Ryan, my 7 year old, and I were walking around in the mall one time. He wanted to buy a particular Transformer Robot. He had a budget but the one he liked was way beyond his budget.
As a father, I really (REALLY, REALLY!) wanted to go over the budget and pay off the extra so that he could get what he wanted. I had to stop myself and limit myself from doing it because of several principles at work in parenting.
He is learning that he cannot get everything he wants. I can buy him a lot of what he wants but I choose not to.
There are times it breaks my heart when I see he really wants to get something but I have to stop myself. There are times I let him have it yet there are times I don’t.
Why? Getting everything he wants may not always be best for him.
Then I had a thought… “That’s probably the same way with me and my Heavenly Father. Getting everything I want is not necessarily what’s best for me.”
We all like Jeremiah 29:11 which says, “I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. (Message).
However, the bottomline is that it still comes down to what God thinks is best for us.
God has the ability to limit the amount of power He releases in my life. As Augustus Strong simply puts it,
“God can do all He will, but He will not do all He can. Else His power is mere force acting necessarily, and God would be the slave of His own omnipotence. God is not compelled to do all He can do, but uses as much of His power as He pleases. Just because He is omnipotent, He doesn’t have to do all He can do.”
These are the times when God limits Himself.
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