The
reason God permits this great imbalance to occur is that he wants to use a
quantity that he holds, the divine infinity (¥).
To better picture how God reverses this inequality by
using his secret quantity, let us represent the inequality by a formula
R/C<<1, where R represents our limited resources and C, the great
challenges. For example, for
Gideon, this ratio was probably 0.001 (300 divided by 300,000). The same was for David facing Goliath. King Hezekiah facing
Sennacherib and the young man, holding his brown bag, facing a `stadium’ full
of hungry people.
What God
did in each case however, is enter the equation, in the numerator,
with his ¥
resources. David knew from experience
what God could do when He said, “the battle is mine” (I Sam. 17:37 and 47). He used this knowledge, believed Him and
charged the enemy. The infinity he
used was the `name of the Lord Almighty’ (vs. 45). Any number, no matter how
small, when multiplied by infinity, reverses the R/C ratio and makes it much
greater than 1.
For Gideon, the infinity was `a sword for the Lord and
for Gideon’ (Judges 7:20). For the young
man with the fish and loaves, it was our Lord’s empowered hands, all of which
reversed the ratio from very much less than one, to very much larger than one.
The following principles emerge from the above
situations:
1. God does not
like `nothing’ or `0’. After all, He
created something from nothing. Multiplying `0’ with `¥’ yields nothing! There is no resource too insignificant for
God that He cannot use it.
2. Each of us
needs to yield our resources, talents, gifts, no matter how meager, to him to
multiply by his infinite power. Any
number, no matter how small (but greater than “0”), when multiplied by infinity
overpowers the greatest challenge in the world.
3. By taking our
resources and multiplying them, God becomes our partner, albeit the senior partner, in having us face
seemingly insurmountable odds. Only once
in Scripture do we read that God took upon himself to bring salvation (Isaiah
63:5). God’s exclusive preference is to
use his people as his hands and feet.
The outcome of all of this is
victory over life’s numerous, often-daunting challenges, but where all glory
and honor go to the Triune God. This was
clearly articulated by David who gave no credit to his skilled marksmanship in
downing Goliath, but rather to the name of the Lord (I Sam. 17:45). In fact, we can join David, when he later
wrote Psalm 20, declaring “…some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we
trust in the name of the Lord our God.”
The Apostle Paul expresses this
inner working of God’s power, through his Holy Spirit by coining a new Greek
word – upper-ik-parisso – translated in the
NIV to “immeasurably more’ than we ask or think” (Eph. 3:21).
The word actually means super-extra-abundance, an extreme state
of affairs which only the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit can bring about.
Therefore, with Apostle Paul we can say with confidence “And God is able to
make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all
that you need, you will abound in every good work” (II Cor.
9:8).