God is Able!
REMEMBER to say: “My God is able!” whenever you are in doubt or discouraged. God is able and more than able! He is the Omnipotent One. He is omniscient and He is omnipresent. Don’t limit God and don’t put Him in a box! The children of Israel sinned by limiting God. We read in the Book of Psalms: “How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power: the day when He redeemed them from the enemy, when He worked His signs in Egypt, and His wonders in the field of Zoan” (Psalm 78:40-43). “But they sinned even more against Him by rebelling against the Most High in the wilderness. And they tested God in their heart by asking for the food of their fancy. Yes, they spoke against God: They said, ‘Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, He struck the rock, so that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide meat for His people?’ Therefore the Lord heard this and was furious; so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel, because they did not believe in God, and did not trust in His salvation” (Psalm 78:17-22). Another example of someone who limited God was Sarah. Because she was barren and has passed the age of childbearing, Sarah fell into a temporary lapse of faith. When the Lord appeared to Abraham by the terebinth trees of Mamre (Gen. 18) and proclaimed to Abraham saying: “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son” (Gen. 18:10), Sarah was listening in the tent door but doubted the word of the Lord and laughed saying within herself: “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” (Gen. 18:12). The Lord was not happy at Sarah’s unbelief and said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son” (Gen. 18:14). The Lord repeats the phrase: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” two more times in the Old Testament. In the Book of Jeremiah we read how the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jer. 32:27). Jeremiah also prays to the Lord saying: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You” (Jer. 32:17). God does not like unbelief in His people and often will not work where there is unbelief. We read how Christ did not do many mighty works in his hometown “because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58). When the disciples came to Jesus after unsuccessfully attempting to cast out a demon, saying: “Why could we not cast it out?” (Matt. 17:19); Jesus replied by saying: “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20). When James exhorts us to ask God for wisdom, he says: “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6-8). The phrase: “God is able” is found throughout the Bible.
First, God is able to provide for us. He is “Jehovah-Jireh” – “The-Lord-Will-Provide” (Gen. 22:14). We read in the Second Epistle of Corinthians: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). God is able to provide for us in such a way that not only our needs are met but He can make us a channel of blessing to others and “have an abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). Paul said: “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). David cried out in his 23rd Psalm saying: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lied down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul… You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:1-3a, 5-6). David again declares: “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). Jesus said: “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you" (Matt. 6:25-33).
Second, God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine. The Bible says: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Eph. 3:20-21). God is able to do more than we can ask in prayer or imagine. The possibilities of prayer are endless. Jesus said: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23) and “whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matt. 21:22). E.M. Bounds (1835-1913) the man of prayer and the author of many books on prayers said: “How vast are the possibilities of prayer! How wide is its reach! What great things are accomplished by this divinely appointed means of grace! It brings things to pass which would never otherwise occur. The story of prayer is the story of great achievements. Prayer is a wonderful power placed by Almighty God in the hands of His saints, which may be used to accomplish great purposes and to achieve unusual results. Prayer reaches to everything, takes in all things great and small which are promised by God to the children of men. The only limits to prayer are the promises of God and His ability to fulfill those promises. ‘Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.’”
Third, God is able to keep His promises. We read how Abraham “who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations…and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform” (Rom. 4:18-21). Abraham was fully convinced that what God has promised “He was also able to perform” (Rom. 8:21). Because of God’s immutable nature, He can keep His promises. He is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). In the Book of Malachi, God declares: “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Mal. 3:6). Balaam declared in his oracle: “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (Num. 23:19). Joshua declared to the children of Israel saying: “Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth. And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one word of them has failed” (Joshua 23:14). “For all the promises of God in Him (Christ) are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20). Paul said: “For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Tim. 1:12).
Fourth, God is able to deliver you. The Bible says that “no temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). Christ was once on earth and He knows how it feels to be tempted and tried. He can “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). “For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:18). He “is able” to keep us “from stumbling” and to present us “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). He “is able” to “establish” us according to the gospel “and the preaching of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 16:25).
And fifth, God is able to save you to the end. We read of Christ that “He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). He is able to save us to the end and to finish the work that He started in us. Paul said: “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). Christ gives us eternal security. None of His sheep will “perish” but shall have “eternal life” (John 10:28). Christ said: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10:29).
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego when facing a fiery furnace were not discouraged but said: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18). Their faith in God’s deliverance was unshaken. And God indeed delivered them and Christ was with them in the fire so they were not hurt. “King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O King.’ ‘Look!’ he answered, ‘I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God’” (Daniel 3:24-25). So remember to say: “My God is able” whenever you are in doubt or discouraged. Don’t look at your outward circumstances but look to Him “who is able” to help you; provide for you; deliver you; and strengthen you. In closing, Jesus asks you: “Do you believe that I am ABLE to do this?” (Matt. 9:28).
Peter Sarkis