When God Shows Up, the Impossible Bows
WHEN GOD SHOWS UP, THE IMPOSSIBLE BOWS | ScriptureLinks Daily Dose of Inspiration Have you ever looked at a situation and wondered how God could possibly work it out? In today’s ScriptureLinks Daily Dose of Inspiration, we’re looking at biblical...
When God Shows Up, the Impossible Bows
Topic: Biblical Examples of the Power of God
Scripture References: 1 Corinthians 1:23–24; Acts 4:13–14; Exodus 14:21–23, 27–28 (KJV)
Episode Overview
Where do we turn when our own wisdom and abilities aren’t enough? Scripture gives us powerful examples of what God can do.
1. The Power of God in Jesus Christ — 1 Corinthians 1:23–24
Paul preached Christ crucified, even when the message seemed foolish to those who rejected it. God’s wisdom and power cannot be measured by human expectations.
2. The Power of God in Ordinary People — Acts 4:13–14
Peter and John stood boldly before the religious authorities. Their courage surprised those watching, and the presence of the man who had been healed provided undeniable evidence of God’s work.
3. The Power of God Over Impossible Circumstances — Exodus 14:21–23, 27–28
With the Red Sea before them and the Egyptian army behind them, the Israelites faced a seemingly impossible situation. God used Moses, parted the waters, and provided a way through. When the Egyptian army pursued them, the waters returned, demonstrating God’s mighty power.
Today’s Takeaway
God’s power is not dependent on human strength, human wisdom, or favorable circumstances. The same Bible that records these mighty works reminds us to place our confidence in the Lord rather than in ourselves.
Personal Challenge: Identify one situation in your life where you have been relying more on what you can do than on trusting God. Pray about it, search the Scriptures, and take the next faithful step.
Continue studying: Read each passage in context and consider what it reveals about God’s character, His purposes, and the response He calls for from His people.
6. Application questions
These questions can help listeners move from hearing about God's power to considering how they respond to Him in everyday life.
Where have I been measuring God by my own limitations? Is there a situation I've already decided is hopeless because I cannot see a solution?
Am I trusting God's wisdom or my own understanding? How does the message of Christ crucified challenge the way the world defines wisdom and strength?
What evidence of God's work am I overlooking? In Acts 4, the healed man stood beside Peter and John. Am I paying attention to the evidence of God's work around me?
What is my Red Sea today? What obstacle seems to stand between where I am and where I believe God wants me to go?
Am I willing to obey God when I don't understand how things will work out? What faithful next step can I take without knowing the outcome?
How can I use these biblical examples to encourage someone else? Who needs to be reminded of God's power and faithfulness today?
Short prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for reminding us through Your Word that Your power is greater than our limitations and our circumstances. Help us to trust Your wisdom when the world offers its own answers, and give us the courage to stand boldly for Jesus Christ. When we face what seems impossible, remind us of what You have done throughout Scripture. Teach us to walk by faith, obey Your Word, and give You the glory for what You accomplish. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
ScriptureLinks (00:00)
Good morning. Have you ever been in a situation and you looked around and you thought, there's absolutely no way this is gonna work out. Maybe your back's been up against the wall and it seemed like like there was there was nothing else you can do and you were ready to give up.
ScriptureLinks (00:25)
Well, you know, maybe you had everything, or maybe you done and you tried everything you knew what to do. And you finally just said, I just don't know what else to do.
ScriptureLinks (00:40)
What's impossible? Rem remember this when those situations come up, remember this. What looks like it's impossible in man's wisdom is not impossible for God. We can see example after example in the Bible of God demonstrating his power and doing great things that we can never understand and we can never accomplish on our own. Let's take a look at a few of them today.
ScriptureLinks (01:08)
Uh we've been looking at these passages in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. So let's go there again. First Corinthians chapter 1, verses 22 and 23. And scripture tells us, but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks. Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
ScriptureLinks (01:38)
We've talked about these verses several episodes now. And just to give a very brief review, as you can go back and watch these other episodes. Um, but to give a brief review, Paul is contrasting the wisdom of this world with the wisdom of God. And we've already took time and looked at the wisdom of man and we looked at at things that man had done in their wisdom, things like the golden calf uh comes up there for one. Um
ScriptureLinks (02:07)
And there was other examples we looked at. And then we we looked at at the end of chapter number one here and how God uses the things that the world rejects to put to shame the things of this world. And it made me think, why why does God do that? Why does God use the weak things? Why does God use the things that that isn't strong and isn't mighty in the world's standards?
ScriptureLinks (02:37)
And this is a thought that came to my mind, and I think that this is an important key here. God uses the things that the world calls weak, because when God does a mighty work in their lives, they're gonna say, only God could have done that.
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The world is going to try and disprove what God did or try to use science to explain what God did. But the average person, the weak person in the world is going to say only God. Only God.
ScriptureLinks (03:19)
Let's take a look at a couple of examples of God's power and God's wisdom being done here, being used here. Let's go back to Acts chapter number four. The book of Acts, chapter number four, just a couple of books over.
ScriptureLinks (03:35)
Acts chapter four, let's look at context. We're gonna look specifically at verse thirteen here in just a few minutes, but let's let's put into context what's going on here. Back in Acts chapter number uh three, Peter and John had healed a man that was lame. He had been laying there in front of the temple for quite some time, and he was a beggar, and Peter and John came and they healed him.
ScriptureLinks (04:03)
And we see in in verse number eight the result of this healing, Acts chapter 3, verse 8. The result of this healing, and he leaping up, stood and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. So we see this man was so happy, so excited that that he got his healing, that he's running around, lump jumping, leaping. Um
ScriptureLinks (04:32)
Some people would say making a spectacle of himself. But what else can you do when you've been touched by God? The result of that was that he was running around, he was leaping, he was jumping. People were seeing this man that they knew was lame that was sitting out in front of that temple for years. Now running around the temple, leaping and jumping and praising God. And people started gathering around to see what was going on.
ScriptureLinks (05:00)
And if we read the rest of chapter number three, we see where Peter had preached a sermon to these people talking about Jesus, talking about the resurrection, talking about how they needed him as a savior. And that got the the religious leaders upset, like it always did when Jesus did that.
ScriptureLinks (05:23)
And we start out here in chapter number four, um, seeing that Peter and John had been arrested because of their preaching and teaching about Jesus and about his resurrection from the dead. Because there's a seed, a sect in the religious leaders called the Sadducees that didn't believe in the resurrection. That's why they were sad, you see. But anyway, I heard a pastor tell that years ago. Anyway, um oh
ScriptureLinks (05:53)
They were put in jail. And verse number, let's see, verse number seven of chapter four begins the questioning of Peter and John as to where they got this power. And verse number eight starts Peter's sermon telling them where they got this power, telling them about Jesus, telling them about the resurrection. And we get down here.
ScriptureLinks (06:19)
To verse number thirteen and I want to look at verse fourteen as well of Acts chapter four, Scripture says Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled, and they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus, and beholding the man which was healed, standing with them, they could say nothing against it.
ScriptureLinks (06:50)
Let's look at that verse 13. Is that there's a key here? There's something we need to understand here. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they saw the boldness of their preaching right there in front of them in their chambers, but they probably heard the message that Peter and John preached to the people out there in the temple. And they seen the boldness of Peter and John, the boldness to proclaim Jesus, the boldness to proclaim.
ScriptureLinks (07:19)
The resurrection, the boldness to go out and provide healing for this lame man. They saw that and then they perceived, they understood that they were unlearned, ignorant men. Unlearned. They weren't trained in the in the in the old testament laws and things like these religious leaders were. They weren't trained in that stuff. They didn't have a a seminary degree.
ScriptureLinks (07:47)
Yet God used them mightily, yet they boldly proclaimed the gospel of Jesus.
ScriptureLinks (07:57)
What else can we say? Except that was God's power speaking through them. There's a verse that I wanted to look it up, and I completely forgot about it until just now. But there's a verse that Jesus said that when you get dragged before the courts and before the religious leaders, he said, Don't worry about what you're going to say. The Spirit's going to tell you what to say. The Spirit's going to talk through you.
ScriptureLinks (08:25)
And I rely on that spirit talking through me each and every time I get behind this camera, and each and every time I get behind the microphone, and each and every time I stand behind the sacred desk of a pulpit in a church to preach the gospel.
ScriptureLinks (08:42)
Peter and John depended on that that power. And and that power of God was shown through their teaching and through their their healing. Verse number sixteen.
ScriptureLinks (08:59)
Let's see. When they let's see that verse number 16 and on goes on here to say what happened to Peter and John, and that they were commanded not to not to preach and teach anymore in the name of Jesus, but they didn't listen. They kept doing what God was giving them the power to do. Let's look at another one. Let's go back to the Old Testament, Exodus chapter 14. Exodus chapter 14. This is the story of the the
ScriptureLinks (09:30)
Parting of the Red Sea.
ScriptureLinks (09:37)
Exodus chapter number 14. We're gonna look specifically here at verses 21 through 23. Um, and also verses 27 and 28. But again, to look at it in context, Israel had walked out of Egypt, they were on their way to the promised land, they got a little distance away from the city that they were they were held captive in, and all of a sudden the Egyptian army.
ScriptureLinks (10:05)
And Pharaoh decides that they're gonna come back and and get them and bring them back into slavery. And and now here's Israel, they're they're at the Red Sea, and they have it they have the armies of Egypt pursuing them and they cry out saying, What did you bring us out here to kill us? And and there they are, their backs against the wall. And it seemed impot like an impossible situation was about.
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was about to unfold and God's power
ScriptureLinks (10:40)
God's power provides a way out when there doesn't look like there's a way out. There they are standing between the army of Egypt and the Red Sea. And and God tells Moses to lift up his rod. And and verse twenty-one through twenty-three says, And Moses stretched his hand, stretch out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night.
ScriptureLinks (11:10)
And made the sea dry land and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea, upon the dry ground and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left, and the Egyptians pursued and went in after them to the midst of the sea even all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.
ScriptureLinks (11:39)
Let me stop right there because science has talked about the parting of the Red Sea in great length. They have science has said things like, Well, you know, at certain times the wind blows and the Red Sea recedes and there was dry ground, and that's where they walked upon. Others other other scientific things say that that they found a shallow area.
ScriptureLinks (12:06)
And they walked through on dry ground in the shallow area. That's not what scripture tells us. Scripture tells us clearly here in verse 22 that there was a wall of water, that the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and their left, a wall, a wall taller than them on their right hand and on their left. They didn't walk through.
ScriptureLinks (12:34)
Ankle deep water, shallow water, they didn't do any of that. They walked through on dry ground in the middle of the Red Sea because God parted that Red Sea. God provided that way out. And if we jump down to verse, let's see, 27 and 28. Remember, verse 23 tells us that the Egyptians pursued. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength.
ScriptureLinks (13:01)
When the morning appeared the Egyptian and the Egyptians fled against it, and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea, and the waters returned, and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. There remained not so much as one of them. So God closed up once Israel crossed the Red Sea, God closed it back up.
ScriptureLinks (13:31)
And did you know that they've been finding remnants and parts of the chariots on the bottom of the Red Sea now? You know, one of the things science tells us was that they walked through ankle deep water, and that makes this thing, all this story, all the more powerful because God destroyed the Egyptian army in ankle deep water. It's not what scripture says, but anyway, there's others. There's a whole bunch of other examples we can do. I didn't talk about the the recent discovery of.
ScriptureLinks (14:01)
of Noah's Ark and there's testing going on now to see if they indeed found Noah's Ark. But something that's interesting is that the the space that the place that they're looking for or looking at right now is the the remnants of Noah's Ark is found in the ancient mountains of Ararat, which is exactly where scripture says that it it landed. We can look in Acts chapter nine and see how how the apostle Paul after his his his
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Conversion. He started preaching and got people upset and his preaching about Jesus so much so that they wanted to kill him. They wanted to destroy him. But the the
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the the the the church lowered him down a wall of the city so that he could escape and go on and do his missionary journeys. Friends, there's so many examples of God using his power in ways that we can never understand.
ScriptureLinks (15:03)
Don't discredit the things that God is doing in your life. Don't sit there and say, well, it's modern medicine that did this, or or this happened, and that's why this happened this way. If God's doing work in your life, and I know he is, if God's doing something, give him credit for what he's done and praise him and thank him for what he's done.
ScriptureLinks (15:30)
Think about that as you go through this day. And remember, get into God's Word and allow God's Word to get into you. Then share that word with someone today. Have a blessed day.
