God is Great!

God is good.
God is great.
Thank you for our food. Amen.

The second stanza of this children’s prayer affirms, God is great. If God were only good, but not great, he could not be God. If God were great, but not good, he would be most terrible, unpredictable—a being to fear and cower before. But our God is both good and great! God’s abundant goodness and amazing greatness combined to bring about our salvation:

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 1:18-20)

God is great in power! “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17) When we come to God with a request in prayer, do we come to him as the God of all power? Or do we come to him as a small, puny God who can’t do very much?

My mom was a godly woman who trusted our big God for big things. At her funeral a young woman with a newborn baby in her arms came up to me. She said, “You don’t know me, but a year ago I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. They told me I’d never have children. But your mom prayed for me. Because of what God did, I stand here today cancer free, and this is my baby!” Our God is great in power!

God is great in presence! Many believe God to be all powerful, but they also see him as removed and indifferent to the details of our lives. But our God is great and he is with us. He invites us to call upon him. He wants to be intimately involved in our lives. When God sent his Son Jesus to die in our place, God was not content merely to forgive us and save us from condemnation. His plan was to make us his children in order that we might enjoy his fellowship and presence now and for all eternity!

“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.” (Romans 8:15-16 NLT) God wants to be so ever present with us that he gives us his Holy Spirit who lives in us. Think of it! Almighty God, our Heavenly Father lives within us through his Spirit!

God is great in knowledge! God is all-wise and all-knowing. That is mindboggling! “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33)

When we consider that our great and good God knows all things, this brings us extreme joy. For nothing takes him by surprise. Nothing evades his notice. He is thoroughly acquainted with us, our thoughts, our words, our motivations, our actions—and yet he loves us. “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.” (Psalm 139:1-4)

The fact that God is both good and great fills me with confidence in him. He is trustworthy and he “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20)

© 2009 Rob Fischer