Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

The saying reverses a natural impulse: instead of asking for an easier life (“tasks equal to your powers”), it urges prayer for enlarged capacity—courage, wisdom, endurance, and faith—so that one can rise to the demands of vocation and conscience. The underlying theology treats difficulty as formative rather than merely burdensome: growth comes not by reducing the world to one’s current strength but by being strengthened to serve it. In secular terms, it is a maxim of self-transcendence: don’t negotiate down your responsibilities; develop the abilities and inner resources that let you fulfill them.