Omnipotent God

Below you will read an excerpt from Dwayne's book, Pure Praise: A Heart-focused Bible Study on Worship. I believe it to be so applicable to our pursuit to learn more about Jehovah-Nissi. I so hope you will read this devotion and again be reminded that God is our faithful banner.

Psalm 33:16-17 says, "No king is saved by the multitude of an army; A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety; Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength."(NKJV)

Three of man's most powerful assets (large armies, great physical strength, and strong horses) are still no match for the Lord. Why is that? Simply put, God can do whatever He wants because He has all the power He needs - an unlimited supply! Another word for this infinite strength is omnipotence, which is the second of God's transcendent attributes that Jehoshaphat refers to in his prayer in 2 Chronicles 20: "Power and might are in Your hand, and no one can withstand You." (verse 6b) Omnipotence has been described as "the will of God being put into operation." Jeremiah 32:17 says, "O Sovereign LORD! You have made the heavens and earth by your great power. Nothing is too hard for you!" (NLT)

As powerful as God is, how much power He makes available to us is somehow based on how much we realize we need it. It's as though God was just waiting for the Children of Judah to give up all human attempts to help their problem.

One of my favorite biographies is Through Gates of Splendor by Elizabeth Elliot. It's the true story of five young men, most barely in their twenties, who answered God's call to take the Gospel to a Stone Age tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. After several preliminary overtures of friendliness, the men set out on a crucial January day in 1956 for a meeting with the Waorani tribes people. Their young wives sat by their radios, waiting for news. But none of the missionaries' voices were ever heard again over the air waves. Some days later their bodies were found, mutilated. Elizabeth Elliot, the wife of the now martyred Jim Elliot, wrote these words:

"In the kitchen we (wives) sat quietly as the reports were finished, fingering the watches and wedding rings that had been brought back, trying for the hundredth time to picture the scene. Which of the men watched the others fall? Which of them had time to think of his wife and children?...This much we knew: “Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's, the same shall save it." There was no question as to the present state of our loved ones. They were "with Christ."...The quiet trust of the mothers helped the children to know that this was not a tragedy. This was what God had planned...To the world at large this was a sad waste of five young lives. But God has His plan and purpose in all things. There were those whose lives where changed by what happened on Palm Beach..."

But "how," you may ask, "can she be so seemingly stoic, so calm in the face of such horrible circumstances? Things like that will strip away peoples' head knowledge about God. It hits at the very core of us. Just what was her secret?" Well, apparently she interpreted everything through the sovereign will and power of God. Here's what she wrote in the closing paragraphs of the book:

"It is not the level of our spirituality that we depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God's and the call is God's, and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package..."

Excerpt from Pure Praise: A Heart-focused Bible Study on Worship (Group Publishing, 2009) Used by Permission.