“Our God is in heaven: he does whatever pleases him”
Psalm 115:3, 135:6
“For nothing is impossible with God."
Luke 1:37
God is omnipotent; all powerful, almighty, source of all power. In A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer points out that God is infinite and therefore His power is limitless. He further points out that God is the self-sufficient Creator and therefore is the source of all power.1 Since the source must be at least equal to the power emanating from it, God is equal to all the power there is.
God is Sovereign. That is to say He does whatever pleases Him. He cannot be Sovereign without having all power and He cannot have all power unless He is Sovereign. Tozer writes further that “God possesses what no other creature can: an incomprehensible plenitude of power, a potency that is absolute.”2
Here we must pause for a moment and consider just what it means to be omnipotent. God is not just the source of power but He controls all power. For Him there is nothing harder or requiring more effort than anything else. He can do one thing as easily as anything else. He sustains the universe which He created and set in motion. Tozer (in Knowledge of the Holy) and C. S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity) both point out that science’s job is to observe the faithfulness of how God routes His power through creation. To understand that God created gravity, aerodynamics, the law of lift, the laws physics, these are to understand how God has designed His power to work in creation. To understand the periodic table of the elements is simply to understand some of the attributes God designed into what He created. Science observes the faithfulness of God’s power in creation and then calls it the law of gravity, the law of lift, the law of centrifugal force, etc. These things are all God’s power displayed faithfully in the world.
Tozer states, “God has delegated power to His creatures, but being self-sufficient, He cannot relinquish anything of His perfections and power being one of them, He has never surrendered the lease iota of his power. He gives but does not give away.”3 God in His sovereignty has decided to allow us a limited amount of power which He has granted to us. Note that He has determined the start of this power, the duration of this power, the end of this power and the amount of this power. To give someone a piece of that which is infinite is not to diminish the infinite at all as it is by definition never ending and incomprehensible. So the math works like this: infinite subtract 1 is still infinite. Infinite subtract and comprehensible number is still infinite. In the same fashion, God has delegated to us a measure of power, yet compared to His own, it is unintelligibly tiny.
We tend to over-exaggerate our place and power in the universe. Compared to the known universe we are less than the smallest sub-atomic particle is to us. God, on the other hand, is bigger than the universe, actually created the universe, and continues to uphold it to this day. We are the single grain of sand in oceans of desert. Yet God has seen fit to acknowledge us and, even more astounding, to sacrifice Himself for us. He left behind, or more properly, set aside His perfect power (Phil 2) and allowed Himself to become human and submit to death on our behalf. One grain of sand in the oceans of desert found worthy of utter sacrifice by the maker of the sand. He has given what only He could give, Himself, to redeem us. Now He makes available to us the same power which He exerted in Christ to raise Him from the dead (Eph 1:19-20, Rom 8:11). Now if that was not enough, He also promises to take the mistakes we make and turn them around for good as well (Rom 8:28). Only an infinitely powerful God could cause all things to work together for good for those who love Him.
John Paul Jackson pointed out an essential difference between God and Satan. God has limitless power. Satan has limited power. We are when placing God and Satan on opposite ends of the scale comparing the infinite with the finite. This is to say, God is infinitely more powerful than Satan. Yes, Satan has limited supernatural power and we should not trifle with him, but we must also understand who our Daddy is. He is the one whom no one can defeat. He is the victorious warrior. He is the one who rules Sovereign over the universe, indeed over all that is. His power is unfathomable. His deeds are incredible. Rest secure, my friend, Father is in control. This reality will end in a moment when He peals back the sky like a scroll and sends His Son for us. We know we have a God whose hand is not too short to reach us, to redeem us, to restore us. There is no foe who can stand in His way. There is no one and nothing more powerful than He.
"Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” - Jeremiah 32:17. I would like to challenge you to read Job chapters 38-40 and Isaiah chapter 40 at this point. Go ahead. Yup set this right down and pick up your Bible. The rest of this can wait. Have you finished? Okay. Doesn’t that give you new perspective? Then we can join the heavenly multitude shouting “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns” (Rev 19:6) and also with Job in 42:2 saying, "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.”
Footnotes
1 Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 65. Print.
2 Tozer. 65.
3 Tozer. 66.
References
All Scriptures not specified are quoted from Life in the Spirit Study Bible (NIV). Stamps, Donald C., and John Wesley Adams. Life in the Spirit Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003. Print.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Audio.
Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Print.
