The Principles of Prayer XXIV

 When faith is anchored in the power of God and not in the wisdom of men, it removes all nagging doubt as to whether God can do a certain thing. Men fail all the time. Even those with the best of intentions fall short because their power is limited, and though they might desire to do grandiose and noble things, they are incapable of doing them because they have neither the ability nor the capacity.

God, on the other hand, is not limited in His power. He is not limited in His ability to do all that He desires, speaking worlds into existence, and creating man from the dust of the earth. Once we come to understand that we serve a God of power, we will never again wonder if God is able to do something, no matter how impossible it may seem to human intellect. We are confident that God can do and will do all He has promised, because we know Him to be omnipotent. The question isn’t if He can do it, it’s whether it is His will to do it.

That’s the sticking point for many people, because they’ve gotten it into their heads that they can dictate terms to God, demand things of Him, and He must bend to their will, rather than them having to submit to His. God owes me nothing. It doesn’t matter how much of a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum I act like, He is not compelled to do something He knows will end up hobbling my walk, or shipwrecking my faith.  

God isn’t the Lord of your life only when He does things that seem to benefit you, or things you agree with. He doesn’t cease being omnipotent because He didn’t do the thing you asked Him to do, because, unlike man, He knows the end from the beginning, and sees the final outcome of what would have been had He acquiesced.

God’s primary concern is and always has been your spiritual well-being. Though we might ask it of Him, anything detrimental to our spiritual growth, our maturing, our learning to walk by faith and in His authority will be denied us because He knows it would harm us in the long run even though living on easy street and still having a couple of dollars in the bank at the end of the month after all the bills are paid would be nice for a change.

By the prayers He answers and the prayers He doesn’t, God is daily shifting our focus from the things of this earth to the things above. He constantly reminds us that this present life is but a flicker, a grain of sand in an ocean of time, then eternity awaits. Not to belabor the point, but eternity is a long time. God’s primary concern isn’t whether you can afford the muscle car of your dreams, but where you will spend eternity. There are only two destinations, and no third option exists. Every soul that has ever walked the earth will either be welcomed into His presence or cast into the outer darkness. There is no third option. There is no purgatory, no neutral existence for those who tried to be good people; it’s either or, and the deciding factor is whether, as an individual, Christ is Lord of your life, and you’ve been born again to a new life in Him. You’re not saved by osmosis or grandfathered in because your parents were regular churchgoers. You must come to the foot of the cross in repentance. You must surrender your life. You must deny yourself, pick up your cross, and daily follow after Him.   

Our trust in God’s purpose isn’t baseless. We trust because we know He is already present in our tomorrow, and knows the end from the beginning of all things. God is omnipresent. This not only means He is everywhere all at once geographically, but also in time. It’s both time and space that God is omnipresent in, throughout the universe, at all times. God doesn’t take breaks. He doesn’t go on vacation. He doesn’t delegate the responsibilities of His sovereignty for a few decades because He happened upon a new hobby He’d like to pursue.

Even when it seems to us that God isn’t there, He is. Even when it seems He is not hearing the cries of our hearts, He is. This is a certainty we as His children must possess and anchor ourselves in, knowing that the enemy’s great joy is to sow doubt and make us question whether God is truly there.

His omnipresence confirms that any doubt we have is baseless and unfounded. His love affirms that when we cry out to Him, He hears, and in His time, He will do as He wills.

God’s omnipresence is also one of the attributes that sets Him apart from all other gods. There is no religion in the world, and no deity men have worshipped throughout time, which has made the claim that their god is omnipresent. You can go down the list, to every continent, every deity, and every religion, and you will not find one that has even hinted at what the God of the Bible has declared.

Acts 17:26-28, “And He has made from one blood every nation of men who dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’”

No matter where you happen to be geographically, no matter what continent or nation, God is not far from each of us. You don’t have to go on a quest to find God. He is not far from you, He is not hiding Himself, or so far removed from your proximity that the hope of knowing Him is futile. We approach God with confidence because we know He is near. We desire a relationship with Him because we know it will not be one-sided, but reciprocal.

If the realization of who our God is in all His wondrous glory doesn’t humble us and stir gratitude in our hearts for the grace bestowed upon us to have fellowship with Him, then we either have an inflated sense of self or do not fully grasp the magnitude of the God we serve.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Posted on 13 May 2025 | 11:45 am