A Mighty God

This is getting to be a regular thing. It happened in 2016 when I went home for my father's funeral, and we had to make an emergency landing in Okinawa and I was stranded there overnight. It happened in 2018 when my flight out of Portland was canceled and I had to spend an extra day in the States. The Lord used both of these unfortunate travel experiences to show me something, and those experiences gave rise to three articles on this website (see here, here, and here).

Well, it happened again.

Admittedly, this most recent travel mishap was not nearly as disruptive as the previous two, but the Lord still used it to show me something—and the Holy Spirit wasted no time in poking and prodding me to write about what the Lord had shown me.

As I do every year, typically in the September/October time frame, I recently spent two weeks visiting my family in Washington. They live in a small city about 45 minutes north of Portland, Oregon, and I had a perfectly enjoyable visit for the entire two weeks. Before I get into what happened, however, a quick word about my itinerary is in order.

In 2016, when I was stranded in Okinawa overnight, my Delta Airlines flight was from Taipei to Tokyo and Tokyo to Portland, and the same route back. A few months later, however, Delta quit serving Taiwan, and I had to shop around for a different flight. In 2017, I started flying United Airlines, which has an agreeable pair of flights that take me from Taipei to San Francisco and San Francisco to Portland that get me to the U.S. and back on approximately the same schedule as before. I took the same flights again in 2018 (when my return flight from Portland to San Francisco was canceled and I was stuck in the States for an extra day), and I took the same United flights recently.

OK, so I was ready to come home to Taiwan after my perfectly enjoyable visit a few weeks ago, and early Saturday morning my younger sister and my mom took me to the airport. We got to the airport in plenty of time, and proceeded to sit and have coffee in the terminal, as we always do. Glancing once again at the boarding pass my sister had printed out for me at home, I noted the time prominently displayed: 0910.

Now, on a trip summary I had received in my email from United Airlines the previous day, the times that were prominently displayed in bold print were the times that boarding began, with the actual departure times displayed below those times in smaller print. I groggily assumed this was the same deal—boarding begins at 0910.

So we finished our coffee and said our goodbyes, and I proceeded through the security screening and headed toward my gate. As I approached the gate at about 9:15 or so, I knew I had plenty of time and assumed that boarding would just be getting underway. But as I drew near, things were eerily quiet and the seating area was strangely deserted. Before my brain could begin to process what I was seeing, one of the two women behind the counter spoke words that caused my panic to start lacing up its boots:

"Are you Mr. Lauer?"

I replied in the affirmative, and glanced through the terminal window and noticed a plane that had just disengaged from the passenger boarding bridge and was now ever so slowly rolling away from the gate area.

Oh no...it can't be...

Now my panic was saddled up and ready to roll.

A tsunami of agonizing disbelief crashed over me as I slumped over onto the counter and struggled to come to grips with the fact that I had just stupidly missed my flight by confusing the boarding and departure times. One of the women behind the counter quickly got to work on the computer, trying to find a way to extricate me from my predicament. As she tapped on her keyboard, mumbled phrases such as "purchase a new ticket," "that one's full," and "may have to come back tomorrow" escaped from her lips.

I started having flashbacks of last year, when my flight to San Francisco had been canceled due to mechanical problems and I really did have to come back the next day. I thought about logging onto the free airport WiFi so I could call my sister and tell her to do a U-turn, just like last year. But that could wait for a few moments. Instead, I did the only thing I knew to do.

I began to pray.

And as she continued typing, I continued praying. After several excruciating minutes, she said it appeared she could put me on an Alaska Airlines flight that would get me to San Francisco in time. She explained that the flight left in about an hour; and although I would have less time in San Francisco, I would still be able to catch my flight to Taipei.

Now it was a tsunami of joy and relief that crashed over me, as I hurriedly made my way to my new gate. I boarded the Alaska Airlines flight with no problems, and as the plane taxied out on the runway, I settled back into my seat. I was still praying on and off, thanking the Lord for His help and provision, and for the fact that I hadn't been forced to call my sister and ask her to come back to the airport and get me. To be honest, I was pondering whether or not I would even tell my family about this little snafu, since I cringed at the thought of having them think I was sufficiently addlebrained to confuse the boarding and departure times on an airline boarding pass (which I am, evidently).

But at any rate, I was feelin' good, basking in the glow you experience when a mighty God has shown Himself mighty on your behalf, and has come through for you in the clutch.

A mighty God—oh, you know that's right.

The thought breezed through my mind of writing an article about my little mishap, but I promptly thought better of it. I already had another topic in the works, and besides, this was just a little mix-up that they were able to fix without too much trouble. Just thank the Lord and move on.

No drama...no disaster. Not much for the Holy Spirit to work with here, no sir. Nothing that would be particularly edifying to other believers. Just another answered prayer—all's well that ends well and all that.

Next thing I knew I was singing "What a Mighty God We Serve" under my breath. But just when I thought I was in the francisco clear...that's when things got interesting. And what followed made me change my mind about writing about the experience.

Out of the frying pan...

So my Alaska Airlines flight was taxiing on the runway, and I estimated that I would have about an hour in San Francisco to catch my next United flight to Taipei. Great. It's all systems go, baby—let's fly those friendly skies.

Suddenly, the captain came on the intercom and made an announcement—something about a "slowdown," and that we would have to wait awhile to take off. It didn't register at first, since it's not unusual for a plane to have to wait a few minutes for its turn to take off; but then he said something that brought back that now all-too-familiar tsunami of agonizing disbelief:

"Folks, it looks like we won't be taking off for about another hour."

Things had yo-yoed from good to bad to better to abysmal. I was physically on the plane and was most definitely going to San Francisco at some point in time; but this raised the specter of successfully making it to San Francisco only to miss my flight to Taipei, and possibly being stuck in the City by the Bay for an unspecified period of time. Being stuck in Portland for an extra day last year was bad enough, but at least I was home with family. I had that support system. But being stuck in San Francisco?! (Or San Fran-skid-row, as I like to call it.) That was an entirely different ball game.

That tsunami of agonizing disbelief, however, was no match for the gyrations that were going on in my spirit. I mean, one minute I'm thanking the Lord for helping me out of one mess, and the next minute He's plunging me headlong into another one that's potentially even worse.

For a fleeting moment, I almost wondered why I had bothered to thank the Lord for what He had done for me.

And it's at that point the Holy Spirit cleared His throat and said:

"Listen up, hoss."

Now, please understand—I wasn't angry at God. I was just confused as to what He was doing. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I've been at this long enough to never get angry with the Lord, as I have known people to do on occasion. It doesn't take a whole lot of scriptural leg work to get a person past that one:

Times forty-leven thousand, you know? So being angry at God has never been an issue for me. When people get angry at God, all it does is reveal a lack of scriptural grounding and a certain degree of spiritual immaturity. Yet there I was, literally wondering why I had bothered thanking the Lord for moving on my behalf...so what did that say about my spiritual maturity?

Ouch.

Let us pray

During the last tumultuous hour, I had been praying...confessing known sin and thanking God for things He had done for me. Making sure me and God were square. I learned many years ago that one of the most fundamental aspects of staying in fellowship with God was to keep short accounts with Him, a topic John addresses in his first epistle:

And let's just say I had an account or two to settle...as usual.

Don't look at me like that: So...you don't? Well, good for you.

But now, as the panic and anxiety in regard to how or when I was going to get home nipped at my heels and at the same time I wondered what on earth God was up to, the calm, reassuring voice of the Holy Spirit began to come through. And it was short and sweet, as it usually is:

The Holy Spirit gently reminded me that
there was more to my relationship with
the Father than thanking Him for stuff.

Tell you what, why don't we leave that Alaska Airlines flight out on the tarmac for the time being and just talk, OK?

As I began to process what the Holy Spirit had shown me, a few things began to occur to me. One of the first was that when we thank the Lord for all the things He has done for us, sometimes if we're not careful the focus can end up being on us and what the Lord gives us and does for us. In other words, we can subtly shift the spotlight away from the mighty God we serve and onto ourselves and the issues we struggle with. I had never thought about it in those terms before; but the more I did, the more I could see times when it did seem the focus was on me, rather than being where it belongs—on God.

Now, I can just hear a few people out there:

Well, that's a terrific message, Bible Dude: "Don't thank God for anything! Just get, get, and more get—I me mine." Yeah, that'll have 'em runnin' to the altars.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Should we thank God for things? Well, duh. What does the Word say?

Times forty-leven thousand, you know? Of course we should thank God...for everything all the time. That's not even an intelligent question.

What the Holy Spirit was trying to get me to see, however, was that there are deep and profound aspects to our relationship with God that are more important and go far beyond just thanking Him for things, and if we allow ourselves to get too preoccupied with that we can temporarily lose sight of some of those things.

Something occurred to me while working on this article that really struck me...so much so that when it hit me, I actually double-checked Scripture to make sure my memory wasn't failing me. In Matthew 6:9–13 (also Luke 11:2–4), Jesus gives His disciples a model prayer, or prayer template you might say, and it became universally known as the Lord's Prayer. Here's Matthew's version, and I just have to quote the KJV for this one:

OK, pop quiz:

Q. How many times did Jesus actually thank His Father for something?

A. Zero.

Not once. For example, Jesus didn't say:

"Thank you for yesterday's bread."

He just asked for today's bread. Now, did Jesus have an attitude of thankfulness with respect to His Father? Yes, of course He did. But in what would go down in history as the perfect, model prayer, the words "thank you" do not appear.

Now, I'm not going to try and make a big deal out of the fact that Jesus never actually said the words "thank you" in the Lord's Prayer, but I think it is noteworthy that Jesus didn't rattle off a laundry list of things to thank His Father for. Having said that, however, it is worth noting what Jesus did say.

You could briefly summarize the content of His prayer as follows:

Our Father which art in heaven,

First and foremost, He is our Father—and as our Father, He loves us. And understand that only believers can call Him "Father," a word that aptly characterizes our family relationship with Him through Christ as adopted sons and daughters.

And He is our Father in heaven. His abode is far above the world in which we exist. He is the Almighty, the Creator, and we are His creation. He is sovereign over all, and we should remind ourselves of that regularly.

Hallowed be thy name.

Hallowed. The same word is usually translated "sanctified" in other places throughout the New Testament. In other words, He is holy. We should seek always to acknowledge and reverence God's character when we pray—His holiness, His justice, His love, His faithfulness, etc. After addressing His Father, the first declaration Jesus makes is that His Father is holy. We should assume there is a reason for that and follow suit.

Thy kingdom come.

Our prayer should not only exhibit a passion for God's glory and honor, but also for the advancement of His sovereign agenda. We should pray for God's kingdom to be established on earth, which it will.

After all, we're going to be part of it.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

God's will is always done in heaven, and we should express our desire to see the same done here on earth. By praying in this manner, we are expressing our desire to conform to His will...not our own. This serves to remind us that we should be in subjugation to His perfect will, not to our own ideas of what should happen or how we think things should be.

I see this as being no small issue in the Church today, where an alarming percentage of believers don't know the Bible well enough to understand what God's will is to begin with. For example, we see believers today praying for things like "unity" and "tolerance" in the Church, but they may in fact be praying for things that sound good to the natural man but are actually 180 degrees out from God's expressed will as written in His Word.

I couldn't have done it without you: Note also that when we pray along the lines of these last two points, it's not like we're helping God out. It's not as if we have to remind God what to do, or God can't do something unless we pray for it to happen. Trust me, the Creator of the universe is perfectly capable of carrying out His perfect, sovereign will without our puny little prayers, no matter how eloquent or well formed.

The point is that He wants us to align and conform ourselves to His will, and our prayer is one vehicle through which we can do that. In other words:

The purpose of our prayers isn't to bring
God on board with our plans—they are
to bring us on board with God's plans.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Naturally, we should pray for our real-world needs. Even though God knows what we need before we ever ask (Matt. 6:8), He still wants us to ask—if for no other reason than to remind us that He is the source of all good things and that He loves us enough to provide for us.

Also, notice it's not "Give us this day our daily filet mignon." It's bread—the most basic of foods. Simple and wholesome. God promised to meet our needs, not our greeds.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

This is about sin, which is sometimes characterized as a "debt" to a holy God. We are asking God to forgive our sins, while expressing our compliance with the command to in turn forgive others who have wronged us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

Obviously God doesn't "tempt" us in the sense of malevolently enticing us to sin, but rather allows us to go through periods of testing (which is the primary meaning of the Greek word used here), typically to discipline us or to refine us spiritually. Of course, such testing is seldom pleasant in nature, so by praying that God not let us go through such testing, we are expressing our desire and determination to live in a manner that neither warrants nor invites such testing, even though it is ultimately for our own benefit.

On the bright side, however, even when God does allow us to be tested (which He will, because we all need it from time to time), He has promised not to allow us to be tested in ways that are beyond what we can handle (1 Cor. 10:13).

In the Greek, the word translated "evil" can either be neuter or masculine, which means it can legitimately be interpreted as evil in general, or Satan in particular. However, the majority of commentators seem to lean toward viewing this as a reference to the Evil One. We should pray that God would protect us from the wiles of the devil, who is quick to capitalize on any opening he can find. So as we pray in this manner, we are expressing our determination to not give Satan a foothold in our lives.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.*

*Although Luke omits this final line in His version of the Lord's Prayer, most commentators consider it a valid part of Scripture. At any rate, I am more than happy to take a rain check on that particular scriptural furball.

Last but certainly not least, our prayer should always acknowledge God's sovereignty, His power, and His glory—a generous helping of this should float on top of our prayers like cream on a latte.

Amen.

Amen and amen. Now that's a prayer.

Of course, you can spend a considerable amount of time and effort plumbing the depths of what the Lord said in this little prayer, but this simple summary is adequate for our purposes. John MacArthur summarizes the thrust of the Lord's Prayer as well as anyone:

Where's the trust?

Confession time: I've been a bit harsh on myself up to this point, because I really don't just rattle off things to thank God for when I pray, and I'm sure you don't either. I really do pray for some of the things the Lord mentioned in His model prayer. I'm no prayer warrior, but sheesh...I'm not that bad.

But the Holy Spirit was spot on in getting me to reflect on my prayer life, because it touches on a deeper issue:

Trust.

The Holy Spirit used this little incident to get me to see that I was a quart low on trust, and I cringed as I recalled how panicked I felt when I realized I had missed my initial flight. I grieved over how I failed so miserably to calmly proceed as if the Lord had everything under control.

Because He does have everything under control!

That's the entire point, and that's what the Holy Spirit wanted to remind me of. As I sat on that plane embroiled in a full-fledged case of Transit Limbo, the Holy Spirit calmly reminded me of what kind of God I serve.

Hint: He's not the type of God who gives us any reason to panic.

As I pondered my puny little problems—in addition to my somewhat...yes, panicked overreaction to them, it brought to mind one of my all-time favorite verses of Scripture:

And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but I mentally modified the verse to suit various scenarios:

• Though I miss my flight out of Portland, yet will I trust in Him.

• Though I miss my flight to Taipei and get stranded in San Francisco for heaven knows how long, yet will I trust in Him.

• Though I have to contact my wife and tell her to let my school know they need to arrange a substitute for me on Monday and I have to catch a few winks in the terminal clutching my carry-on, yet will I trust in Him.

• Though my plane gets hit by an Iranian drone launched from an undisclosed location and plunges into the Pacific Ocean a couple of hundred miles off the Kamchatka Peninsula in a fiery explosion that kills everyone on board, yet will I trust in Him.

I mentioned that the Holy Spirit reminded me of what kind of God I serve, and that thought should give each one of us pause.

So...what kind of God do we serve?

I'm so glad you asked:

The bottom line is that the entire universe is the work of God's hands, and it puts His power and glory on display in such a manner that only the most wilfully ignorant fools can deny His existence as Creator (and if you spend much time online, you are keenly aware that there is no shortage of such fools out there). In the words of Matthew Henry:

But let this sink in for a moment.

Astronomers estimate that the most distant observable galaxies are 13.8 billion light years away, but the operative word is observable. In other words, that only represents the light that has reached the earth up to this point. Through exotic calculations that I don't even pretend to understand, some astronomers have estimated that the entire universe is at least 250 times bigger than that, which would put it at roughly 3.5 trillion (with a "t") light years in diameter. And they readily admit even that could be a gross underestimate.

Some astronomers also estimate that there are roughly 1 x 10²⁴ (one septillion) stars in the universe. That's a trillion times a trillion (that is, an incomprehensibly huge number...squared). And speaking of those septillion or so stars, God did one other thing I think is kind of cool:

He counted them and named them:

In other words, even our most advanced scientific minds can scarcely begin to grasp the size of the universe and the number of heavenly bodies contained therein. My point is that it's certainly not a stretch to say that the universe is immense beyond human comprehension.

And yet it's all just God's "handiwork."

Handiwork...the work of His hands. I think most would agree that qualifies as impressive by pretty much anyone's standards.

Not only did He create the unimaginable expanse of the universe we live in, but He created time and all the physical laws that keep it running like clockwork (including a few we probably aren't even aware of yet).

For example, many physicists today believe there a total of 10 dimensions. We are only capable of experiencing three. (OK, four if you count time.) That's how far above us God exists, which shouldn't surprise us because He told as much in His Word:

And if you think that's something...oh, we're not done yet. Before He hammered out His above-mentioned handiwork, He intimately knew billions of human beings that He would create, and knew exactly which ones would ultimately place their faith in Him and in the provision for their salvation that He would freely provide through His Son's atonement for their sin. And little old addlebrained me?

I was one of them.

Not only that, but He wrote us a message that He alone is qualified to write, because it foretells our detailed history in advance, which is known only to Him because He exists outside of time. Which He created. Among many other things, that message tells those of us who love Him and are called according to His purpose that He will work all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28, quoted earlier), and reassures us that nothing happens to us that He doesn't allow and have complete control over.

Now, I admit I love the lyrics to that song:

"What a mighty God we serve,
What a mighty God we serve,
Angels bow before Him,
Heaven and earth adore Him,
What a mighty God we serve."

But still...

As good as they are, the lyrics to that
song somehow just don't quite capture it.

God is powerful far beyond anything we can conceive of—so much so that the worst problems we can even imagine facing in our most terrifying nightmares are a triviality that He saw coming before time began.

And yet there I was, with my hair on fire over a silly little thing like a missed flight.

A quart low on trust? I reckon so. Shame on me. As the Holy Spirit brought some of these thoughts to my mind, I just sat back in my seat...

Oh, wait...I almost forgot. Let's get back to that plane we left on the tarmac a little while ago. Anyway, as the Holy Spirit brought some of these thoughts to my mind, I just sat back in my seat on that Alaska Airlines flight and began to pray with a spirit that had been refreshed and renewed. At that particular moment, I didn't concern myself too much with asking or thanking Him for anything—I knew that a mighty God had everything under control. So I just began to praise Him and worship Him and glorify His holy name and lift His name high and exalt His power and glory and majesty and just meditate on what a mighty God He really is and...

(*crackle*...*squawk*)

It had only been a few minutes since the captain had given us the bad news about not taking off for another hour, but now my prayer was suddenly interrupted by the captain coming over the intercom and making yet another announcement:

"Well, folks, it looks like we've been given a reprieve. We should be taking off in another four to five minutes."

He actually called it a "reprieve." Good word. And sure enough, we were airborne in five minutes flat, and I made it to San Francisco in plenty of time to catch my flight to Taipei, and made it home in fine fashion.

I'm literally smiling as I write this, because if I were writing a fictional story, I would have made it a little more dramatic—a tad more nip and tuck, you know what I mean? Maybe something involving Iranian drones...

But before God—that's exactly what happened. Trust me, if I were making this up, it would make for much better reading.

Oh, and speaking of thanking the Father for stuff...the moment I heard that announcement, what do you suppose the first words out of my mouth were?

Oh, you know that's right:

Thank you, Father!

Greg Lauer — OCT '19

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