How God Likes to Use Power

One of the most frustrating realities, and at the same time one of the most wonderful realities, is that God is not like us. This is wonderful because if God became moody or capricious, even for a moment, all of reality would be unalterably unhinged.  We tend to forget this.  And we forget it because we are busy suppressing our angst that God hasn’t done what we see as completely reasonable.  God is not like us, and His higher ways can be flat-out frustrating.

We feel this most in God’s use of power.  If God has infinite, omnipotent power, why then is he so slow or absent in the things that seem so urgent to us?  We hear it in the following types of questions:

Why doesn’t God just wipe out evil?

Why doesn’t God regularly save celebrities and the highly influential?

Why doesn’t God do miracles to make his presence unquestionable?

Why doesn’t God heal/save/protect/guide in this particular instance?

We know that God can do awesome displays of power.  We see it in his creation (Rom. 1:20), and we see it in the mighty miracles of God which are called “wonders,” “signs,” and “power.”  The Exodus, Joshua’s conquest, healings, and the resurrection, to name a few, display that he has done mind-blowing works in history and can do them at any time.  Therefore, we never have to ask “can God do something,” but only “why has he not done what he could do?”

So, we wonder, why would God not do what seems entirely reasonable to us?  There are two major issues at play.  First, there is the issue of information.  Every parent knows that children can’t understand all the reasons something should or should not happen.  To understand the whole, you have to understand the parts, and children don’t know all the parts yet.   Therefore, as Tim Keller has stated, “God gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows.” 

But it goes beyond a lack of information.  It is also due to what is loved.  What you love affects how you do things.  If you love attention, you will do things in big, flashy ways.  If you love solitude, you will do things that remove people from your presence.  You will always use power according to who you really are. 

I believe this is the major feature for why we grumble and complain about what God has ordained.  God loves certain things and so he ordains our circumstances around what he wants above all.  What kinds of things are these?

• God loves compassion more than sacrifice (Matt. 9:13). Therefore God allows difficult and needy people to come into our lives so that we can show the mercy we have been shown.  God could instantly deliver needy people from their need, and sinners from their sin, but God loves the transforming nature of mercy and compassion and often works through that instead.   
• God loves sacrificial love more than cheap comfort (John 15:13). Therefore God ordains situations where love is tested in the hardest ways and shown for what it is.  Did Abraham really have to sacrifice his son?  Did Daniel really have to go to the lion’s den?  In countless situations, God could have made things easy, but he wants to display divinely-empowered love for God and love for neighbor. 
• God loves displaying sufficient grace in weakness (2 Cor. 12:7-9). Therefore, God could have removed the thorn in Paul’s flesh, but instead God wanted the grace-created fruit of the Spirit to be seen in the worst of situations.  
• God loves humility (James 4:6). Therefore, although God could have brought success and influence he many times will bring us low with difficulty. 

What else does God love?  He loves endurance, forgiveness, hard work, generosity, enemy-love, trust, purity, faithfulness, forbearance, reconciliation, courage, impartiality, and more. Why does God love all of this?  Because it reflects his own character, and he is the most lovely of all.    Notice that for all of these qualities to be fully displayed, there are corresponding problems that are in the mix.  We would like the problem to just disappear in the power of God.  Instead God wants godliness to appear, which often deals with problems in surprising ways.  This appearance of godliness is what God is most committed to, and there is only one thing that can do it; the power of the gospel.  “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation…” (Rom. 1:16)  This is the power that creates what God wants most of all.  So, God is ordaining all things after the council of his will (Eph. 1:11) and the council of anyone’s will is always driven by what one loves.  God loves gospel transformation and the display of his own character in the lives of his saints. 

So power is used according to what you know and what you love.  When you combine our lack of knowledge regarding the whole picture with the reality of our love for the wrong things, it becomes much easier to distrust ourselves than a good and wise God.  Grumbling needs to go because God is using his power perfectly consistent with his wisdom and the exalting of Christ through the gospel.  We should make it our goal to love the things that God loves, to pursue the gospel’s power for transformation, and to be praying for what God wants and is working for in the difficulties we endure.