Limiting God's Power?

God is all powerful and limitless in Himself.

If God is omnipotent, the creator, the one and only true source, then how can we as created beings have any ability to limit the workings of His power?

The idea of limiting God in anyway really stopped me in my tracks for a bit because I could not believe that I could knowingly be guilty of restricting a move of God.

The thought came to me as I was once again reading one of my favourite Bible passages, Ephesians 3. Every time I read that word a different revelation comes through. The same passage, new day, new revelation, a new degree of understanding.

The portion that stood out for me on that day was verse 20:

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

For some reason, that portion of the word suddenly stood out for me – yes, it is a clear and firm declaration of God’s absolute power, but somehow, we are presented with a conditionality.

“But isn’t God’s power unconditional?” was my next question, which led me to do some reading into the idea of if it was possible to limit the flow of God’s power.

God’s power is immeasurable, we are unable to fully conceive of its magnitude, however, its manifestation in our lives will be limited according to how it is allowed to be at work within us. Therefore, the power of God that will flow THROUGH us, and our true experience of it, is dependent on how freely our faith and belief allows His power to move and work.

We must be careful not to limit our own personal experience of God's power, and if we are honest, we may do it unintentionally in many ways:

• Sometimes we don’t fully trust Him enough or at all. Our trust in God tends to vary depending on what the case at hand is. It’s almost like we can believe for some things if it’s not too much or seems possible, but for other things that seem too big we are not quite sure.

This creates the baseline for the other limiting barriers we unknowingly create:

• We pray and act, but with low expectations.

We tend to confine how we believe He will show up to match our limited human thinking. The Passion Translation of Matthew 9:29 says

This was what Jesus expressed when he healed the two blind men. They were able to experience their complete healing because their faith was not limited.

• Sometimes we heavily rely on ourselves first, instead of recognizing God first as our ultimate source and our help. If we mentally limit our potential outcome to only what we can tangibly control, then where is the space to allow God’s power to intervene and transcend anything we face?

• Then, there are the times when we are just plain old disobedient. Depending on the modality, we may get an inner insight or instruction - or we may receive a prophetic instruction through someone else - to do or not to do something, which threatens the comforts of our norms and our plans. Sometimes, choosing to obey in these circumstances can be powerfully expansive, taking our lives to completely new dimensions of God’s will as He intends.

· We tend not to want to do the ‘leg work’. We cannot rely on an inherited experience of His power, despite how strong in the Lord our forefathers may have been. Some of us come from rich lineages of devoted believers who would take the time to pray and intercede and worship and yes, some of those prayers may still cover us today. We, however, need to become students of God’s word for ourselves and strive for spiritual transformation first, for which faith is a requirement. It is a must that we strive for grace and power to understand His love for ourselves and by extension allow his power to flow through us and reflect in our lives in a meaningful and consistent way.

I hope this was helpful to you in some way, it opened my eyes for sure.

Be blessed,

Catique.

Photo by Brandon Morgan, Unsplash Images