LCN Article

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Do Not Limit God!

While traveling across the western United States recently, my wife and I were amazed at the overwhelming beauty and magnificence of God’s creation.

When we looked beyond our planet at night, we saw the stars, and a hint of the creation beyond. We were even more impressed by the creative powers of our great God who created such vastness, beauty, harmony and even a hundred billion galaxies the size of the Milky Way, each composed of probably a hundred billion stars!

Do We Limit the Power of God?

The power of our God is unlimited. Although we do not even begin to understand it, yet, in a way, we can limit the power of this Almighty Being.

For example, after God brought the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, they quickly began to gripe and complain. They exhibited absolutely no confidence in God’s leadership, judgment and care for them.

 The Israelites provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! Again and again they tempted God, “and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:40–41).

Since there is no power great enough to interfere with, or defeat the plan and purpose of the Creator God, some might wonder how it can be possible for us to limit God. Yet, it is our own actions and lack of obedience that can limit the great God in blessing us.

As a loving and perfect Parent, God is always going to do what is best for us. And at times, what is best for us may be withholding certain blessings in our lives that we might otherwise receive in order to first learn our lessons. We need to develop more of the mind of God, and more of the reasoning ability of the great Creator, as preparation for our eventually being born into His Family.

That is God’s purpose—His agenda for each of us individually.

Promises Made to Ancient Israel

God had intended to lead the ancient Israelites directly into the land of Canaan.

What a future He had in mind for the ancient nation of Israel! God promised that He would bless them in the city and in the country. He also promised to bless the fruit of their body and the produce of the ground. He wanted to bless them with all the good things of life (Deuteronomy 28:1–14).

But receiving these great blessings was dependant on their obedience to God.

“But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all the commandments and His statutes which I command you today that all of these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country” (Deuteronomy 28:15–16).

If the Israelites cut themselves off from following the true God, various penalties would occur. God knew when to withhold His blessings so that Israel would realize that blessings come only through the great God and Creator.

God is now working even more closely with us than he worked with ancient Israel. Unlike the Israelites, however, we understand His purpose. The stakes are much higher for us today. He is offering us as firstfruits in the family of God the potential to have eternal life. He must be able to fully trust us individually before we become born as sons of God.

Even Jesus Faced Limits!

Jesus Christ and His disciples came to Jesus’ own country where He grew up. “And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands? Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?’” (Mark 6:2–6).

So they were offended at Him. They were familiar with His background. Sometimes, we make that same mistake. We do not honor some of those whom we should honor, because we are too familiar with them.

“But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives and in his own house.’ Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching” (Mark 6:4–6).

Christ was lamenting for the people of Israel and Jerusalem through the ages. He said, “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34). It was His intention to bless and bring prosperity to the nation of Israel (Deuteronomy 28); yet, He said they were not willing.

 “See!” Jesus said to the Jews of His day: “Your house is left to you desolate, and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” Very clearly, we see that we actually can limit our God—at least as far as His intentions to bless us fully in our individual lives.

Let us consider three ways in which we may be limiting the great God. These three points are nothing new. You have read them many times, but think of them in this context today—limiting God’s blessings that could be ours if we were wholehearted, focused and vigorous in seeking our God.

Do We Seek God Wholeheartedly?

First, understand that when we lack confidence in God, this involves a lack of trust in His guidance. We can call this a lack of faith. One who feels this lack of faith should ask, “Do I fully trust God to guide my life, day by day?” If we are not trusting Him, we can be sure that we are acting on the wrong guidance.

 “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matthew 6:26). He is the Creator, the Designer of all life, and He has programmed the birds of the field to take care of themselves. Our great God planned the genetic design and instinct of every bird and animal on the planet.

Also, He reminds us, “Are you not of more value than they?

“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to your stature?” (v. 26). We might like to reduce a few inches horizontally, but we have got to do more than worry. We have got to do something about it.

And so, why do we worry about clothing? We do need clothing, but why do we make that the main focus of our lives—our financial security, our career—when our main focus should be on developing the very character of the living God. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin” (v. 28). They do not plan. They are genetically engineered, “and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory,” his finery, his coats and his gold, and even his crown, “was not arrayed like one of these” (v. 29).

The great Creator God put more thought, planning and genetic design in one lily than was put into the regal clothing of Solomon. It was God who designed the beauty, harmony and symmetry of a lily.

God Takes Care of Our Needs

So Christ’s message here is, “Do not agonize over the physical provisions of life.” Yes, we have our part to do, but ultimately God will take care of our needs. If we feel that our basic needs are not being met, it is time to focus on the great God and His provision for us. “Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which, today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith” (v. 30).

Matthew was pointing out the absurdity of not trusting our Creator. Think about it. We look at His creation. We see the intensity of the design and His loving care for His handiwork, and yet we are potentially the pinnacle of His creation, eventually to be full-born sons of God. And He says, “Oh you of little faith.”

Christ tells us not to worry. He said, “Therefore do not worry saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink’, or ‘What shall we wear?’” (v. 31). Yes, we plan and prepare, but we do not agonize over our financial future. We have a greater future than that. “For after all of these things, the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things” (v. 32).

If we are His children, He knows it. He looks after us. He protects us. He will bless us if we trust him. “But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you” (v. 33).

The character of the living God will be formed within us, and we will be developing the mind of God. He is continually working with us to accomplish this. Our God is “on the job.” He takes care of His children. He looks after all of us, even though there may be times when we might be concerned about where our next job—or our next meal—will come from.

Trust in God

But, if we trust the great God, we will go to Him continually. We will put God, His Kingdom and His Work first. He promises to provide our every need—if we trust Him. What an incredible blessing!

But there are times, to whatever degree we know the true God and have understanding and truth, that maybe our confidence in God wavers just a little. Or, maybe the bank account is a little low, or we lose a job; then our confidence in God delivering us wavers.

A father brought his young son to Christ. The boy was both deaf and mute from an unclean spirit. “So He asked his father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes’” (Mark 9:21–23).

Now “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe, help my unbelief’” (v. 24). Think about that. The boy’s father said he believed, but then he asked Jesus to help his unbelief.

How often are we in that situation? We believe. We have a measure of faith and confidence in our God, but we do not have the supreme confidence in God’s response in our life, individually. Maybe we assume God is going to ignore us this time, or perhaps He has better things to do. Or, maybe he is not focused on our situation at the moment.

This is the time when we have to go to God. We need to trust Him and ask Him to help our unbelief.

Ask God To Strengthen Our Faith

We need to ask God to strengthen our faith. More than that, we should beseech Him to give us more of the living faith of Jesus Christ. Christ had that ultimate faith—the full confidence that God would sustain Him, and even at the end of His life resurrect Him back to the glory He had from the beginning.

You and I do not have that level of faith or confidence. So, we ask God to give us more of the living faith of Jesus Christ, month by month and year by year, to strengthen our own faith, to give us a rock-solid unshakable confidence in the great God and His purpose in our lives.

When we ask for more of the faith of Jesus Christ, God will work out circumstances in our lives. Sometimes we will find ourselves needing God’s intervention. It could involve our health, our finances or our family, but if we go to God and ask for a greater measure of faith, we can be confident that—in His way and in His time, one way or another—He will rescue us and sustain us. God strengthens us, encourages us—and sometimes performs miracles.

Lack of Effort

A second key point is that, if we do not put our best effort into doing our part, we will be limiting God by preventing His blessings from pouring out on us. God may want to bless us in a difficult situation. But if by our conduct we are making ourselves unable to receive those blessings, we may need to address weaknesses and even sins in our lives before God can give us what we need to overcome and grow.

Our weaknesses may be hidden from those around us, even though we know we are holding on to some habit or situation that is dragging us down. On the other hand, we may have become so careless and self-satisfied that we have lost awareness of our own weaknesses.

Even after we have come a long way, we know in our growth as Christians that we have further growth ahead. Maybe we are proud of our adherence to the “letter” of the law (though consider James 2:10; we may not be as “perfect” as we like to imagine), but what about the spirit of the law? If we lose sight of the work that we must do, the effort we must put out to be doing our part fully, we may be limiting God, by telling Him, in effect, that we do not really want our lives to change for the better.

“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). We know that can apply to us, even small hidden sins in our lives. God, at times, is not able to bless us in the way He would like. He is just waiting for us to repent and change.

And, of course, God withholds blessings. “Your iniquities… and your sins have withheld good from you” (Jeremiah 5:25). If we are honest with ourselves, we all know that we still have areas where we ought to change for the better, even if we have been in God’s Church for 30, 40 or 50 years or more.

God Wants Us To Succeed

Our loving God truly wants us to succeed in every way. He wants to bless us with abundance—especially in spiritual matters. He is a loving parent. He is our personal guide, and He will work with us in whatever way will get our attention. This includes withholding blessings at times, especially when this will motivate us to seek His help. It is difficult to change our inner being—our very character. It is the most difficult thing to do in life! It is a struggle, but we have God’s help.

Society programs us from birth. We are affected by our parents, by society and by Satan’s system. We absorb the mindset of the world. The Apostle Paul said, “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Romans 7:23). That is the way we all are, naturally, without God’s Spirit. Paul asks the question, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (v. 24).

 Was Paul asking this in hopelessness?  No!  He answered his own question; he knew who would deliver him. “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 25).

Our Personal Trainer

I think of Jesus Christ as our Personal Trainer. A personal trainer is very closely involved with us on a daily basis, helping us focus our energy on making the progress we need to make. As our Personal Trainer, Jesus Christ will guide us as much as we will listen to and follow His guidance. He will bless us when blessings will help us, and will withhold blessings when that is the best way to help us grow. We should never forget that when God withholds blessings, that can be a blessing in itself. “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects” (Job 5:17). And also, “For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:12).

So, as God intervenes in our lives and gently corrects us, we come to realize we need loving, gentle correction. I like gentle correction. Most children do, too. Gentle correction—mid-course correction along the way—absolutely will benefit us, whether in our physical life right now, or in our spiritual life now and in the future, even forever.

Regrettably, we often think of correction as punishment. We worry that God will “let us have it.” But think about what parents do. They correct their children because they want them to learn and grow, and to stay out of harm’s way. Parents know that they do not help their children the most by ignoring small problems until they grow and grow and become big problems. The most effective corrections are the small ones that prevent our children from running into the big problems later on.

When a plane is traveling toward a destination across country, onboard computers are constantly reading wind speed, altitude and barometric pressure, ground speed and other data. As a result, many small corrections are made that keep the plane on course. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny mid-course corrections are needed. Without these corrections, the plane might end up who knows where? The same is true in our lives.

So, if we want to accelerate the blessings in our present life, we need to seek correction, to ask God for gentle correction in our own lives. We know His correction, given in His love, will benefit us. It is not punishment. It is a blessing that will keep us from harming ourselves, our loved ones and others.

When we ask for gentle correction, we know our loving Father is there for us. He wants what is best for us. He will not harm us. If we act on the correction we receive, the Holy One of Israel—the Creator of all life—will open the door for us to receive His blessings in our lives.

One primary blessing is that of having our needs met.  And we know that God promises us that He will meet our needs physically, financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and in every way. However, there are also spiritual blessings that we cannot do without—such as acquiring more of the mind of God. We want to be blessed with more of the fruit of God’s Spirit, which is described as love, joy, peace and longsuffering, as well as patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

We should not feel saddened or discouraged by correction. We should have joy in our lives. We know we are receiving correction in order to become part of the future Family of God. Our Father will see us through. As we develop the confidence to know that this is true, we will have a measure of peace, no matter what our circumstances. Things may not be perfect in our financial realm, or our health may not be good, but we can still have a basic peace of mind. We can know that God will see us through to His Kingdom.

As we grow in conversion, we will experience this more and more. A deeply converted person is very mentally stable, able to weather the “ups and downs” of daily trials. As we move closer to God’s way of thinking and living, we will grow more and more in our capacity to have that blessing and more of it. God wants us to be stable and happy. He wants us to be open to His guidance and gentle correction, so it can bear fruit in our lives.

Our Prayer Life

A third vital key, if we want to be sure we are not limiting God’s work in our lives, is to consider our prayer life, and how we approach the true God. Are we just putting in “clock time”—maybe praying ineffectually or ritualistically? Or do we put our whole being and our heart into our prayers, making them real and vital, knowing that we are speaking to a real Being, the God of the Universe?

Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong used to mention that one of the fundamental weaknesses of God’s people was not putting their hearts into their prayers—not speaking to the true God with intensity, feeling and genuineness. Scripture promises us, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). And we know the inverse of that is also true.  Superficial “sleepy-time prayer” accomplishes very little.

 Jesus Christ warned in Revelation 3 that the majority of God’s people at the end of this present age would be lukewarm. But that does not need to apply to us as individuals. We do not want to be lukewarm. We should want to communicate with the great God in a genuine, wholehearted way—not in a routine or lukewarm way. What will happen if we do this? God said, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Our “wicked ways” may or may not correspond to those of ancient Israel. But we all need to draw closer to God in a genuine way, which begins with “getting real” in our approach to God, and in our communication and conversation with the great God.

It is not wrong to focus a part of our prayer, at times, on our immediate needs and desires. However, we must also do as Paul instructed and continue earnestly in prayer for others, and about the Work and the “Big Picture” of God’s Plan and what He is doing here on the earth. We should especially pray that God will open more doors for His Work, and call more laborers to the harvest (Matthew 9:38).

Are you asking God to open doors in your life? Are you asking God to open doors for His Work? It is God, and only God, who can open doors for the Work. We cannot do it of and by ourselves.

More Blessings

We all have a greater potential than we have yet achieved. God has already blessed us much, and He would like to bless us more and more. But we need to allow Him to bless us as we grow in Philadelphian zeal—as we grow in faith, do our part to obey Him, and draw closer to Him in fervent and genuine prayer from the heart. As we do so, we will discover that as we align ourselves ever more closely with God, we will be removing the limits that we previously placed on His blessings. He will be more and more able to bless us, and we will see more and more blessings individually, as a Church, and as a Work. 

Just as parents want to bless their own children as they grow, mature and prosper, God desires even more than that to bless us abundantly. So, let us be vigilant and not limit the power of the great Creator God in our lives!