Is anything too hard for the LORD?

Is anything too hard for the LORD? (Gen 18:14)

This is a simple yet personally challenging post. Do we really believe the statement that God makes in Gen 18:14?  Do I really believe it?

Is anything too hard for the LORD?

At one level, this is the sort of thing that seems intuitively obvious. If you're reading through Genesis, God as done some amazing stuff. How can anyone doubt His abilities, especially if you're Abraham and you are living it out. Yet Abraham and Sarah had to be confronted by this rebuking question:

Is anything too hard for the LORD?

And here we are, with the testimony of the entire Bible, the evidence of grace through the centuries of church history and the fingerprints of God's power and action in our own lives. And yet, this question lingers like the smell of a distant brush fire.

Is anything too hard for the LORD?

So, where do we go? What do we do with this? Personally, I think I need to take God seriously, as if He is asking this question directly to me? Think about your praying (as an example) or your serving or 100 different aspects of your life. What is our first (or 31st) response when things don't go the way we think they should? God, what are you doing? God, I thought I understood? God, should I go another direction? If you are like me, you are too pious to actually say: God, can you really do what you promised? But sometimes, deep in our not-yet-glorified hearts, that's what's sitting there. And, isn't that the lighter fluid that Satan loves to pour all over us?

But, with one simple rhetorical question, God slams everything back into alignment, if we have the ears to hear. Think hard. Pray hard. Confess as necessary and seriously ask yourself, whatever your situation:

Is anything too hard for the LORD?

I now send forth this post with a deep sense of its many defects; but with an earnest prayer that it may do some good. (JC Ryle)


To God Alone be the Glory