Things God Cannot Do

Depending upon how you parse and classify, the list of things God cannot do varies. For some people, the list looks like this:

1. God cannot do anything against His nature.

And then they are done. If you are going to have a single-item list, I will concede that is a pretty good one. It does cover the items on my list if you stretch it a bit, so people who opt for the one-item-fits-all answer would consider the list below as one item with subheadings. I've given them all separate status, however, because (a) there are distinctions in responsibility, and (b) I believe that the three-item list below greatly expands our understanding; saying that God cannot do anything against His nature is a little like boiling down a logic argument to "A does not equal not A," which sounds rather profound, but does not explain very much.

So here is a 3-point list of things God cannot do.

1. God cannot do anything against His Word. 

In a sense, His Word and His nature are the same, but we've never seen God do anything in the scriptures without His Word in addition to not against His Word, so I think there is a distinction between 'His nature' and 'His word.'  The Word is living and active, cf Hebrews 4:12, it performs, creates, and penetrates. But sometimes it is God's nature to rest.

2. God cannot do anything without faith.

Comparing Matthew 13:58 with Mark 6:5, we have an account of Jesus not being able to do miracles because of the unbelief that he was encountering. I remember some debates from seminary days when one side would say that 'God has no faith' and argue that since for God, simply declaring it makes it true, that He doesn't need/use faith. At the time it seemed... something close to esoteric. I had a sense than that something was missing in their argument, and in the decades since,  I have come to believe that the 'God has no faith' premise is utterly false and only appears as if it could be true after also accepting the view that our 4-dimensional space, mass, time universe is all.   

3. God is (sometimes) limited by men.

We can use the same scripture for #3 as we did for #2, but draw a different aspect of truth from it.  The men's doubt and unbelief limited what God was able to do. In Ezekiel 22:30 we find that  God needed a faithful person to stand in the gap, so that He would not destroy the land.
John Wesley observed, "God does nothing but in answer to prayer." Wherever Satan is 'the god of this world,' see 2 Corinthians 4:4, the True God must be invited to act by a human representative who has an earth body that gives the human being authority on Earth. We "have not because (we) ask not," see James 4:3, (and yes, fights and wrong motives are often a cause, but also,) we must ask in faith and not doubt, see James 1:6.  A conundrum oftentimes arises here because God chose to give men freewill. That puts limits on God since He cannot violate His Word that gave mankind a free will in the first place.

Each of those three areas need to be understood in depth, but I am impelled to keep the focus on this blog's purpose of comparing real life with scripture. 

I have a print of M C Esher's Waterfall in my dining area. It shows a cascading aqueduct where the water appears to be "falling uphill" until it eventually spills over a waterwheel.  Escher used geometry and optical illusions to make a fantastical perpetual motion machine.

Although I am fairly certain that the artist did not have this in mind when he created his original lithograph, it effectively illustrates that God's "impossibilities" flow together.  God's word produces faith as it is heard and allowed to take root in a person's heart. But the person's heart must also be in agreement with God's word.  Any interruption will break the flow of the life-giving stream.

Remember Romans 10:17? So then the faith is by a report, and the report through a word of God.  We are used to the King James translation that uses hearing in place of report. The idea that Paul was expressing is not only about the 'hearer's ears' but includes what is being heard. It is a full concept that encompasses both the act of hearing and the thing heard— the preaching, the report.
 
The Lesson
 Contrary to Gwen's belief (she is the mother of the runaway bride, for those of you who have not been reading the earlier posts) that the engagement fell apart because the marriage was "not meant to be," the reason that the engagement fell apart was because KatieLyn chose to run away. The marriage was meant to be, but she did not want to trust God for it. KatieLyn placed herself in a position where God could not go against her own belligerent will.  Marriage was something God could not perform without KatieLyn's agreement.

Gwen needs to stop telling herself that the disaster that her daughter created was God's will. Gwen ought to quit accusing Joe and me of not hearing God.  I'm not holding my breath though because stubborn, controlling people often cling to their self-deception more strongly than they pursue the thoughts of God.