Can He Do That?
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Can He Do That?
March 13, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Let’s once again go before the throne of God. Would you join me?
Thank you Lord. Thank you that you are here; that you hear our prayers; that you hear our songs, and you welcome them into your court. And Lord, now we ask that your Spirit would be about it’s work—it would be working in our hearts, it would be working in our minds to quicken us, to convict us, to encourage us as we gather around your ever sharp word once again. So Lord, we ask that in your name. Amen.
Well, we are spending a couple of weeks talking about prayer and we want to continue that this week. We want to start by asking: When you think about prayer, how many of you sometimes get a twinge of guilt when you think about prayer? If it has ever happened to you, I want you to know that you are in the right place today, because that guilt can come from a lot of different places and we all know it, don’t we? Maybe it comes from saying, “I’ll pray for you;” and as we go through the day and we get into the busyness, we just simply forget it and we don’t pray. Or maybe there is a twinge of guilt because we feel like we are not praying enough to get the answers that we want, or that we are praying for those who we long for that are hurting and we are just not getting an answer. Maybe we are praying for ourselves or others that are struggling with illness and we just want them to be free from the pain. Perhaps it is coming from, we just don’t feel like we pray enough about the big things in our life. So there is just this twinge that we get from time to time.
You are in the right place today, because there is a truth about God. There is a conviction that is shared by those who see and have breathed prayer at very deep levels. That conviction is also shared with those who find that prayer is an uphill battle. It is something that we struggle with. It is also a conviction that I think our world seeks to erode. Yet, it is a conviction that is important for us to hold up today and it comes from our Scripture, from Ephesians, Chapter 3, starting in verse 14 and I invite you to follow along as we read our Scripture today. (Ephesians 3:14-21)
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! (And we can confirm that by saying,) Amen.
Well, that conviction that is found in that passage we just read is the conviction where Paul says, “to him who is able.” To him who is able. This is Paul’s prayer that he is praying for the Church in Ephesus, but it is really a prayer that can be for all of us in the Church today, as well. It is the conviction that God is able. God is able. Say that with me: “God is able.” Well, if he is able, what is he able to do? He is able to do whatever is needed in this world or in your life. There is no hurdle he can’t overcome. There is no problem he cannot solve. There is no obstacle he cannot break through. There is no attitude he cannot change. And there is no outcome that can confuse him, because, our God is what? “Able.” Our God is able.
Our God is able and yet I also know that that is really hard for us because all of us have experienced unanswered prayer. We will talk about that in a couple weeks. And because we have had unanswered prayer in our lives, it can cause us to doubt this conviction. But, I want us to remember, who is it that is praying this prayer and where is he when he is praying it? This prayer is by the apostle Paul and he prayed this prayer when he was in prison, when he was bound in chains, when he was suffering, when he was waiting to die. Yet, Paul wrote this prayer with all the conviction while he was in the jail house as if he was in the penthouse. Paul knows that God is able and he knows that God will be with him and he is never on his own.
Well, there was movie many years ago called The Bear. It is a story of an orphaned bear cub that ends up meeting up with a big daddy Kodiak bear. You would think that it might not go well, but it does because you see the big daddy Kodiak bear takes this little baby bear under its wing, so to speak, and begins to show him how to live as a bear. And that’s the story. It is the story of them learning to hunt grubs together, to fish together. As they go through their life and they are learning how to live with one another, there is also a mountain lion that is tracking them. Tracking them, waiting for just the right moment when it could get that little baby bear and make a quick snack out of it. So this is the story. I want to show you a clip because at one point in the story the baby bear does get separated from the daddy bear. I want to show you that clip right now and I want to let you know, parents that have children here, there are no fatalities in this clip, O.K. Just so you know. But, I want you to watch it.
(video shown on screen)
You see, the baby bear was never really on its own. It was never really on its own. The daddy bear was always there; was always watching. The same goes for God. God is always there. God is always watching. We are never far from him who is able. Because we are never far from him who is, what? “able,” we need to ask, well what kind of God is this who is able that we are going to pray to? Well what we want to do is we want to take a look and look at what our text says about this God who is “able.”
Well our text says that God is “able to do”; in other words, God is at work in the universe. He is not a God who removes himself from the universe. He is actively engaged; in other words, God is at work here. He is able to do. But our text says that he can do more than that, doesn’t it? It says that he can do “all that we ask.” Jesus says “We don’t have because we don’t ask.” God is able to do what we ask; but our text says that he can do more than that, doesn’t it? It says that he could do what we “imagine.” What can you think about? What you can think about, God can do. But it says that he can do more than that, too, doesn’t it? It says that he can do “all that we imagine.” Think about all that you can imagine, that is not too much for our God who is able. He can do everything that you can think about. I can think about a lot.
But it says he can do more than that. It says that he can do “more than we can imagine.” Think about that for a minute. Think about all the stuff we don’t even think about…that might be tough. But that doesn’t even scratch the surface. If you think of all the things you can think about, that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the things that God is able to do. But Paul says he can do more than that. He says he can “do immeasurably more than we can imagine.” At this point, Paul is making up a word. He is making up a word to try to describe that God can do beyond what we can possibly begin to think about. That is because our God is “able.” Our God is able. There is nothing that he can’t do that is logically consistent within the constraints of his character, that God cannot do. God is able.
Yet, our culture tells us something different. Our culture tells us that in our world the real movers, the real shakers, the ones who have the power, are those in the political world, in the economic world, in the scientific world, in the educational world. Those are the people that really have the power. And therefore by default it automatically moves God to the sidelines. God gets dismissed.
So for us, who believe that God is able, we need to believe that. Even if we don’t believe that at the very deepest core of our being, we, too, then will push God to the side, if we don’t believe that in the very deepest levels of who we are. Because the truth is we will not believe that God is able if we don’t get to know this God. So we need to know this God. So what I want to do is to take a walk through the Bible to see this God who is able so that we would know him better, because we have a God who is able.
A God who is able to produce light. He is able to produce the universe. In other words, he created it. There is nothing in a tested peer reviewed scientific journal that disproves this fact that God created the universe. Everything was created from something. They can’t tell you and put a finger on what that something is; but we can. The greater the universe, the greater the one who created it. Too often we think we have this really big universe and this really small God. But the truth is, we have a really small universe and a really big God—a really big God who can control this universe with no problem at all. He can do that. So we have a God who is able to create.
We also have a God who is able to suspend and interact with the natural laws in any way he chooses. He can part the Red Sea by blowing wind into it. He can calm the storm just by speaking into the wind. He can cause the sun to go backwards as needed—that’s what Scripture tells us. He can cause the walls of Jericho to fall down. He can flood the whole earth and then he can give us a rainbow as a promise that he will never do it again. Our God is able.
He is able to deliver us from trouble. He rescued Daniel, Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego from the fire. He brought Joseph from a hole in the ground to the Pharaoh’s table. He rescued David from a crazed king, Saul. He rescued Paul from jail. So he is able to deliver us, our God who is able.
Our God is able to provide for our means. He brought manna from the sky, water from a rock. He fed five thousand with just five loaves of bread and two fish. That is because he is “able.”
We have a God who is able to change hearts. He changed Pharaoh’s heart to let the Israelites go. He changed a crazed rabbi by the name of Saul, who had nothing more on his mind than to destroy the Church. He changed his heart to become the apostle Paul, who then took the gospel to the Gentiles around the world and you and I are all products of his work. He took a hard-headed fisherman who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut and turned him into the one who started the Church, Peter. God is able to change hearts.
God is able to forgive sins. We are guilty before a righteous God. But God became human in the person of Jesus and he suffered for our sins on the cross. And out of that, he cleanses our guilt and he frees us from the penalty that is due each one of us because of our sins. Think about that. Only God can do those things. God has the power to do what is needed in your life right now, whatever it is. None of his power is diminished. His power is the same today as it will be tomorrow, as it was yesterday. God’s power is the same. So he can cure the alcoholic. He can rebuild a marriage. He can overcome a scandal. He can find hope in the midst of a terminal illness. This is our God. This is a God who is “able.”
Because our God is able to do these things, we can put our hope in him. And we may even believe all that, but there may be some of us that are going: “He may be able to do that Buck, but I don’t think he would do that for me, because you see my faith is too weak.” And yet Jesus says it only takes the faith of a size of a mustard seed to be in. We may say, “I am too messed up. God could never forgive me. If he knew what I did, if he knew all the people I have hurt, he could never forgive me.” Perhaps you would say, “My motives are not pure. I mean, I know myself and I have to tell you they are not very good. So God could never do those things for me.” Or maybe you are simply saying, “I’m not spiritual enough. I don’t have enough stuff for God to be able to do those things for me.” But you have to remember, you have to remember, we have a God who is “able.” We have a God who is able. He is able in the person of Jesus Christ to live in our heart in faith. We have a big God who is big enough to run the universe and yet is small enough to live within us. And that can happen right now, that can happen today. All it requires is just saying “God forgive me. Be my Lord.” And that can happen, because we have a God who is “able.”
He is able because of who he is. Our God is incapable of un-love. Let me say that again. He is incapable of un-love, for Scripture tells us that “God is love” and, in our prayer, Paul reinforces that. So, many times we will hear, “Isn’t it amazing that God could love someone like me?” The answer to that is “No.” That is not what is amazing. What would be truly amazing is if God didn’t love you. That would be amazing. And what makes that hard for us to believe is because we know that there is so much unloving in us. So it is really hard for us to understand that God does love us. To know that, to live in that fact that God loves you, means to walk in that, because we have a God who is able.
So the question today is: Where and what do you want to see God at work in your life around? There are no circumstances that could put you outside of his love, outside of his abilities. So I invite you. I invite you to test him. Put your joyful confidence in the Lord, and if you do, you will find a God who is “able.”
Let’s pray.
Lord God, thank you. Thank you that there is nothing beyond your capability. So God we come to thank you, to praise you, because you are, in fact, able. So God whatever is on our plate today, I pray for those who are thinking that they are not good enough for you, Lord God; and I pray that you would show them that you are able to love no matter what. And Lord if there are some who have never committed themselves to you, who have never come before you and just say “I am sorry Lord, I have messed up before you and I want you to be Lord.” I pray they would do that right now. And Lord for the rest of us, I ask that we would put our confidence in you with our whole hearts, with the very depth of our being, we would put our trust in you, Lord; because you have demonstrated your faithfulness, your ability time after time after time after time. And Lord we thank you. We thank you that you are the one who is able, that you sent your Son to prove that there is nothing beyond that you wouldn’t do to call us home. So thank you Lord that you are able. Amen.