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Power. The world seems to revolve around it, doesn’t it? There’s political power, power in relationships, the power of physical strength, and even electrical power that all make the world go around. I can think of so many cartoons I watched as a kid that were all about power - usually super powers, and the powers of good versus the powers of evil. What makes us humans so fascinated with power?

It is part of our human nature to be hungry for power. The first humans on earth, Adam and Eve, were hungry for the power of knowing good and evil as only God did. They were so hungry for that power, in fact, that their sinful act thrust all of humanity into a downward spiral of sin that we’re all still stuck in. It is our human nature to want to have power, whatever kind of power that may be.

As much as we humans may always want to have more power, we will never be all powerful. Only God is all powerful, and that is our word this week - omnipotence. Omnipotence means that God is able to do all things, as long as it does not conflict with His divine will - more on that later. God’s power is limited only by His own nature, and not by anything outside of Him.

A guy named Job in the Old Testament of the Bible discovered God’s power the hard way. God allowed Satan to ruin Job’s life in disastrous ways, but yet Job held onto his faith in God. Toward the end of this situation in Job’s life, he tells God: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2) Even when Job was powerless to make his earthly life better, he recognized God as omnipotent.

Jesus confirmed this omnipotence in Matthew 19:26 when he said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

However, throughout history, even the great minds who study theology (the study of God) have wrestled with God’s omnipotence. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian who lived in the 13th century, pondered the potential limitations of God’s power as this question: “Can God create a square triangle?” If God really can do anything, he could create a square triangle. But, God’s power is limited by the laws of the universe that He created; a triangle simply can’t be square. Aquinas said, “If it is said that God is omnipotent because he can do everything possible to his power, the understanding of omnipotence is circular, doing nothing more than saying that God is omnipotent because he can do everything that he can do.”

Even if we can’t fully wrap our minds around what great theologians like Thomas Aquinas wrestled with, we can be confident that God has way more power than any human being and that can give us comfort knowing that He is in control of everything.

As humans, we desire power. God is and has all the power in the entire universe and beyond. Therefore, doesn’t it logically follow that we should desire God?

Because of our sinful nature as humans, we desire to be omnipotent as God is. This is evidenced today by the fact that basically every cartoon, movie, novel, etc is about a some character desiring or achieving more power, and the consequences that causes. In a perfect world, we would desire God and his omnipotence with all our might.

It is our challenge as those who follow Christ to not desire power for ourselves, but rather to be content with God’s omnipotence and to worship Him because He is almighty and all powerful.