Omnipotence - God is More Powerful than Me

Once upon a time there was a pastor who lived in Texas. One day this pastor received an invitation to speak at a church in the state of Michigan, which he gladly accepted. The church in Michigan invited him to bring his wife along also. They even arranged to have one of their members, who was a pilot, fly to Texas to pick the pastor and his wife up in his personal airplane.

This was all well and good except for one thing. When the pastor told his wife that they were going to be flying to Michigan in a 4-seater Cessna 172, she said “Correction, you’re going to be flying to Michigan in a Cessna; I’m going to be flying there on Delta.” You see, the pastor’s wife did not enjoy flying in small airplanes, and no amount of persuasion would make her change her mind.

So the pastor had a problem. What should he do? Well, like any good husband who is having a disagreement with his wife, he decided to compromise—and do it her way.

And so it was that a few weeks later they were boarding the Delta flight to Michigan. The pastor’s wife settled back in her seat and said “Ahhh! Now this is more like it.” The pastor looked over at her and said gently, “Honey, you should have a bigger faith.”

She said “No sir. I don’t need a bigger faith; you need a bigger airplane.”

The same thing is true of our concept of God. Many of us are going through life believing in a Cessna-sized God when what we really need to be trusting in is a Delta-sized God. It’s not the size of our faith that is the problem, it is the size of our God.

The Bible says that if we have faith that is this big in a God who is THIS BIG, then we can move mountains. But is we have faith that is THIS BIG in a God who is only this big, then we can’t do much.

That is why we need to have a Biblical view of the omnipotence of God. The word omnipotence simply means “all powerful”, and the Bible teaches us that that is exactly what God is.

He has all the strength, he has all the power, he has all the might. There is nothing that God cannot do. He is bigger than any problem; more powerful than any foe; greater than any challenge. Nothing is impossible for Him.

1. What are the dimensions of his power?

The Bible says that he has power over creation. That’s logical, since he made it. If he made it, he’s the one who’s controling it.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

He brought into being all things simply by the power of his word. There are objects out there in the universe that God created that we are just now discovering—getting our first look at them after all these years.

In Job 36 & 37, we get a picture of God’s power over the forces of nature…

God is exalted in his power…How great is God—beyond our understanding!

Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders from his pavilion? See how he scatters his lightning about him, bathing the depths of the sea.

God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen. He loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them. At his direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever he commands them.

One day, Jesus was in the boat with his disciples when a great storm blew up. They were terrified because they thought they were going to drown. But Jesus was asleep in the stern of the boat. They woke him up and said “Don’t you care that we’re going to perish?”

And Jesus simply spoke to the wind and the waves. He said “Be quiet. Be still.” And the wind died down and the sea became completely calm. And the disciples were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

God not only has power over creation, he has power over history. There are many occasions when he has intervened to change the course of events. In Exodus we read of how he took a slave people—the Israelites—and brought them out of Egypt and made them into a nation. That act, 3,400 years ago, is still having repercussions today.

In the books of the kings and the prophets, we read of how he delivered his people from their enemies, or gave them into the hand of their enemies to punish them.

In the Gospels we read of the great turning point in human history when God came down from heaven himself in the person of Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sin and bring us back to himself.

And in the book of Revelation, we read of how history is one day going to be consummated when Jesus Christ comes back to earth to reign in glory.

God has power over history. And he has power over the hearts of individual people

Proverbs 21:1 tells us “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.”

In Romans 9, Paul tells us that even a person who resists God is under God’s control. Pharaoh hardened his heart against God and wouldn’t let the people of Israel go. But God said to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

Nebuchadnezzar was arguably one of the most powerful men who ever lived. But at the very height of his power, God struck him down. He went insane—became like a madman for seven years. But at the end of that seven years, Nebuchadnezzar’s sanity was restored. And at that time he lifted up his voice and acknowledged the power of God most high. He said “God does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.”

God has power over individual people. And he has power over death. This is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. When Jesus rose from the dead, God broke the power of sin and of death.

Paul says, in Ephesians 1:20, that God “exerted his mighty strength in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”

1 Corinthians 6:14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.

You see, the same power that raised Jesus up from the dead is the power that God uses to make us who are dead in our trespasses and sins come alive spiritually when we put our faith in Christ.

Ephesians 2:6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

So our God is an incredibly powerful God. He has power over creation and nature. He has power over history and events and circumstances. He has power over individual people—their thoughts, their attitudes, their actions. And he has power over death—he can make dead people come alive.

But what difference is that making in my life? What are the dynamics of God’s power in me?

There once was a fellow who bought a brand new audio system for his house. It was the last word in sophistication. It had more buttons and lights on it than the Space Shuttle. But when he brought it home from the store and got the various components all connected together, it wouldn’t work. He pressed every button and combination of buttons he could think of, but it still wouldn’t work.

So he called his friend, who was an expert on electronics. His friend came over and looked at the system carefully for several minutes. Then he reached around the back and took the plug and put it in the wall socket. The stereo wouldn’t work because they had forgotten to plug it in!

And likewise, your Christian life won’t work unless you are plugged into the power of an Almighty God. There are several dynamic tests that prove whether or not you are plugged in.

Test #1 - Do I believe God to be all powerful?

Turn to Romans 4. In Romans 4, Paul tells us the story of Abraham. Abraham was a man to whom God had given a promise. The promise was that he would become the father of a great nation.

Only one problem—Abraham and his wife didn’t have any children. And it was well past time for starting a family. Abraham and Sarah were members of the AARP—the Ancient Association of Retired People. They were well-advanced in years. In fact, Abraham was a hundred years old, and his wife was ninety.

Now Abraham and Sarah had made the rounds of all the fertility clinics. And all of the gynecologists in the Middle East had given up on them. There was no way, humanly speaking, that they were going to have a child. They were as good as dead. And that meant that God’s promise was going to fail.

So what did Abraham do? Did he give up believing in an all-powerful God? Did he water down his concept of God? Did he try to reinterpret the promise of God to make it mean something less than it seemed to mean? Not on your life! Listen to what the Scripture says about him:

Romans 4:18ff Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Abraham didn’t have a Cessna-sized God; he had a Delta-sized God. And that’s what kept his faith strong. He knew the facts of the situation. He was a realist. But he knew that God was bigger than facts.

And so Isaac was born—the child of the promise. But when Isaac was still a young man, God gave Abraham an opportunity to grow in faith again. He told him to take Isaac, his only son, and place him on an altar and sacrifice him.

Now if Isaac died, that would be the end of the promise. That would be the end of Abraham’s line. There would be no more descendants. No great nation.

So what did Abraham do? He obeyed God and offered up Isaac as a sacrifice. Why? The book of Hebrews tells us why in ch. 11:17…

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.

Abraham trusted a God who was powerful enough to even overcome death and bring Isaac back to life. The bigger the problem, the more capable Abraham’s God was of handling it.

Which leads me to ask the question: How powerful is the God you believe in? Are you convinced that God is greater than anything that can come into your life—whether it is illness or death or financial catastrophe or family problems or whatever. Do you believe that God is greater? How big is your God?

Test #2 - Do I live in God’s power or my own?

In 2 Peter 1, Peter tells us that “God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

But the problem with most of us is that we are trying to live the Christian life in our own power and not God’s. We’re trying to resist temptation and stay away from sin in our own power and not God’s. We’re trying to please God in our own power and not God’s. We’re trying to witness to other people and make an impact on them in our own power and not God’s.

Listen carefully—we cannot live the Christian life in our own power. It is impossible. That’s why God has given us his power to live it, because he knows that ours won’t work.

So the more we rely on his power, the more effective our Christian life will be.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about this very thing. Now if ever a human being should have been able to live the Christian life in his own power, it should have been Paul. But Paul tells us that God gave him a thorn in the flesh—a physical problem—to remind him that he had to constantly—every day—rely on God’s power for living.

And God said to Paul “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore (Paul says) I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

When I get up in the morning and start out a new day, who’s power am I relying on? Am I going to handle the problems and the people and the challenges of that day in my own power, or in God’s power?

If I do it in my own power, I’ll soon come to the end of my resources. Sooner or later, my wisdom will run out. Sooner or later, my patience will run out. Sooner or later, my love is going to run out. And I’ll make a mess of things.

I am going to find myself in a situation like the prophet Habakkuk found himself in. Everything was going wrong. The enemy was attacking, the people were in panic, there was no food on the table and the future looked grim.

But Habakkuk, in chapter 3 of his prophecy, had seen a vision of just how powerful God was. And so he made up his mind that he was going to put his trust in that all-powerful God no matter what the next day brought. And that’s why he could say in verse 17…

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.”

Habakkuk had learned to live in God’s power, not his own. What about you?

Test #3 - Do I pray to a God who is all powerful?

What do my prayers reveal about the size and strength of my God? Are they Cessna prayers or are they Delta prayers?

In Ephesians 3:20, Paul tells us that God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. Do our prayers reflect that? When’s the last time that you asked God for something that only He could do? I fear that sometimes, we almost insult God with the smallness of our prayers.

In Acts 4, the Christians of the early church in Jerusalem were beginning to be persecuted for their faith. Peter and John were arrested and threatened with further punishment if they continued to preach about Jesus. What was the response of the church?

They prayed. They didn’t seek human solutions to a spiritual problem. And listen to their prayer. It is based on their conviction that God is an all-powerful God. I’m reading from Acts 4:24…

“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’

Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

Look at what they acknowledged in their prayer. They acknowledged that God had power over creation. They acknowledged that God had power over history. They acknowledged that God had power over individual people—Herod and Pontius Pilate. And they acknowledged that God had power over death, because they were praying in the name of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Their prayer was infused with an awareness of the omnipotence of God. And their request was simply that God make that power available to them in this situation. They weren’t praying that God would change their circumstances, they were praying that God would change their character, and give them courage: “Lord, enable us to speak your word with great boldness.”

Lord, you are able, so make us able; you are powerful, so give us some of that power. We are your people, so let us reflect your character and your strength in this situation.

And we read in verse 31 that “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” No wonder! They were praying God-sized prayers.

So how big is your God? Are you trusting a God who is all-powerful? Are you relying on the power of an all-powerful God to live your life? Are you praying to an all-powerful God, and do your prayers reflect that fact?

The power and impact of your life is in direct proportion to the size of your God.