And when He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was sleeping. And they came to Him and got Him up, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” And He said to them, “Why are you so cowardly, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. And the men marveled, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
Matthew 8:23–27
Why do we insist on having such a low expectation of our God? Why do we repeatedly underestimate Him? Why, after so much evidence to the contrary, is our faith so small, so timid? Why do we so often behave in the shameful fashion of those praying “fervently” for the release of Peter from prison—who then rejected the idea that God had actually answered their prayers? The apostle Peter had been imprisoned under heavy guard by Herod Agrippa.
When he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people. So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.
The friends of Peter, including no doubt many of his fellow apostles, were holding earnest, intense prayer meetings for their friend and brother in Christ. And those prayers were indeed answered.
Now on the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter’s side and woke him up, saying, “Rise up quickly.” And his chains fell off his hands.
Now we come to the embarrassing part of the story. The angel supernaturally leads Peter out of the prison, through iron gates and past guard posts. Once Peter is out of danger the angel disappears, and he suddenly realizes that what he thought was a dream or a vision was, in fact, real. Peter immediately goes to the house where everyone has been praying for him, the house belonging to John Mark’s mother, Mary. The servant-girl Rhoda answers his knock and, overcome with joy at his release, she forgets to let Peter inside and rushes back into the house to inform the prayer meeting that its prayers have been answered! Their response?
And they said to her, “You are out of your mind!” But she kept insisting that it was so. They kept saying, “It is his angel.” But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door, they saw him and were astounded.
Acts 12:1–16
They were astounded that God had answered their prayers.
Why do we blithely accept as factual truth that God created from nothing—spoke into existence creatio ex nihilo—the entire universe and all its inhabitants; that He released underground fountains and hideously torrential rain to flood the entire earth; that He sent other-worldly plagues against Egypt, then parted the sea to permit Israel’s escape from Pharaoh’s chariots—why do we believe all this and far more, yet wonder if he can or will answer our small prayers?
Why do today’s doubts linger when we believe that God will one day, perhaps even tomorrow, return Christ to gather His church, judge the nations, rule for a thousand years, then destroy Satan and evil for all eternity; that after that He will replace this earth with one shiny and new, and dwell for all eternity with His people—why do we trust in all this universe-shattering prophecy, yet question His decisions for our small lives?
While Israel was still sojourning to the Promised Land, God once again revealed his extraordinary, limitless power—this time in a rather artistic, organic manner, during a period when certain sons of Levi were whining that they couldn’t be priests as well.
Then they assembled together against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and Yahweh is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of Yahweh?”
Yahweh answered this insurrection against His order that only the seed of Aaron could be priests, by opening the ground to consume all those who had rebelled against Him. Even so, remarkably, instead of falling down in submission before omnipotent Yahweh, the people en masse took up the grumbling.
But on the next day all the congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You are the ones who have caused the death of the people of Yahweh.”
This time Yahweh took a different approach to answer their arrogant disobedience. He told Moses to have the heads of all twelve tribes present a rod on which the fathers’ name of his tribe was written. Thus, on the rod for the tribe of Levi would be Aaron’s name. And Yahweh declared,
“You shall then deposit them in the tent of meeting in front of the testimony, where I meet with you. And it will come about that the rod of the man whom I choose will sprout. Thus I will rid Myself of the grumblings of the sons of Israel, who are grumbling against you.”
Reach into your cleaning closet and pull out a broom with a wooden handle. You can dance around and swing a dead chicken over your head; you can pray and beseech whichever god you call upon; you can promise anything under your control, dip it in rich fertilizer, a bucket of warm water—do anything you like, but that broom handle will never sprout new growth.
What do we typically expect the Lord God to do in this scene? We picture the Israelites peeking at the barren rods the next morning and discovering one wispy, delicate leaf sprouting from Aaron’s rod. We know it will be Aaron’s rod; that is a given, even if one is not familiar with the story. But what we expect is one fragile shoot emerging from his rod. Now that’s a miracle! Who else but Yahweh could do such a thing.
But our expectations of Him are, as usual, too low.
So Moses deposited the rods before Yahweh in the tent of the testimony. Now it happened on the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced flowers, and it bore ripe almonds.
Numbers 16-17
Not just simple life from lifelessness; not just meager evidence of growth from a dead stick. Oh no, just as He could speak a universe into existence in less than a few days or create a living man from the clay of Eden, Yahweh in one night caused a dead stick to produce flowers and bear ripe almonds!
The word “omnipotent” means just that, having unlimited power. Our God can do anything.
Since He has at His command all the power in the universe, the Lord God omnipotent can do anything as easily as anything else. All His acts are done without effort. He expends no energy that must be replenished. His self-sufficiency makes it unnecessary for Him to look outside of Himself for a renewal of strength. All the power required to do all that He wills to do lies in undiminished fullness in His own infinite being.
A. W. Tozer
And it is a measure of our insipid, lackluster faith that we do not embrace that truth every day of our lives. If He is capable of doing everything He has already done, then He is certainly capable of doing everything within His will in your life.
We must stop our bad habit of thinking of God from our perspective, from our example, from our non-omnipotent standard. We are born from the soil and we have a habit of thinking from the soil. Our God is not of the soil; He is not like us. And He is not just “better” than us, but supernaturally, other-worldly, incomprehensibly supreme. We can pray to Him and trust Him by that measure.
He is El Shaddai, Almighty God!
Issue #901 May 2025
Reflections by the Pond is published monthly at dlampel.com and is © 2025 David S. Lampel. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com. Photo credits: Cover broom, Saskia Wustefeld; cover leaf, Kwang Javier—both on Unsplash. This and all of our resources are offered free-of-charge to the glory and praise of Christ our Lord.