God is Able

Lord, please do this ... or do something better!

But I do know that when you and I approach God for help, filled with our cares and distresses, our prayers are not confined to this calendar date, to this particular month and year. What may seem to be His silence and avoidance from where you sit today is already reverberating in future places. If not right here, if not right now, you can be sure His ability is taking visible, tangible shape somewhere, even if beyond the scope of your current sightline. You and I are living right this minute on a tiny dot of time within a vast sea of God-moments. And the ripple effect of today’s prayer, today’s faith—today’s now—spirals out in all directions for all eternity, bumping something here, affecting something there, all under God’s watchful eye and wisdom. Each time we turn to Him, each time we trust, each time we bring our all to the surpassing greatness of His all, we find ourselves instantly connected to every future time zone where His ability lives. We link up across generations where He is already working, present-tense, to make His glory known.

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

But we also need to be careful about turning too easily and exclusively to our junk. To television, to the Internet. To movies, sports, and hobbies. To numbing wastes of time, if not to shameful lacks of self-control. Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s just easier to shop than to deal with our lives.

When was the last time you just told your stuff to shut up and go to sleep, and then gave your full attention—deliberately and intentionally—to the living Lord? Your Father. Your caregiver. Your provider. And then laid back into the big, strong arms of Psalm 46:10 and got r-e-a-l-l-y still, just lying there “knowing that He is God.” Worshiping Him. Meditating on Him. Repeating His Word from the depths of your memory or choosing new passages to write down and post in strategic places where you’ll run into them on a regular basis. Reflecting on His grace, His glory, His love, His mercy, His power, His might, His majesty . . . His ability.

I understand that the current conditions in your life may not be your favorite thing to dwell on right now. You may have become very adept at concentrating on later, distracting yourself with the possibilities of the future. You may have grown accustomed to looking the other direction, daydreaming your life away, too overwhelmed at this point to even try figuring out solutions anymore for your present reality.

What kind of believer do you have to be to voice a doxology from within a tight space and a tense situation you really, really want to get out of? The kind who knows that timing is everything. The kind who draws the connection between their current circumstances and the power of God, the way Paul chose to do it. The kind who leaves the mountain of crisis long enough to cross the sturdy bridge of faith that leads directly to God’s ability.

Just because God can doesn’t mean He will. But just because He hasn’t doesn’t mean He won’t. The bottom line is that He is able. And because He is able, and because He is love, our hearts are completely secure in every situation, no matter how desperate or chronic or time-sensitive.

But whether or not God CHOOSES to do something is a question of His sovereignty, not His ability.

He just flat went ahead and “tore down the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14 hcsb) that had stood between them for dozens and dozens of long, gray-haired generations. He wasn’t appealing for peace but was proclaiming peace—“peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near” (Eph.

Fighting the low-level cloud cover that’s blocking out what you’re wanting to see break through into your life.

Nope, he penned these words of worship while sitting on the cold-floor, cold-food, maddening reality of Roman confinement. House arrest. Guards at the door, preventing his escape. When he wrote this glorious sentence, he was under a sentence himself, probably for as much as two years. Locked up. Locked down. Imprisoned.

The fissures ran too deep. The haughtiness and hostility were too ingrained. No one had ever run for office on a Jew-and-Gentile reconciliation platform. They hated the ground the other had walked on. Their aims and desires were mutually exclusive. By a country mile.

I’m talking about impossible. The apostle Paul told them that Jews and Gentiles, age-old enemies in every conceivable aspect of the term, were no longer on opposite cultural planets. By virtue of the gospel—the peace and reconciliation to God they’d received through the Messiah’s sacrifice—they had become a third race of people known as the “body of Christ.” And their unity as believers was designed to show the world that if God could do this, He most certainly could do anything.

No matter your current reality and the circumstances that describe it, there is a time to start connecting it all with God’s infinite and indescribable ability

Maybe it’s just the accumulated stress and strain from a long season of steady struggle. Or maybe you aren’t overwhelmed at all. More like underwhelmed—bored with the sameness and mundaneness of a life you thought would be filled with so much more adventure. The predictability, the pointlessness. Urgh. You so desperately want a change, or at least a little excitement along the way.