He is able!

Omnipotence.  Its a bit of an awkward word. It seems to draw a picture of far off deities sitting in clouds with the sun behind them, dazzling us and yet remote from us.  You might think of angels and gods drawn on ancient monuments, or perhaps of vast murals with a musclebound God the father, flexing his muscles as he calls creation into existence.  It does not really seem to enable us to connect with the divine, does it? The “Almighty” which is another way of saying omnipotent, is not a real cuddly term!

It also draws some rather silly comments from people who are skeptics.  In their minds, and perhaps even yours, omnipotence means God can do anything. This has spawned the old canard that perhaps you have heard: “if God were really omnipotent, he could make a rock that even he could not move.”  In their mind then, if he can’t move the rock, or make the rock he could not move, then that is a logical paradox, and God vanishes in a puff of smoke.  POOF!

Think about this though:  there really are things that God cannot do.  

Several years ago someone made a bit of a splash when he published a book saying that there were things God can’t do.  Open the book, and you see things like, “God can’t tell a lie,” and “God can’t break a promise.”  So being omnipotent does not mean can do anything.

The Biblical understanding of Omnipotence means that God is able to do everything that is in accord with his will. Anything that he says is his will, his plan, his desire, his intent, he is able to accomplish or bring about.  Anything. If he says at one point in history that he can make a virgin give birth, 700 years later he brings it about because he is omnipotent.  Whatever he intends, is able, yes, more than able to do, as the hymn says:

He is able, more than able
To accomplish what concerns me today.
He is able, more than able
To handle anything that come my way.
He is able, more than able
To do much more than I could ever dream,
He is able, more than able
To make me what He wants me to be.

-Henry Smith

In Psalm 139 there are two statements in verses 15-16 that point to God’s omnipotence:

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,  16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Omnipotence at this point crosses over with Sovereignty in verse 16, but we will deal more with that topic in the next entry. Here we will focus on Omnipotence.

When you think of Omnipotence, you probably don’t think of a baby.  Yet this too, is an expression of of the omnipotence of God.  God is the creator, and when we think of God creating all things, we ought to think of God creating a baby from a microscopic egg, with all of its genetic coding, all the way up to him setting all the stars in place and calling them all by name.  Creation is a work that God is still involved in doing, a process begun in Genesis 1:1 and continuing today in the life of a child.

Louie Giglio has a pair of great presentations on God’s omnipotence demonstrated in creation.  He points to a chemical glue in one video, called laminin, that is shaped like a cross.  Then he points to a structure in the heart of a distant galaxy that is also shaped like a cross. Click this link to see Louie here, discussing the stars.  From the smallest to the greatest things, all creation is an expression of the omnipotence of God.

But then we see he has written your life script.  That means he has plotted out your life before you even came to be.  We cross into the territory of sovereignty here, which I’ll present next time, but for now, understand that God is the author of your life, in which Jesus is your hero.  He is making you like Jesus in this story, and the good guy (Jesus) always wins. You, his “sidekick” if you will, are being conformed to his image, by the work of God.  And because he is omnipotent, he will bring you to the end of the story.  

He will accomplish his will for you. And he has good plans for you: 

 11  ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD,  ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.