Have you ever felt the disappointment of incompletion? You set out with a list of tasks to achieve, but everything seems to fall through your hands. At the end of your day, you look back over what you have done and realize you have effectively completed nothing. This is the life of living a life of finitude, a life of being limited. Because we are finite, we are limited in our capabilities to achieve what we set our sights upon.

This feeling also comes when we see the work of our hands dissolving into dust around us. You labor in a workplace, spend your energy in a ministry, or devote your commitment to a relationship, and in the blink of an eye, it is taken away. The job ends, the ministry folds, the relationship breaks down, and you’re left wondering why you bothered and whether effort is really worth it.

However, one of the most deadly aspects of feeling our finitude is that we can be tempted to project our finitude onto God. Since we so often fail to accomplish what we aim at, maybe God is the same? The devil quietly whispers in our ear that just like those we love, God doesn’t have the ability to keep His word. Our hearts begin to believe that the same limits and frustrations will be found in God. This is a lie of the devil.

The Lord our God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (all-present). There is no limit to His promise, His will, or His ability to accomplish it. All that the Lord says, He will bring to pass. Don’t believe the lie! The devil and this world want to convince you that not only is God unwilling, but He is unable.

The devil says, “The Lord is not able”, but the Bible says, “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”¹

The devil says, “The Lord will be stopped”, but the Bible says, “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”²

The devil says, “The Lord will change his mind”, but the Bible says, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”³

The devil says, “The Lord will fail to do what he says”, but the Bible says, “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.”⁴

Don’t allow the devil, or your own heart, to project your finitude upon the Lord. The Lord is faithful and able, he will bring all things to completion. Allow your finitude to fuel your trust in the Lord your God, for he is nothing like you. Say with the Apostle Paul, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”⁵

1. Psalm 135:6 ↩︎
2. Job 42:2 ↩︎
3. Numbers 23:19 ↩︎
4. Joshua 21:45 ↩︎
5. Ephesians 3:20–21 ↩︎