There’s nothing that God cannot do!

Our songs of praise and worship often focus on God’s power to help us.

There is nothing that He cannot do!

But a possible danger lurks in this emphasis.

The danger is in connecting these songs to a God who is primarily interested in delivering us from difficult circumstances — rather than from the power of sin and death. 

This is the emphasis found in a therapeutic gospel that promises a God who is primarily concerned with healing your damaged emotions and broken relationships.

Certainly God is gracious to work in every area of our lives, but the greatest display of His love and deliverance is what Christ did to free us from the curse of the Law and the power of death (Galatians 3:13; Romans 3:19-25; II Corinthians 5:17-21). 

Let’s not set people up with false expectations about the Christian life being one of triumph over all obstacles. Yes, there’s nothing God cannot do, but we must honor His timing and process for what He chooses to do.

One day God will restore us to a place where there is “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” but this will not happen until “the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

The possibility of this restoration is completely based on what God has already done for us – “when the set time had fully come,” and “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Galatians 4:4-5).

We live in that piece of history when Jesus calls his followers to take up the cross and follow him. We are not called (in this life) to take up our scepter and rule with him.

It’s so easy in a fallen world to want a Savior who offers temporal deliverance from difficult circumstances more than one who offers eternal deliverance from sin and death.

Loss of focus

Is it possible to become so consumed with wanting God to solve our temporal problems (a broken relationship or a physical limitation) that we no longer celebrate what God has done to remove our greatest enemy — sin and death?

Let’s not allow temporary challenges of this life to diminish grateful worship of the God who, “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).  

Steve Cornell