I hope that you had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. I enjoyed mine but now I feel rushed to accomplish everything I need to do in a short week! I always pay for days off!
I also hope that you can continue to meditate on the wonderful statement from God pertaining to His promised blessing in Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?”
This will be a question to ask yourself in every category of life:
- Is it too hard for God to create spiritual new birth? (Gal. 4:28)
- Is it too hard for God to break the addiction or habit of drugs, of porn, of laziness, of over-eating, of anger?
- Is it too hard for God to reconcile a relationship that is broken?
- Is it too hard for God to work forgiveness in your heart?
- Is it too hard for God to give you the courage and strength to fulfill your calling from Him?
- Is it too hard for God to make you grow spiritually?
Now remember the other side of the coin, while it is not too hard for God to accomplish these things in our lives, it is too hard for us. The background for this statement from God, ‘Is anything too hard for Him?,” is Sarah, an 89 year old barren woman who has gone through menopause and is being promised to conceive and give birth to a child of blessing. It is impossible for her to do this, but it is only possible for God.
Likewise for us, it’s impossible for us to grow spiritually, to conquer sin, to grow in a love for God, to ditch our idols, to restore broken relationships, and of course, to fulfill any of God’s good promises, like worldwide evangelism to bring about that day when every tongue, tribe, and nation praise God forever. But these things are possible for God and require His supernatural intervention.
For instance, to experience God’s promise of Revelation 5:9, every nation redeemed by Jesus, requires God’s power to release nations and tribes from the power of Satan. I hear about missionaries who labor in Muslim nations to no avail because our obedience is not enough to fulfill God’s promises or convert people. God’s power must work in order to create spiritual new birth and new hearts that would want to praise Jesus! And this surpasses our ability to make it happen!
Therefore, I pray that you realize the whole Christian life is supernatural from beginning to end. This could be broken down into two categories: (1) your experience of God’s blessing and (2) your extension of God’s blessing.
So depend on God’s Spirit in your lives, Church, to accomplish what you cannot. This is not ignoring our responsibility to strive and work hard (Col. 1:29 for instance), but we also cannot ignore the dependence we exercise on God’s omnipotent power to help us.
So press on, WOL Chapel, even while circumstances appear contrary to God’s promises, like in the case of Sarah, and even while your ability does not match what God has promised to accomplish through you. He promises to bear fruit to the one who abides in Jesus (John 15), and bearing fruit is not a matter of skill, it’s a matter of spiritual dependence on God.
Don’t laugh (Gen. 18:12, 15) at God’s power to work blessing through you, both in your spiritual growth and in your witness for Him, but believe Him, that nothing is too hard for Him! He’s God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth!
Galatians 4:28-29 describes how God’s supernatural power accomplished through Sarah to give birth to Isaac, touches down in our life today:
“Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. (think, the same way that Isaac would be born through Sarah: impossible!)29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.”
Isaac was born of the Spirit, and so are we! Now, from beginning to end, depend on God’s Spirit to work blessing in and through your life. “Nothing is too hard for the LORD!”
Finally, Romans 8:1-4 describes how God’s Spirit accomplishes God’s grand purposes in our life, those that are too hard for us, but not for God!
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Walk according to God’s Spirit, dear Church, in order to walk in victory from day to day, knowing that “nothing is too hard for God” in your life. He will help you in what you could never do by yourself! I am praying that God’s power would be on display in His Church in each one of your lives. No doubt, it already has been because you’ve been born of God to love Him and serve Him. But may we see His power more and more and resist the temptation to do things in our own power.
With love in Christ,
Aaron
