The Bible contains many great statements about God’s unlimited ability, most of them in the form of rhetorical questions. One is the well-known question, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14) Jesus made seven “I am” declarations in John’s Gospel. After his resurrection Jesus spoke even more expansively about himself, saying “All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). Christians speak of God’s ability to do absolutely anything, and of Christ’s authority in both heaven and earth, yet in the minds of many theres a big gap between what Jesus did and what he said they were to do, in his name. Some view this imaginary gap with something akin to relief, because it excuses them from doing the works that Jesus did – “and greater” (John 14:12). Others imagine the gap as a separation between church and kingdom that Christians should not even try to bridge, since to them the kingdom is a promise to the Jews, not to the Church. But to bible-based, faith-filled believers this gap is a theological illusion. How can such a division exist when the apostle Paul wrote plainly of Jew and Gentile being “one new humanity” -- indivisible in Christ? Yet some find it difficult to accept that the authority and power that Jesus exercised is available to them, because his relationship with the Father is theirs as well (1 John 1:3). Their inability to grasp this keeps them within the safe confines of the Gospels and prevents them from venturing into the Acts of the Apostles and experiencing what people did in its pages, where the authority of the name of Jesus and Gods supernatural power are so very evident. They agree that the original twelve apostles had that authority and power, but claim that it lasted only during the timeline of the book of Acts. It’s time that we identified with the glorified Lord Jesus, and shifted our focus from trying to please God to impacting our world in the way Jesus did the world of his day. But to do this we need to change the emphasis from what God can do for us to what God can do through us. Its one thing to believe that “with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37), and another thing entirely to believe that “Nothing shall be impossible to you.” (Matthew 17:20) There is no gap between what is possible to God and what is possible to us -- so why create one? Jeremiah said, “Ah, LORD God, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power; nothing is too difficult for you!” But after making this strong statement of faith, Jeremiah got to wondering how God could do it. Then God spoke to him. “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27) Jeremiah may have thought, I just told your people that! Ah, yes, Jeremiah, but do you really believe it in your heart? Had a gap opened in the prophets mind between the certainty in his mind of what God could do and the uncertainty in his heart as to how He could do it? Jeremiahs public affirmation became a private question when second thoughts allowed a gap to open in his thinking. We need to prevent such gaps from opening between the promises of God in our hearts and second-guesses in our minds. The world needs to hear us voice faith, not uncertainty.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:56:40 +0000
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