Posted on 01/14/2023 5:18:54 AM PST by metmom
Scripture says of Israel, “Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:41 NKJV).Israel turned away from God in unbelief. Likewise, I believe we limit God today with our doubts and unbelief.
We trust God in most areas of our lives, but our faith always has boundaries and limits. We all have at least one small area that we block off where we don’t really believe God will take care of us.
For example, many people will pray for the healing of a well-known person who is a perfect stranger to them. But often, when it comes to healing for their own loved one, they limit God. I limit God most in the area of healing. I have prayed for physical healing for many, and I have seen God perform many miracles. When it comes to my own body, though, I limit God. I am afraid to let him be God to me. I douse myself with medicine or run to a doctor before I ever pray for myself. I’m not saying it’s wrong to go to the doctor, but sometimes I fit the description of those who “did not seek the Lord, but the physicians” (see 2 Chronicles 16:12).
Do you pray for God to bring down walls of oppression in other countries, but when it comes to the salvation of your own family you don’t have an ounce of faith? You think, “God must not want to do this. He doesn’t seem to be hearing me.”
If this is true, you are not seeing him as God. You are ignorant of his ways. God desires to “do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20).
Israel asked constantly, “Can God…? Sure, he made a way for us through the Red Sea, but can he give bread?” God spread a table for them in the wilderness. “But can he give us water?” He gave them water from a rock. “But can he give meat?” He gave them meat from the sky. “But can he deliver us from our enemies?” Time after time, God provided in every area, yet they spent forty years saying, “Can God…? Can God…?”
Beloved, we ought to be saying, “God can! God can!” God can and will do all that we ask and believe him to.
The Return ping.
The irony is that it is much easier to have faith that God will do for others what He won’t do for us.
It must be a tactic of the enemy to convince us that we are somehow unworthy when others are. But God plays no favorites. It’s a level playing field with Him. He is not more likely to do something for others and less likely to do it for us.
That is a difficult mindset to break free from.
Yes. God CAN! Help me have faith in Him alone, without doubt. In the Name of Jesus.
AMEN!
I think though that while God can do the impossible, he has self limited during the church age (especially when it comes to supernatural miracles like raising the dead, restoring a cut off ear without surgery etc.) He certainly can still do these things, but chooses for now to limit his power for his own purposes. In the Bible, Jesus said to the disciples basically that it was easier for them to beleive because they were first hand witnesses to great supernatural iracles, but that it would be harder for later Christians to beleive (implying I think that God would self limit his power via supernatural miracles, and laer christians would not have the beneifits of seein god in the flesh do tHe things only god can do)
I thunk the prayer should be “if it be thy will lord, may you heal so and so” , knowing that God can do miracles, but also recognizing that God has chosen to limit his supernatural interactions and is al.owing natural every day life to play out for the ti e being in most cases- and he is allowing and empowering researchers to discover medicines to cure folks and heal them, and surgeons to study hard and work to cure people and heal them. God chooses to allow man to work alongside him for things like healing. We have to realize that God may say no to supernatural healing g, but yes to “natural” healing (in the sense that docs can do so within the boundaries of natural works, not,outside in the supernatural realm)
[[God can and will do all that we ask and believe him to.]]
Um not so sure about that- (if he had added “if it is God’s will to grant our requests- realizing though that God chooses for now to limit his interactions with the natural course of life, for the time being,” I woild agree with that)
Even Jesus stated that folks don’t get everything they ask for because they “ask amiss”, even when they psych themselves up tO believing they will receive it, tHey ask amiss and dont receive. we have to ask in God’s will, and it seems that his will for now is to act mostly within the realm of what is possible naturally.
Indeed, even in Israel’s past, there were times when God performed a lot of miracles and people heard from him, and other times, He left them to their own devices.
There certainly is precedent for your thoughts.
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