Can God Really Do That?

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
He made the trees
He made the seas
He made the elephants too

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
My God is so great, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
My God is so great, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do

The mountains are his
The rivers are his
The skies are his handy works too
My God is so great, so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do
There’s nothing my God cannot do
There’s nothing my God cannot do
For you

Traditional

I remember singing the children’s song “My God is So Big” in Sunday School as a child. It was always a fun song to sing, because there were body movements that went along with the song. We would make an elephant trunk, flex our biceps, and describe the greatness of God as little tiny kiddos.

Like with many children’s songs, this one broke down the theological concept of God’s omnipotence into a few short verses that I’m sure anyone who sang it will find hard to forget. 

The words. Not the concept.

It seems the concept is something that we tend to forget as we get older: as we begin to learn more about the physical world around us, the science of all things. Or, as we come to understand that not everything in life gets an answer from God that we are looking for, and as we experience more of life’s disappointments and tragedies, we begin to consider the possibility that God might not be as capable as we learned in Sunday School. We begin to accept the idea that the physical world has limitations, and that the power of God must therefore, somehow, fit into the realm of reality. 

In short, we begin to doubt that there’s nothing our God cannot do.

As I pray through the Morning Prayers, I most often choose to end the prayer with the verses from Ephesians, which read, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen..” Ephesians 3:20-21

Since we stop and offer our prayers for those in our church family – and authorized intercessions – this conclusion is a perfect reminder that we don’t just pray into a vacuum, but that we expect things from God. We expect big things from God. Because God can and does provide them.

Even if God sometimes doesn’t answer our prayers. 

Or even if God doesn’t answer the prayers in the way we had hoped. 

If we experience too many of our prayers going unanswered, we may come to a point where we believe that God is incapable of answering prayers, and that God is incapable of moving beyond the physical world to effect God’s change in this world.

Whatever the reason, it seems that we forget the concept of an omnipotent God who is able to do more than we can think or imagine. 

And then we forget to ask. We refuse to pray. We begin to look for our own solutions, because our minds hold an image of a puny little god who is somehow subject to the great, fantastic world that God created. 

Talk about a contradiction.

It is very true that God will not always answer our prayers. Or that God will not always answer our prayers in the way that we had hoped. It is very true that God might simply seem to ignore us, and our prayers fall upon deaf ears.

But that still doesn’t mean that God is incapable. Our prayers just become so narrow that we will not accept anything beyond the scope that we have defined. 

These are not God’s limitations. They are limitations that we have placed upon God. Or, better said, they are limitations we have placed on what we will accept from God.

We do not realize how much more we could have. In James, we see that sometimes we do not get our prayers answered because we ask with motives guided by our own desires (James, 4:2b-3).

Several years ago, the entire development team at my work was told that we would all be losing our jobs. We were given two choices on when to end our service to the company; if we chose the later date, our severance package would be bigger. Naturally, I chose the later date, and began looking for new work in the meantime. For months, I turned in resumes and job applications, all to no avail. The last day of work came and went, and I still did not have work. My prayers revolved around asking God for the very specific type of job I wanted, but my prayers went unanswered.

Finally, a month after my last day of work, a Friday, I remembered the words from Matthew, just a few verses before the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:5-15). And my prayer became, “Lord, I’ve had no luck finding work for three months. You know the type of work I need and what would be good for me. Provide the job you know I need.”

Three days later, on Monday, I received an email from someone saying they had received my resume from another company I had applied for a few weeks earlier. Did I want to hear about a job opportunity? Two days after that, on Wednesday, I had a job interview. A week later, on Thursday, I was offered the job. 

The job did not match the work I had been praying for, nor did it fit the type of work I had been doing for years. But the work fit my skill set well, the pay was better, and the fringe benefits were much better than at my previous position.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

More than I could ask or imagine.

And so I sing again the children’s song:
My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there is nothing my God cannot do.

God is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. As long as we are ready to accept it when it comes.