but he is able to give us a winter coat ahead of time when we didn't even know it would snow. We didn't even know to ask the question. This is what I mean by Ephesians 3:20 demonstrating God's holiness.
The real difficulty is what to do with sorrow. We ask for comfort, ease, or at least not to be hurt too much. God is able to do more than we ask for. He leads us into sorrow. This is sometimes what we needed, but didn't know to ask.
I don't know what to do with this. I wish I had the answers. The closest answer I have is that when I let my heart go to sorrow, as opposed to thoughts of murder and revenge, I sense joy around the corner. Some of my most joyous occasions have followed periods of sorrow, so long as I'm willing to enter the sorrow instead of fighting with God over the injustice. For some reason, the problem of evil doesn't seem to have a grip on my heart during those occasions.
Jesus demonstrates this in John 16 when he tells his disciples that he will leave them and that they will be filled with sorrow, but that he will return and they will be filled with joy. This was a concrete instance where God allowed people to experience sorrow, knowing that they would be filled with joy later.
In our lives, we place our hope in the fact that we will meet God in our sorrow and us meeting Him there in that sorrow is often what we didn't know to ask for (Eph 3:20). When we meet Him there, joy is possible. If we opt for resentment, bitterness, and anxiety then we are unwilling to meet Him in sorrow and joy is not possible. Being made in the image of God, your heart is worth sorrow. Resentment, bitterness, and anxiety dishonor you by placing little value on your heart and dignity. Asking God to help us enter sorrow is one of the ways in which we come to terms with the fact that God finds us valuable and that we can do so too.
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*Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for qodesh (Strong's 6944)". Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 2 Jan 2011.
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