By Pastor Anthony L. Scott
“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27, NASB)
B. Phillips said, “Too many of us are crippled by a limited idea of God.” The hang up with many today is that they have not found a God big enough to meet their modern needs. The questions we really need to answer are not just What can God do for me but hat can’t God do for me? It’s more than a matter of thinking too small but thinking too small of God.
The school of life will often squeeze most of us to the point where we throw our belief in God out the window when problems arise. I often refer to these words by Phillips Brooks, “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men and women. Do no pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.”
Much like the man who was asking for help everyday at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, we are in close proximity to the one who can really help yet choose to trust from a distance.
For various reasons some remain at a distance having become victims of expectations. Everything you have ever anticipated or desired appears to have never come true. Others doubt God from a distance having succumbed to being victims of experience. For this group, all that they have ever seen seems to contradict what they were promised. And unfortunately some trust God from a distance because they are feeling victimized by their environment. The things they have felt rendered their faith lame and impotent.
Jeremiah poses a question we all must consider. “Is anything too hard for the Lord? “ There is nothing demanded of faith which is not justified by God’s goodness in the past. If we are not careful, forgetfulness and fear will paralyze our faith in the present. Jeremiah also presents an invitation-, an invitation to connect the question with the promise. He opens the gate of life with a question that ushers us into the presence of the one who can give us the victory.
In his book on Jeremiah entitled, Like Fire in the Bones, Walter Brueggemann says that in these words, the prophet offers both a prayer and a promise. Within the prayer, the extremity of the situation is discussed with God, but while praying the extremity of the promise overrides the situation. So much so, that Jeremiah 32:27 accurately becomes a question that implies affirmation. In other words, “Is anything too difficult for God is answered with the words from Luke 1:37, “For nothing will be impossible with God!”
