January 7 The Power of God

Genesis 18:13-14  Then the Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

A couple things come to mind as I read this passage: "There is reason to believe that God has a sense of humor," is one.  I always think of his sense of humor in placing me in my role at BBC as Associate Dean of Students.  I'm a drop-out, one of those departing freshmen projected never to return or turn out well. 

However, God does have  a sense of humor and much grace: he allowed me to go back to school and ultimately brought me to this role, to a new way of fulfilling what I believed was my calling to minister to women in some way.

Then, the writer speaks to God's promises, and I fear we find fault with God when he does not a keep a promise in Scripture that he never made to us today.  I wonder sometimes if he took me to Africa to help me learn this lesson.  We served a body of believers in what was then the poorest country in the world.  Today it is called the most corrupt government in the world by some.  Anyway, these people loved God and risked their lives to serve him.  Still, thirteen of those pastors were brutally martyred because they loved God and refused to renounce him.  Thirteen women had then to parent their families with no government aid (such as might exist in this country), alone and having lost their role in the community, as a pastor's wife.

I think also of one of the Bible school students who lived nearby in Africa.  I heard his child crying and asked why.  The response: "Oh Madame, he is hungry." Their grain had run out, and the harvest was months away, not an uncommom problem in a country plagued by poverty and increasingly short rainy seasons - producing less grain. Good people who loved God  suffered as a part of their daily reality, and I have to tell you, I never heard them complain.  Instead, they always gave of their best when we went to a village to minister - even if it meant they would be hungry the next day or week.

So, what about that "promise" that we claim - God will provide all our needs? Can he do that? Certainly he can. I am just not sure he did promise that.  He did say he would never leave us nor forsake us, but I am just not sure he promised he would supply all of our needs - what we define as needs. 

We use Paul's words to the Philippians in Phil. 4: 19, "But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," as if they were promises made to us. They weren't.  Paul was thanking the Phillippians for ministering to his need, and he is reassuring them that God would minister to their needs - and go back a few verses.  Could his definition of need be fruit to abound to their account?  I'm just asking here.

The amazing thing is that God sometimes trusts us with unmet "needs" as an opportunity to demonstrate that his love is sufficent, that his children do trust him and that what is temporal and temporary leads to something far better, beyond our imagination. Paul says that he "has all, abounds and is full," but remember, he is speaking from a prison cell and a possible sentence of death.  Some perspective, huh?

If God wants it to happen, it will happen.  Our problem is that we overwrite God's will with our own.  Certainly he can give us dreams, equip us to reach amazing goals, but we must be careful not to blackmail God.  By that I mean, misuse Scripture to say God is bad and failed me because he did not keep his promise.  The question is, Did he really make that promise to you?

All of that to say, I do not believe anything is too hard to God, and sometimes the hard thing he must endure is to watch his children suffer - because of their own choices and because he must use suffering in our lives to accomplish his purposes.