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Pointers along the way #293

How 'almighty' is our God?
- Jacob Ninan

If we are asked to describe God, we may come out with words such as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent before saying how He loves us, forgives us, cares and provides for us, etc. Perhaps many Christians relate more to God's character such as His love and grace, than to His essential being in terms of being almighty, etc. Otherwise how is it that some find it difficult to actually believe the supernatural things the Bible reports He has done? Do we find it hard to believe that God could create the world and everything in it as the Bible says? Or that He destroyed the world through a flood? That He actually parted a sea and stopped a river from flowing? That He stopped the sun for about a day for Joshua? That He can heal the sick with a word and raise people from the dead? Etc.

There is nothing wrong in seeking to find detailed explanations of how He did things. We are happy when scientific or archaeological discoveries corroborate the Bible. But when we try to find out natural explanations so as to avoid having to believe that He did anything supernatural, we are actually catering to unbelief in God as God. In other words, instead of believing in God who created everything out of nothing, who created all the laws of nature which we are only discovering little by little, and who has the ability to outperform those laws temporarily for any reason (Ps.115:3), we are trying to configure a god who is just a little bigger than a man.

If someone discovers Noah's ark, that is great. But if no ark is found, will it shatter our faith in God? Do we need NASA's computers to tell us that there is a missing day in history when God made the sun to stand still? (Incidentally, this NASA story is a hoax.) Why is it difficult for us to believe that God can easily pause all planetary and stellar movements for some time and resume normal operations afterwards? Can't He stop the earth from rotating, without everything on the surface being thrown off because of the momentum? How almighty do we think our God is?

The sad fact is that if we cannot believe in a really almighty God, it is also difficult to believe everything about His character. How can we be sure He will keep His promises? How can we believe He hears our prayers even if all the billions of people in the world are praying at the same time? How can we believe He knows the number of hairs on each one of our heads, and also what is happening in every cell in our bodies, what we are thinking of every moment, our motives and intentions, etc? How can we believe He can turn around for our good everything that happens to us?

It is the clever ones who think they can understand everything who think God has to be explained before they can believe in Him. The simple ones who know Him through personal experience are not looking for explanations. Yet the clever ones think they are helping the simple ones to believe by creating natural explanations to bring supernatural things to natural levels!

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