Joy Without Limits

We live with limits. We drive within speed limits. We live within city limits. We use equipment that has weight limits. We can only lift so much, run so fast, jump so high, hold our breaths so long. And the older we get the more we discover our limitations list has grown. To compensate, we just pull back and try to live within the boundaries of our abilities.

Unfortunately, we impose those standards on God. We look at our sorrows, our crises, our drama and classify them as beyond God’s ability. Without ever turning them over to Him, we decide He can’t do anything even if we wanted Him to. 

Jesus met a man whose son had a demon. The man had already placed limits on the boy’s condition. He had tried everything he could do and none of it helped. He asked others for help, including Jesus’ disciples, and their help didn’t help. Now he stood before Jesus and said with no confidence, “If you can do anything…”

Speaking to the One whose very words created the earth they stood upon, he challenged Him with the word “if.” If—a word of cynical limitations. I’m not expecting You to be able to do anything either, but if You want a shot at it, here’s my problem. There’s no faith in that statement, no confidence, no trust, no belief that an almighty God is even listening to our prayer, much less engaged in accomplishing what concerns us. Obviously, there’s no joy.

Joy is the outflow of trusting. It is the overflow of a confident life. It is upflow of an inner assurance that we belong to a God bigger than our lives, our problems, our needs. It is the peace that God is walking with me in this night and He’s bigger than the storm.

Putting limits on God robs us of that joy.

Question: What happened in the past that made you place limits on God?

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