Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?
– Job 11:7
Wow, what great questions. When you stop and think about them, even amidst, again, some of the unhelpful counsel, extremely unhelpful counsel that job is receiving, there are these truths and questions like this that drive us into so much of God’s Word.
Job 11:7 teaches us that there is no limit to God’s power, love, and wisdom.
Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? And the answer is no. There are no limits to the Almighty God. There’s no limit to the love of God toward his people. There is no limit to the power of God. There’s no limit to the knowledge of God. There’s no limit to the wisdom of God. This is what makes him God. God is infinite in all his attributes, and this is reason for us to praise him to fall on our knees before him as limited creatures.
We all have limits and we find ourselves lying down at some point every day because our bodies can’t go on. And that’s just one of many limits that we have, and our God is infinite in all of his attributes and all of his glory, and at the same time. So here’s another direction my mind goes in Scripture based on the first question in Job 11:7: Can you find out the deep things of God?
Job 11:7 reminds us we can only truly know God by the power of His Spirit.
And in one sense, the answer is no. You can’t find out all the depth of who God is because he’s limitless. We will, for all of eternity, be discovering more and more and more of the greatness of God. At the same time, I think about 1 Corinthians 2 talking about how God reveals himself through his Spirit to us. 1 Corinthians 2:10 says for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God, and we’ve received the Spirit of God that we might understand.
Verse 12, says the things freely given us by God, so you and I can know more and more and more depth in God is by the power of His Spirit in us. So that leads us to pray in a whole different direction. God, we want to know you more. We want to know more about your love God, we want your wisdom in our lives, God, or we want to see how you see. So yeah, let’s just pray then based on these questions in Job 11:7. God, we praise you as the limitless Almighty God, as the infinitely glorious God. There is no one like you with no limits. We praise you that there are no limits to your love for us. That there are no limits to your wisdom, your knowledge, your power, that there is no point at which your power runs out.
This verse reminds us of our dependence on the Lord.
We praise you that your wisdom, power, and love are infinite. All glory be to your name. And we confess, we are not limitless. We are limited in so many ways, and we need you. Lord, we need your wisdom. We need your love. God, we need your power, your strength. We need your help. God, we are dependent creatures on you, our limitless Creator, and we praise you for revealing yourself to us. We praise you for your Word, the revelation of who you are, and the depth of who you are in your Word.
And God, we praise you for your Holy Spirit in us to help us understand your Word. And so we say exactly that. God help us to know you more. Help us to understand you, oh God, we pray for your wisdom in our lives. We pray for the depth of our knowledge of you to grow with every single day in the Jeremiah 9 kind of way that we might boast not in our wisdom or our might or anything else in this world that we would boast that we know you more and more, we say together, God, we want to find out more deep things in you today than we did yesterday and tomorrow, more than we did today.
Prayer for the Taja People
We want to know you more and more and more, and we delight in growing in our knowledge of you. Oh God, that leads us to pray for people who don’t know your revelation in Jesus… Who’ve never even heard about your revelation in Jesus, many of them never even heard your Word. God, we pray specifically for the Taja people of Algeria, 50,000 of them, no known followers of Jesus among them.
God, we pray, please reveal your grace, and your glory in the gospel among the Taja people, cause Christians to spread the gospel among them, and cause your children to go to them. Use whatever your wisdom and your Spirit knows is best for the spread of the gospel to them. God, we pray, bring it about for the Taja. Might they find out the deep things of you through hearing the gospel of Jesus. God, we praise you as a limitless almighty God who has revealed yourself to us and put your Spirit inside of us. Help us to know you more today and to make you known today. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
