I ended that last chapter with a statement, which I hope and pray made you think a bit about the absolute sovereignty of God. I did this for several reasons, not the least of which is my continued frustration with those “Christians” who so readily place God in a box.< p>

What I mean by that is the manner in which so many people who claim to believe in God, His Son and His perfect plan of salvation, also go around making comments to the extent of, “I would ask God to do something about this situations, but …” In other words, they do not really believe in either His power or His love.

If you are one of those people and you make a regular habit of making such comments, I challenge you to ask yourself why. Why do you, who claim to be a believer, not believe that Almighty God can and will answer your prayers?

If the problem is that you do not yet fully grasp His love for you and His care and attention to your needs, then you need to ask yourself again if you are truly saved. If, on the other hand, the problem is your lack of faith in God’s ability to answer your prayer, then you need to ask yourself in what it is that you are trusting for anything … especially your salvation.

The Bible makes an interesting statement along these lines, saying “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and unfading, reserved in Heaven for you by the power of God, having been kept through faith to a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time;” – I Peter 1: 3-5 This is an all important Scripture and teaches us the importance of recognizing and even cherishing our faith in the power of God.

Notice that Peter tells us who are saved that our inheritance is reserved in Heaven “by the power of God.” Whenever we allow ourselves to begin questioning the ability of God to work out any given situation in our best interest, we are also questioning the power in which the Bible says that our inheritance as believers is held.

So the question must then be raised, exactly how powerful is God? The Bible tells us all we really need to know.

We can see from Scripture that the earth has been orbiting the sun for about six thousand years, that God put it there and that it is held in place by His will. In all those six thousand years it has never drifted so much as the three degrees variant of its course which would be required to destroy all live on the planet.

If you ask me that is a pretty good record and an awesome testimony to the power of God. Now remember that Peter said the saved are “kept through faith” by that same power and rest assured that if you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you too are held forever in that same, unshakable power.

At this point, those of us who have already made the decision and received His will in our lives, need to reflect on the third of our three questions. That is, “do you believe this?”

Do you believe that the power of the living God is great enough to hold both you and your eternal inheritance without compromise? Would you like to take a look at just how strong that power is before you make a decision?

The Bible says, “Make a joyful noise to Jehovah, all you lands. Worship Jehovah with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know that Jehovah, He is God. He has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For Jehovah is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endures to all generations.” -Psalm 100: 1-5 I do not know about you, but just pondering that leaves me I a state of awe.

He has made us. We have not in any manner, way, shape or form had even a hand in our creation or our development as individuals. That is right. Most people take this merely to mean that He formed us in the womb, but a careful study will show that at no point does the psalmist say that He formed our bodies.

He has formed every aspect of our being and made us who and what we are because we are the sheep of His pasture. We belong to Him!

This is of course only an echo of the Scripture which says, “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” - Genesis 2: 7 Almighty God created us, has dominion over us and has numbered the days of our lives because we are His possessions.

Also, note that in describing the Lord’s goodness, the psalmist declares that, His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endures to all generations.” This tells us two very important things.

First, if God’s mercy is everlasting, then the love which He shows us by offering salvation as a free gift can have no end. So often as human beings we think of love as a temporal, passing emotion of the heart, but God’s love has been from before the foundation of the world, has never wavered and will still be going strong ten thousand years beyond the judgment.

Second, we read that His truth endures to all generations. This tidbit of theology has been repeatedly quoted by well meaning pastors and put to tunes by some wonderful musicians, but seldom do we really think about what he is saying hear.

To understand this passage more fully, we must remember that Christ said, “Jesus said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me.” – John 14: 6 and “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

God has given us the opportunity to know the full truth of who He is and His plan for us in Christ. This promise, if we will only grab hold of it, is good for all of eternity. It will never pass away and we who have embraced it will never again be captives in bonds.

If by chance you have not received Him as your Savior, then I would urge you to do so right now. God the Father loves you and He desires for you to live with Him in Heaven forever, but in order to do so you have to come to Him on His terms.

His Word says that Jesus Christ is the only way to Him, which brings us back to the first of our three questions, “What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” What will you do with Him today? Will you let Him come into your heart?

Will you invite Him in, not just as a visitor but as the permanent resident? He is waiting for you to decide.

The Bible also says that even such things as our intelligence are not of our own making. Certainly it is within our power to seek after knowledge, but God alone dictates to whom such will come.

The Word declares this, saying, “Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals the deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.”-Daniel 2: 20-22 Wisdom, knowledge, the times and the seasons are given to us and taken back by God alone.

We are at His mercy and it is a very beautiful thing to the soul of one who has recognized his own sin, to know that there is mercy indeed in the living God and not only wrath. Indeed He reveals the deep and secret things of our hearts and convicts us of our sin, that we might come to Him through His Son’s sacrifice, despite the fact that we deserve to come before Him for judgment.

What great power, but how few surrender to it these days. Too many would rather face Him as their judge than as their Savior.

Why? Because once we have begun to doubt the power of God to intervene in our lives, we then begin to question His ability to decide our eternal destiny.

The reason we begin to doubt God’s ability to intervene in seemingly impossible situations, is because we try to limit God to our own realm of understanding. We try to keep our understanding of Him comfortable to our own limited minds.

But Scripture teaches us that it is during these very times that we must resist most fervently the urge to limit God. If any man ever had the opportunity to doubt God, it was Job, but the Bible tells us, “And Job answered Jehovah and said, I know that You can do all, and not any purpose is withheld from You.”-Job 42: 1-2

We all need to take a lesson from Job and trust God. If Job could trust Him to deliver him from the afflictions which Satan had poured out upon him and we are told to trust Him for our salvation unto eternity, then we must begin by trusting Him with the everyday round of “impossible.”

We must remember that Scripture tells us, “For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He may be pre-eminent in all things.”-Colossians 1: 16-18 I take the greatest comfort in this passage at times when it seems like nothing is going right.

Notice that the list of “things” given here transverse from the natural over which we commonly acknowledge His control in the heavens and the earth, all the way to those which we might be tempted to think are merely institutions of men, such as thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. In truth, there is nothing happening to us right now which God has not allowed and which He does not desire to work out according to His will and for His glory.

This is why Paul wrote, “and by Him all things consist.” Meditate on that for a moment if you would. “By Him,” means by Him alone, without the aid of men or angels and can be understood as “by his will.” “All things,” literally means everything, from the finite object, to the infinite thought, to the situation with which you are currently burdened. “Consist,” comes from the Greek word “sunistao,” which quite literally means “set together. So literally we could translate this passage as “by His will everything we experience, both finite and infinite, are set together.”

Tell me, what kind of power is that? The answer is, it is the only kind of power in which I would want to trust for my salvation. The Scriptures we have thus far covered, should give assurance that our God is in fact omnipotent, but I ended the last chapter by stating that I would prove from Scripture the He is also omniscient and omnipresent. With that in mind, let us turn now to some other verses.

We will begin with the verse which declares, “I know all the birds of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are Mine.”- Psalm 50: 11 Herein the Lord tells us plainly that He knows ever creature and in fact owns them, just as He has divine ownership over each and every one of us.

Consider if you would, that in order to know such things, God would have to know all things. Consider then, that if He knows all things, then He knows whether you have received His son as your Savior and, if you have, how to hold your eternal inheritance without loss.

In a later passage the Bible says, “O Jehovah, You have searched me and have known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You search my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Jehovah, You know it altogether. You have closed me in behind and in front, and laid Your hand on me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot go up to it.”-Psalm 139: 1-6 The God-inspired author, moved by the Holy Spirit in his writing, declares without question that the God of Gods knows not only him, but everything about him, down to the deepest desires of his heart.

Perhaps the most awesome statement here made is the cry to the Lord, “You understand my thought afar off.” It should be convicting even to the most devout believer to know that He knows our thoughts clearly when they are still distant and unformed. He knows the words we speak. His knowledge is so complete that the psalmist says it is too wonderful for him and too high for him to reach!

The same is true for you and me. We cannot know the thoughts of God, nor even completely comprehend His love, nor His mercy, nor His grace.

If we could, it would be so much easier to accept His gift of salvation. As mere human beings we often times have trouble grasping the concept of God loving us so much He would be manifested in the flesh and die for us.

But the Bible says He can do this because He knows our weaknesses and the fact that we could never be righteous in and of ourselves. He has seen our whole lives and knows the outcome of our days before we are even born, as the Word says, “My bones were not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skillfully formed in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo; and in Your book all my members were written, the days they were formed, and not one was among them.”- Psalm 139: 15-16

God knows that you are a fallen sinner. He knows every mistake you have ever mad and every one you ever will.

He knows exactly how man times you will violate His law. He knows whether you are going to truly repent.

That is why Jesus Christ was crucified for you, to be a perfect sin offering. God wanted to bridge the gap between you and Him which was created in the Garden of Eden and which you have continually widened with your own sins, but He knew that there would have to be a sacrifice.

I will get into the hows and the whys of the sacrifice in chapter five. For now, we need to look at what Scripture has to say about the omnipresence of God.

Once, while debating theology with a preacher in my hometown, we came upon the concept of God’s omnipresence. To my complete disbelief, this man who holds a Master’s Degree in Divinity, told me that he did not believe in the omnipresence of God.

I guess to me, the concept has always seemed quite fundamental. It is something I took pretty much for granted even before I was saved.

This man proceeded to tell me that there was no way he could accept the omnipresence of God as a fact, because that concept was not truly conceivable to the human mind.

Again, one individual decides that what the Bible says does not make sense to him, therefore the Bible must be wrong. I challenged him to show me where in Scripture we are told that we have the right to throw out those parts of His Word with which we struggle in understanding.

Not surprisingly I am still waiting for his response in that matter, as well as his explanation of why he says that Jesus is not God and several other debates. At the current time, he has ceased to debate with me and I doubt he will ever resume the effort, since he cannot possibly argue against Scripture.

I have already used more space here than what I initially set aside for this topic, so I am going to limit myself to two passages of Scripture. After all, even one proof from Scripture is proof enough.

Let us consider that the psalmist said, “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I go up into Heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the furthest parts of the sea; even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light around me. Yea, the darkness does not hide from You; but the night shines as the day; as is the darkness, so is the light to You.”-Psalm 139: 7-12 “Where shall I go,” he asks, “that You are not there.

No one will ever go high enough, low enough or far enough abroad to escape the presence of God. Some have claimed that this is because god knows where we are going and arrives there prior, but once again, this is men limiting God.

This also applies to where we are emotionally. We have all had troubles from time to time with sunny day friends who are our closest confidants when we are in those soaring high times, but cannot be found when we hit those low times and it feels as though we are making our beds in the grave of Sheol.

The Word of God tells us here that God does not desert. He is the one friend who shares our every trial, test and tribulation.

Finally, this passage tells that regardless of whether we soar spiritually or fall and regardless of how many times we wonder from the path, He never ceases to be there, desiring to show us His forgiving love. We all, even the saved, fail God daily, but God never fails us and He is always right there to prove it, if we will only trust in this promise.

So, one might ask, how is it that God is able to be in all places at one time? Consider again the passage we studied earlier, which said “For all things were created in Him”-Colossians 1: 16 Notice the wording is “all things were created in Him.” Now many translations render this as “by” Him, as though it denoted God as the creator of all things, but a careful study of the Greek shows us that the word here is “??,” which literally means “to be fixed in place” either in space or in time.

So all things in Heaven and on earth were created not only by Him and through Him, but also in Him. God almighty both surrounds and permeates all of creation all of the time!

Now I realize that, based upon that last statement, someone out there will probably accuse me of pantheism. However, pantheism includes the worship of nature.

What I am saying is that the Bible has once again granted us the answer to a great question which has pondered modern science. It has been known for a number of years that at the subatomic level, atoms are held together by an unseen and until now unnamed force, which some have referred to as the “nuclear glue.”

I speculate based upon this passage, that the force in question is in fact the very will of Almighty God. By his very thoughts He gives stick to the “nuclear glue” which science, despite its inability to locate and study, cannot deny.

He has done so since the beginning of creation and He will continue to do so until the end of time as we know it. If He ever ceased to do so, then all things which consist in Him would cease to exist.

In closing, let us reflect upon the Scripture which says, “And I heard as the sound of a great multitude, and as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of strong thunders, saying, Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigns!”-Revelation 19: 6 In the Greek, the words ?????????? ????? ????????????, which is translated “The Lord God Omnipotent,” literally reads as a name, “Supreme All Ruling Deity.” This name serves to both exalt God and give assurance of the fact that, despite what Satan might try to convince of, almighty God has always been in control and will remain so forever. He is, as the name suggests, all ruling and, thereby, all powerful.

He has the ability to do anything He might desire, including being everywhere at once. If He can and is everywhere all the time, then it is not so big a thing that He knows all things.

I wrote this chapter in part to further explain why the doctrine of trinity is biblical, but more important than that is the fact that your redemption is biblical. If God is all powerful, everywhere and all knowing, then He has the power to pull you back from wherever you are and He knows how to make you right with Him through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ!