Rev Gav

How powerful is God?

Luke 11.1–13

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
   Give us each day our daily bread.
   And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
   And do not bring us to the time of trial.’

And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’

In today’s Bible passage Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. Prayer, it seems, is something with which the followers of Jesus should engage and later, writers such as the Apostle Paul, encouraged his readers to, “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” (Ephesians 6.18) however, the elephant in the room (so to speak) is that our prayers where we ask God to intervene often seem to go unanswered. As I write this Insight, we are praying for peace in Ukraine and Gaza, and yet children are being starved and slaughtered, and who of us hasn’t prayed for a miracle only for the situation (where we long for God to intervene) to take a turn for the worse? This lack of intervention from God raises the age-old question of why an all-powerful and all-loving God allows so much pain or suffering. Why is it that God doesn’t answer our prayers?

It appears there can be only two options, either God is unable to intervene, meaning that God is not all-powerful, or God is choosing not to intervene, meaning God is not loving. How can both be true simultaneously?

Typically, Christians hold on to the view that God could not possibly be God if God was not all-powerful, and that God is love, therefore we make excuses for pain and suffering, such as rationalising why bad things happen to good people. For example, many times at the funerals of a young person I hear people say, “it was their time,” or, “God wanted another angel,” or “all things happen for a reason,” and forgive me if this sounds harsh, but this attempt at providing comfort is, theologically speaking, a mask for saying that God is not loving. No, a loving God does not cause pain and suffering and the death of a loved one cannot be rationalised. It is disgusting, traumatic, painful, heart-breaking, and truly awful. God feels and experiences every ounce of pain and suffering in this world and I am never going to make excuses for God and cave to the idea that God is not loving. God is love, and if this is true then I may well have backed myself into the other corner and I have to entertain the idea that God is not all-powerful.

It feels treasonous to suggest that God is not all-powerful. Surely this is the very definition of God? Yet, we seem very quick to abandon the idea that God is all-loving. Is an all-powerful God better than an all-loving God? These are the questions us pastors and theologians think about! So, let’s go down this rabbit-hole. As a simply theoretical exercise, dare we entertain the thought that God is not all-powerful — at least not in the way we traditionally think Reframing this idea as a question, let us ask, ‘What if God is only able to exert the power of love?’ What would that mean for us, our prayer life, and the world around us?

When we think of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, God came in the power of love. Yes, there were miracles with a locus around his presence, but even Lazarus who was raised from the dead — a miracle with a deeper meaning — died again, and Jesus himself, “gave his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.28) submitting himself to a most degrading and painful death on a Roman cross. He did not have a ‘good death’. He was not an old man who had lived, ‘a good life’ and who died of natural causes in his sleep. As Christians, we have a suffering God and the evidence appears to point to a God who is only able to exert the power of love — but here’s the thing — the power of God’s love is enough to conquer death. Jesus was resurrected.

Like the sun warms the earth, God is metaphorically beaming love to us and willing us and wanting us to operate in the power of this love. God is not a God of miraculous, violent intervention. If you want a God like that then there are plenty of pagan, Greek, Roman, or modern-day ‘Marvel’ gods from which to choose. No, our God is love, and we have placed our hope in the power of this love that will one day ‘win’ and bring the universe to a point where heaven and earth overlap and there is no more pain, suffering, or death.

Turning back to Jesus’ teaching on prayer, he did not provide template for how to ask an all-powerful God to miraculously intervene in the world (divine intervention) but it was about asking God for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit — with the answer being found in verse 11, “…how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” This, interestingly was a statement and not a question.

I wonder too if this teaching is connected with the earlier tenuously omitted line from the Lord’s Prayer — “Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us” even though we’re happy to include an equally tenuous line, “Your will be done, on earth as in heaven,” and remember Paul’s exhortation for us to pray that I quoted earlier? Paul encouraged his listeners to not pray in their own strength, “on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” but to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” The Holy Spirit is the key to prayer and the key to how we expect our prayers to be answered.

God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus, is also the Spirit of love and it is this Spirit that makes home in us. When this happens we become connected or one with God and filled with God’s love, enabling us to be bringers of God’s love to a loveless world. We are filled with God’s love, and like God, what if we are only able to exert the power of this love? (and when I say ‘only’ I don’t mean this in an inferior way to the way of violent divine intervention!) What if we, as Christians, are able to exert the power of divine love?

For me, living in this reality, means my prayers are less about ‘divine intervention’ but for ‘Spirit-filled intervention’ — for the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of those who suffer, to bring about inner peace and transformation, and also for the Holy Spirit to work through the lives of others — to be conduits for God’s love — and to work to alleviate suffering and pain wherever it may be encountered. Rather than diminishing the power of God, I am more expectant for God to work through those who are filled with the Holy Spirit.

We live in a world where there is unimaginable pain and suffering, and we are not to be bystanders, imploring a remote God to divinely intervene. Paul’s call to prayer, the one from Ephesians 6 comes on the back of the teaching on ‘the armour of God’. We are an army of God-filled warriors called to work in the power of God’s love. We’re not there yet, but love will win. Let me close with the words from Paul in his letter to the church in Ephesus:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

Amen.

Holy God
I put my trust
in the power of your love.
Fill me with your Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of Jesus,
that I may be so
filled with your love,
that I may be a
bringer of peace, justice
and reconciliation to a
broken and hurting world.
Amen.

Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash