Don’t limit your God-Knowing His power

Genesis 18:9-15

Don’t limit your God-Knowing His power

00            00:0 You can identify, then, with poor Sarah. She laughed when God did not. She managed to conceal her laughter, but that doesn’t work with the Lord, who knows the very thoughts and intentions of our hearts. When the Lord said, “Why did Sarah laugh?” she denied it and said, “I didn’t laugh.” But the Lord knew differently and said, “No, but you did laugh.” It wasn’t a laughing matter to the Lord.

The problem was that Sarah’s laughter reflected her unbelief in the promise of God. Unbelief is a more serious sin than most of us realize. To doubt God’s promise is tantamount to calling God a liar. It is to demote God from His place of sovereign power and to promote myself over Him. God doesn’t take kindly to unbelief.

All of us struggle, at different levels, with the problem of unbelief. Perhaps, like Abraham and Sarah, you’ve prayed for something for years, but God has not answered. Life is passing you by while you wait. You struggle with doubt as you often wonder whether He is hearing your prayers. You may have suffered some tragedy, such as the loss of a close loved one, and you wonder, “Where was God when this happened?” Maybe it’s a family problem that has dragged on for years. You wonder, “Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t He answer?” Sometimes I’ve struggled with doubt when I’ve needed some small thing that would be easy for God to provide, something which I knew would further His work, and yet in spite of my prayers, God did not answer.

The Lord’s word to Sarah speaks to all who struggle with unbelief (and that’s all of us): “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”  This story of Abraham and Sarah waiting all these years for the promised son teaches us an important spiritual lesson:

God brings us to the end of our strength so that we will trust in His ability to do the impossible.

By nature we all trust in ourselves most of the time, and in God only when we really have to. If we trust in ourselves, then we glory in ourselves. But God’s purpose is that we glory in Him alone. So through various means He graciously brings us to the place where we have no hope except in Him, so that we trust in Him and He gets the glory. The first step in this process is ...

1. God brings us to the end of our strength.

We’re also reminded that Abraham and Sarah were old, and that Sarah was past the age of childbearing (18:11). It was humanly impossible for her to bear a son. She was already through menopause. In her natural strength, she was barren.

That’s where the Lord wants us in our relationship with Him, to recognize our weakness so that we will trust His strength. Many people mistakenly think that the reason they struggle in their Christian lives is that they’re too weak. That isn’t so. The reason we struggle in our Christian walk is that we do not recognize our own weakness for what it is, and so we trust in ourselves rather than in the Lord. When we see our weakness and cast ourselves on the Lord’s strength, then we’re strong. God doesn’t help those who help themselves. God helps those who are helpless.. Hudson Taylor used to say that when God wanted to open inland China to the gospel, He looked around until He found a man weak enough for the task.

2. The Lord confronts our unbelief so that we will see things from His perspective.

 “Why did Sarah laugh?” He wanted Abraham and Sarah to think about that question. The answer was, “Sarah laughed because she didn’t believe the Lord.”As I said, unbelief is sin because in effect it calls God a liar and me the truthful one. It says, “I know better than the omniscient, all-powerful God, what He can do or not do!” It implies either that God doesn’t know what He’s talking about or He isn’t able to do it. So the Lord asks a second question, “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”

Unbelief is also serious because invariably it leads to other sins. Sarah denied that she did what the Lord says she did: “I didn’t laugh.”. But how foolish to think that we can hide our sin from the Lord who knows every thought in our heads! He got her to face her sin of unbelief and to think about things from His perspective with the rhetorical question, “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”

The most loving thing the Lord can do is to make us face our sin of unbelief: “No, you did doubt Me. Admit the truth yourself, because I know your heart.” Then He lovingly gets us to consider things from His almighty perspective: “I could never be in any situation which would be too difficult for the Lord to work.”

A woman once came up to the famous Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan, and asked, “Dr. Morgan, should we pray about the little things in our lives, or only the big things?” In his British manner, Dr. Morgan drew up and said, “Madam, can you think of anything in your life that is big to God?”

3. When we trust God to do the humanly impossible, He rewards us.

Because she faced her sin of unbelief and thought about things from God’s perspective, Sarah received the faith to conceive Isaac. Faith is a gift God is ready to give us the moment we will turn from our unbelief and see Him for who He is: the God for whom nothing is too difficult.

Also, Sarah received laughter. Her laughter of doubt (18:12) was replaced with the laughter of joy when Isaac was born (21:6). In fact, Isaac’s name means “he laughs.”

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In the same way, the Lord is gracious, ready to forgive us and meet our every need when we turn from our unbelief and trust in His mighty power.

Application:

·         Know that God is able; believe that He will do it.

·         Rely not in your understanding, rather trust in Him.

·         Write down the past achievement and answered prayer.

·         Get Encourage by reading promises of God.