Tag: Omnipotence

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A.W. Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 8, 2026

“Why Does God Seem so Distant When I Pray?”

Why Does God Seem so Distant When I Pray?Download

Why Does God Seem so Distant When I Pray?

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 9, 1958`

Formerly released as “God’s Omnipresence and Immanence”

I want to read again some verses. There’s so many of them but I’ll just read these. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have builded. Then Acts 17, that was 1 Kings, Acts 17, that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of them. For in Him, we live and move and have our being.

And then of course, that Psalm 139, whither shall I go from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from Thy presence. If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand laid me and thy right hand shall hold me. I read these, I just copied them out on a card there to save turning, flipping pages. There are here and are many, many more like them.

And I begin tonight with the restatement of two tenets of the Christian belief. This is not my idea. And if you haven’t heard it emphasized before, it’s because we preachers are falling down in the preaching of the Word. These two tenets are simply these, that God is omnipresent. That is, that God is everywhere. That God is immanent. That is, that God penetrates everything. They’re standard Christian doctrines and they have been believed back until to the days, even of the Jew.

Now by this all, we mean that God is omnipresent and immanent and is penetrating everything even while He contains all things as I explained last week. The bucket that is sunk in the depths of the ocean, it is full of the ocean and the ocean is in the bucket. But also, the bucket is in the ocean surrounded by it. And this is the best illustration I can think of how God dwells in His universe, and yet the universe dwells in God.

Now, I’ve dealt with the fact of remoteness, that distance is unlikeness. And I pointed out that hell is for those unlike God. The moral dissimilarity creates hell, moral dissimilarity. Those moral beings that are morally dissimilar to God, hell is their final place. And those creatures, those beings, moral beings that are morally similar to God, this likeness to God, heaven is their place because they have a nature that belongs there.

I have shown that reconciliation with God is secured, or affected by three divine acts. They’re all divine acts: atonement, justification and regeneration. Atonement of course, is the objective work of Christ. It is the thing that He did on a cross. It is the thing He did before any of us now living we’re living. It is something that He did alone in the dark. It’s objective, that is, it’s outside of us. It did not take place inside of anybody. It took place objectively, externally out there on a cross. He did it. The spear went into His side alone, and He suffered. The nails were in His hands and feet. That’s atonement. And that is objective and external to us. And it could have been done without affecting anybody. And it was done, and still there are millions that have died unaffected by it. Because it’s an external act. It’s something that was done outside, an objective act, something done beyond, outside of and not inside of us.

But here is the beauty of it, that this act which He did in the darkness there, makes justification possible. And justification is the second act which God does to bring reconciliation, men and God together, to reconcile man to God. Justification is that which declares the sinner righteous, and that also is external to the man. That is, it doesn’t reach the man.

The justified man may be no better off for his justification if that’s all that happened to him. Because justification is a judicial thing. It’s legal, just as a man may stand before a court and be declared innocent of a crime, not guilty of a crime, and yet it doesn’t change the man any. He weighs exactly the same as he weighed before. He is the same height as he was before, the same color of hair and eyes. He has the same relationships.

He’s in every way the same man that he was before, but he’s judicially free. He’s declared not guilty before the law. It might have a subjective effect in that when he found it out, he’d rejoice to know that he was declared not guilty. But the work is not done in him, the work is done in the minds of the jurors and before the law, it’s a judicial thing.

So, justification is the second act that God performs to get us reconciled with Him. He first gives atonement to make justification possible, then He gives justification.

And then the third act, regeneration. Regeneration of course takes place at the same time justification takes place. When God justifies a man, I said that a man could be justified and not be any better off. That is technically possible to be so, but not actually so. Because, when God justifies a man, He also regenerates the man. So that, nobody ever was justified and not regenerated. But you can think them apart, though actually of course, you cannot separate them. Justification and regeneration are not the same.

And again, I’m only giving you the most ordinary, basic Christian theology that everybody ought to know, that justification is not a subjective thing. It’s a judicial thing. But that regeneration takes place within the life of the man, within the heart of the man, it’s a subjective thing. It deals with the man’s nature. It gets inside the man, because Jesus died in the darkness and because God accepted that as atonement for that man’s sin. If that man believes in Christ, God can justify him and declare him righteous, and then regenerate him by imparting to him the nature of God. For it tells us that it is through this, through these promises, that we are partakers of the divine nature.

A regenerated man is a man who has partaken of the divine nature, who has a new relation to God which gives him eternal life.

Now, this reunites God and man and it restores some degree of moral likeness to the man. The newest convert, the newest convert that was born again; today, for born again and regenerate are the same expression. The newest convert has a degree of moral likeness to God which gives a measure of compatibility. You see, heaven is a place of complete compatibility. And sin introduces incompatibilities between God and the sinner. There cannot be any compatibility. There cannot be any communion, because sin introduces that quality which throws man and God out of accord with each other. There’s no accord there, no congruity.

But when that sinner believes in the blood of atonement, puts his trust in Christ, and is justified in heaven and regenerated on earth, for that’s the only place you get regenerated. Don’t wait until you die. There’s no place to regenerate after you’re dead. But you’re regenerated, you’re given a measure of the character of God, so that, there is enough of the image restored to the man in regeneration that there can be quite a full measure of compatibility. And that compatibility allows God to draw feelingly near to the man and it makes communion morally consistent.

You see, as I explained at great length last Sunday night, you can’t have communion where there is complete unlikeness. You can’t have it. You go to a creature that has a nature other than yours and you can’t have communion there. You may pet the head of a dog, but you can’t commune with the dog. The dog can’t commune with you, because there’s too great a dissimilarity of nature. So, God cannot commune with a sinner, because there is a violent unlikeness, a dissimilarity making communion impossible.

But it says here in Colossians 3, that ye have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him. That new man within you is the regenerated man, the new man, if you started on your way toward God-likeness. And there was enough of it there even in the new convert, that God, I repeat, can commune without incongruity because He finds some of His image in the man. God can only commune with His own image, remember that.

God, being the God He is, can never commune with anything except His own likeness. And where there is no likeness, there can be no fellowship between God and that unlike thing. But where there is restored to that person, a similarity, something of the nature of God, a compatibility, then God begins a communion. And of course, He can commune depending upon the fullness and completeness of that, of that compatibility.

Now, it says, ye have put on the new man, you Christians at Colossi. You have put on the new man, you have, you Christians. These Colossian Christians were not perfect by a long way, but they had put on the new man. The seed was in them. The root of the matter was in their hearts. They were regenerated. So, God could commune with His own image in them and see a little bit of His own face there and hold communion with His people. That’s why we can say, Abba, Father.

If I might use a rather grotesque illustration, I might say that the young father who goes to the hospital to see his newborn heir, looks into the glass and there never was a father yet who wasn’t excited, and frightened and bewildered. But there never was a father yet who wasn’t disappointed, because when he looks at that little fellow, his eyes are on over all twenty-five or thirty or fifty in there, and he picks on a pretty one and hopes that’s his. Then when they turn the thing around and he sees that it isn’t, he’s disappointed.

I think little Becky was about the only one who didn’t disappoint; well Stanley was pretty too. But mostly, you know, they’re a mess. And, but there is enough. And when you say, he’s just the image of you, and you’ll never be dead as long as he lives. A father beams you know, but actually it isn’t much of a compliment, the little blob of squirm and suck and giggle and red skin and hair that isn’t there.

Well, yet there is a little bit of likeness there. There’s something, there’s a similarity now in a deeper way. A new convert, that fellow that just been born again there, he certainly may not be much like God, but he has something of the resemblance to the Deity. And so God can own him as His and the angels can recognize a family resemblance. Now that’s all settled.

Now my brother, why then, and this is really the reason the sermon is being preached. Why then, this serious problem among real Christians. This feeling that God is far away, or vice versa, that we are far away from God. It’s hard to rejoice, you know, no matter what, you know, it’s hard to rejoice if you don’t feel, for feeling is rejoicing. And it’s hard to rejoice when you’re suffering from that sense of remoteness.

And I’d like to say to you that I believe that most Christians do suffer from a sense of divine remoteness. They know God is with them and they’re sure they’re God’s children, and they can take you to their marked New Testament and prove to you seriously and soberly that they’re justified and regenerated and they belong to God and heaven is going to be their home and Christ is their advocate above. They’ve got the theology they know in their head, but they’re mostly suffering from a sense of remoteness.

To know a thing in your head is one thing, to feel it in your heart is another. And I think that most Christians are trying to be happy without having a sense of the Presence. It’s like having a bright, trying to have a bright day without having the sun. You could say, well now it is 12:15 noon, therefore, the sun is up. Let us rejoice in the sun. Isn’t it beautiful and bright? Let us take it by faith and rejoice that the sun is up, that all is well. The sun is up according to the calendar, the sun should be about there. You can point upward and say the sun is up, but brother, that’s kidding yourself. As long as it’s gloomy and rainy and wet, soggy leaves keep dribbling down and it’s dark, you’re not having a bright day. But when the sun comes out, then you can you can rejoice in the presence of the sun.

Now, most Christians are theological Christians, they know they’re saved, somebody is given them a marked New Testament and it’s proper. We should so they get their theology straight, but they’re trying to be happy without a sense of the Presence. The sense of the Presence is absent, and so that yearning, that yearning, you see is a desire, that yearning to be nearer to God, to have God near to us. It’s found everywhere among God’s people. You will find it in two places; prayers and songs and hymns; you will find it there. If you think that I’m merely spinning this like a spider spins a web out of his stomach.

If you think that I am merely spinning this out of my head, go to the next prayer meeting and kneel down with the brethren and listen to them pray. They all pray alike. It’s, O Lord come, O Lord drawn near. O Lord show thyself. Be near to me Lord. And then, if that isn’t enough, sing along with us. And hear us sing come, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and other such songs. Draw Me Nearer, nearer blessed Lord. Near the Cross my heart can say I am coming near. The yearning to be nearer to God and have God come nearer to us is universal among born-again Christians.

And yet we think of God as coming from across distance to us, when my text declares and Christian theology back to David declares that God is already here now. That God doesn’t dwell in space, and therefore God doesn’t have to do like a rocket or like a ray of light, come from some remote place or start toward some remote place. There is no remote place in God. God contains all remoteness and all distances in His own great Heart. And why then do we feel Him in distance? It’s this dissimilarity in our natures. It’s the unlikeness.

We’ve got enough likeness that God can commune with us and call us His children and we can say Abba, Father, but in practical working out of it, the average one of us senses our dissimilarity. And that is why God seems remote.

Now, what I am trying to get across is simply this, that nearness to God is not a geographical or an astronomical thing. It is not a spatial thing having to do with space. It is a spiritual thing having to do with nature.

And so, when we pray, God draw me nearer or when we pray, come near. When we pray, come Thou Fount of every blessing. We’re not praying if we’re good theologians for God to come down from some remote distance. We know God’s here now. Jesus said, lo, I am with you alway. And they said, surely God’s in this place. The Lord is here. Jacob said, God’s in this place and I didn’t know it. He didn’t say God came to this place; God is in this place.

Well then you say, then what are we praying for? What we’re praying for is a manifestation of the presence of God, not the Presence, but the manifestation of the Presence. Why don’t we have the manifestation? Because we, we allow, unlikenesses. We allow moral dissimilarity and that sense of absence.

Please notice I say, sense of absence is the result of the remaining unlikeness within us. This desire, this yearning to be nearer to God is in fact a yearning to be like Him. It’s the yearning of the ransomed heart to be like God. So there can be perfect communion; so the heart and God can come together in a fellowship that is Divine.

Now, I want to point out some of the points of dissimilarity between God and the Christian. There I have said there is a similarity which makes it compatible for God and proper for God to commune with His children, even the poorest, weakest of His born children, these bairns as the Scots say. But there are dissimilarities and those dissimilarities are such that there isn’t a degree of fellowship that there ought to be. There isn’t that perfection of the sense of God’s presence that we want and yearn for, and pray for, and sing about.

How are we going to know what God is like so that we may know whether we’re like God? The answer is, God is like Christ, for Christ is God. Christ is God manifest to mankind. And so let us look at Jesus. And by looking at our Lord Jesus, we will know what God is like, and then we will know what we have to be like if we’re going to experience the unbroken and continuous Presence of God, a sense of the Presence.

Now, the Presence is here. I can’t say it too often. But it’s the sense of the Presence that’s absent. Just as the man knows the sun is there, even though the clouds are hanging so low you can reach up and touch them. And even though it’s so dark they have to put the lights on. I’ve seen that and you’ve seen that. Even when we know the sun was there in midheaven, they had turned their automobile lights on for safety. I’ve seen that happen and you have because there are, were clouds between. They know the sun’s there, but they don’t feel it nor see it.

And so, we Christians know God is here. But there is a sense of His absence. As the man feels the sun is gone, never to return and he knows better, and yet he can’t be happy because he can’t see the sun. So, we feel that God is away even when we know that He’s present, and He can’t manifest Himself as He wants to for certain reasons.

Now let’s notice some of the qualities of Jesus. The first one of course is holiness. Our God is holy and our Lord is holy, and we call the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Now, notice how stained and how spotted and how carnal the average Christian is. We allow stains. Months go by without repentance. Years go by without asking for cleansing or taking it. Spots on our garments, and carnality, and unlikenesses within our heart. Then we pray, draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord. Or we sing, or we pray, come Lord, come to this meeting. Well, the Lord is there. What we’re praying is, O Lord, show thyself, but the Lord cannot, a Holy Lord cannot show Himself in full communion to an unholy Christian. Do you say is it possible to be a Christian and be unholy. It’s possible to be a carnal Christian, to have the seed of God in you, to be regenerated and justified and still be unholy in some of your inner, inner feelings and desires and willingness.

The second is unselfishness. Do you notice that Jesus Christ was completely unselfish and gave Himself, but how self-centered and self-indulgent most Christians are? Even when they’re reading books on revival, they’re still self-centered. Even when they’re praying for revival, they’re still self-indulgent. A revival is, among other things, a sudden manifestation; it’s the breaking of the Son through the clouds. It’s not the coming of the Son. It’s the breaking of the Son through the clouds, and so our selfishness. How much selfishness there is.

I am sick in my own heart, sick about myself and sick about my friends and sick about the preachers in the ministry. How utterly self-centered we can become; live for self, talk loudly about glorifying God, and boast and say this is the glory of God, and yet be self-centered. And how you know you’re self-centered is, if anybody crosses you, your hackles go up. Now, don’t smile about it. It is not funny. It’s serious. That as soon as you’re crossed your hackles go up because you’re self-centered and self-indulgent. How much self-indulgence there is.

Do you know something friends, there is enough money potentially in this audience tonight, not only to keep this church going hilariously, but to double the missionary offering that we make. There’s enough, potentially, if we weren’t so self-indulgent, but we’re self-indulgent. And of course, a perfectly selfless Christ who gave Himself and poured Himself out and had no selfishness, can’t warm up for the Christian heart who’s self-indulgent and self-centered. He loves us. He’s our Shepherd. He’s our advocate above. He pleads our cause there. We are His bethren in Christ and His God, His Father is our Father. But I’m talking about the fellowship, the sweetness that changes some people into saints while they walk on earth in more than a technical sense, then love.

Now, He so loved that He gave all, but how calculating so many of us are, how calculating. I can say, now I can go to this meeting, but I can’t go to this one because the doctor has told me that I’m to do thus and thus, and I must obey doctor’s orders. And we let doctors push us around and tell us what to do. And we’re calculating. We figure it out. We put our spiritual life on a budget and we won’t spend anything for God unless we can justify it in the columns of our budget. What a cheap, carnal way of living. And yet it’s true. We do it. How narrow God’s people are.

The love of the Lord Jesus Christ was a great, passionate, outpoured thing, among other things that caused Him to give Himself completely. It said He please not Himself. Do you remember that beautiful passage? Jesus, even our Lord, pleased not Himself. But, do you know what’s wrong with us. We’re self-pleasers. We live for ourselves. There are people that would have a new car if this church went to pot and we had to close the doors. There are women that would dress in style and with the very best if the mission cause died and every missionary had to be sent home. Yet, we’re saints, we’re born again. We’re believers. We have our marked New Testament, but and maybe we are Christians, but the love we have is a calculating love and narrow love, a love that doesn’t give itself. And so how can He who gave Himself; how can He ever fellowship with us?

Do you want a Bible illustration of this? Let me give it to you. Back in the Song of Solomon, that delicate, gentle, wondrous, beautiful book that Dr. Schofield said, sin has almost deprived us of the ability to kneel before that burning bush. Well, back there you remember, that the Bridegroom who represents Jesus, had given gifts to the Bride, the bride to be. And he was out gathering lilies, taking care of his sheep, out among the lilies, and the dew was falling. And his locks were wet with the dews of the night. He was out there doing what his interest required him to do; what his heart wanted to do. And he came and knocked on her door as much as to say, won’t you come and join me? And she said, How can I? How can I come? I am not dressed for it. I’m dressed for the couch and the home, and even my hand drip with the ointments you’ve given me. I can’t come.

And so, he disappeared. He was still her lover. And he was still wanting and going to marry her. And he did finally, thank God. And it came out all right, but he was out there pouring himself out, and she was in her house admiring herself. And taking long whiffs of the fragrance of the perfumes that he had given her; standing before the mirror and admiring the robes and the jewelry that he had given her. He wanted her and she wanted his jewelry and his perfume.

Then finally, she got under conviction about it. And she quickly, hastily dressed, not really for street dress, but she got some clothes on and threw a robe about her and started out looking for her beloved. And she says, where is he? Where is he? And I asked the watchman, where is he? And the watchman beat me He said, “A harlot out on the street on a night like this, go on home,” and he slapped her down. She went on staggering under the blows and couldn’t find him and said, where is he? Where is he? And while she was hunting him, her friend said, what is thy beloved more than another beloved? What’s the matter? Why don’t you go home? What is thy beloved more than another beloved? And then, she burst out into a beautiful song saying my beloved is white and ruddy. Do you remember that passage? She described him from head to foot. He is fairer than 10,000.

Well, you see, he wanted her fellowship. And she was too selfish and self-centered and she stayed in while he was out. And of course, there could be no fellowship while he’s out there doing one thing and she’s selfishly staying in house doing another.

And then there’s kindness. Think how utterly kind our Lord Jesus is. For the love of God is kinder than the measure of man’s mind. The kindness of Jesus and the harshness of us, and the severity and the sharpness, the acerbity, the bitterness, the acidity in so many people’s lives. How can a kind Savior feel perfectly at home with a harsh Christian?

Then there’s forgiveness. He was a forgiving Lord. He is a forgiving Lord and He forgave them while they beat Him. He forgave them while they put Him on a cross. But how hard and vengeful so many of the Lord’s children, how vengeful. You remember things that happened twenty years ago, some of you and you just can’t get over. You can’t. Oh, I have forgiven it all right, but you haven’t. You’re vengeful and He was forgiving. And He proved He was forgiving by dying in blood. You prove that you’re vengeful and hard by many, many proofs, many demonstrations.

Then, think of the zeal of Jesus. The zeal for thine house has eaten me up. Think of the zeal of God. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this. Zeal is a burning fire. Do you know, the most zealous thing I know is fire, O brother. Wherever fire burns, it burns with hot zeal. And the heart of Jesus was like that. But think of the lukewarm Christian, Christians that haven’t been to a prayer meeting for years. And the careless Christian, and the torpid Christian. The torpor that lies over the church of God.

Then the humility of Jesus. Though He was the highest, He came down and acted like the lowest. And though we are the lowest, we are sometimes like the proudest and the most arrogant. How completely unlike Jesus; how unlike God.

Now, you say then, am I justified by being like God? I hope I’ve made it clear. You’re justified by being declared righteous by Almighty God basing His sentence upon the cross of Jesus and the dying of the Savior in the darkness there on the hill. Then, because He made atonement, God justifies. And when He justifies, He regenerates. And you’re saved by justification and regeneration, but regeneration does not perfect the image of God in you. The image of God must continue to grow and come forth and come out. As an artist works on his pictures, at first it’s only an outline and the general confuse, but he knows what’s there and slowly it comes out.

And so, God seems far from us because we’re so unlike God. It isn’t distance. And Horace Bushnell and his friend went out on the hill to pray, talked first and went out and sat and talked about God until slowly, sunset and the stars came out in the darkness settled around while they sat on the grass and talked about God. Then before they left, Bushnell said, Brother, Let us pray before we go. So there in the darkness Bushnell lifted up his heart to God and his friend said afterwards, I pulled my arms in tight around me. I was afraid to reach them out lest I touch God.

I once knelt under an apple tree in a field, several other preachers and a Salvation Army man, Captain Ireland of the Salvation Army. Captain Ireland, we all prayed and then Captain Ireland began to pray. And as he prayed, I suddenly sensed a nearness. There was another One there that hadn’t come out. He’d been there all the time. Am I a God far off? Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD?

So, this sense of the Presence, how can He continually manifest His presence to the proud and arrogant when He was so humble and low? To the lukewarm and the careless when He was so zealous? To the hard and the vengeful when He is so forgiving? To the harsh and the severe, when He is so kind? To the calculating, when His love led Him to die? To the Holy, when we are so stained? How can we have fellowship?

And then the heavenly mindedness of Jesus. Oh, think of that. He was with the Father in the bosom of the Father while He was on earth. He said, the Son of Man who is, not was, in the bosom of the Father. He never left the bosom of the Father while He was on Earth. The only time He left it was in that awful, wrenching agony when God turned away from Him on a cross that He might die for mankind, but never at any other time He was in the bosom of the Father, the other world. He talked about, I came from above, I came down from above, I am from above. I tell you things from above. He lived in the heart of God.

And the other world and the world above was the world in which He inhabited, the world in which inhabited. And think how earthly His people are, and how worldly: furniture, TV sets, baseball, football, automobiles, picture windows, split level houses, politics, anything but Heaven and God. And then we want, draw me nearer, nearer. You’re as near as you can get as far as distance is concerned, but He can’t manifest Himself because there’s a dissimilarity of nature. You’ll have enough of His nature that you’re justified and regenerated, but you haven’t enough to perfect the fellowship. Do you see what I mean? The perfection of the fellowship. Oh, brethren, this is what we need so desperately bad.

Well, there was a man once who followed the Lord afar off. But you know he couldn’t live with it. Some of you have learned to live with it. You’ve gotten older and you’ve learned to live in the twilight and not mind it. You’ve learned to live in the chill and not mind. What can I do for you? How can I help you? I know no way. Peter followed a far off, but he couldn’t stand it. When the Lord turned and looked at him, he went outside and wept bitterly. He wept bitterly.

Have you any tears for your unlikeness? Have you any tears for that distance between you and God that you know isn’t there and yet feel is there? You’re not, you’re not in any wise diminishing anything God has already done. You’re grateful and thankful for every blessing and for the goodness, for justification, for the good grace of God on your life, but you can’t escape that sense of remoteness.

And many a day is a heavy day because God seems far from him. You know He isn’t, but you feel He is. The reason you feel He is, is that He can’t show His face. You’ve allowed self-indulgence, harshness, vengeful spirit, lukewarmness, pride, worldliness, earthliness to put a cloud over the Face of God.

What are you going to do about it? Would you be willing to do something about it tonight? Maybe I haven’t preached to anybody. I don’t know. Maybe nobody’s heard me tonight. Because I know it’s one thing to talk and it’s quite another thing to be heard, even in the same room. Only the Holy Ghost can give you the illumination that will make the words heard by you. You know the English, you know the grammar, you know the logic, that’s one thing, but it’s another thing to hear in your heart. Then opened He their hearts. Has He opened anybody’s heart here? If He’s opened anybody’s heart, I think that you ought to do something about it. Let us stand please. Let us stand.

Do you know what I think? I think that repentance is called for. Repentance of what? A deed done? No. Repentance of the unlikeness? Repentance of the unholiness in the presence of the Holy? Of the self-indulgence in the presence of the selfless Christ? Of the presence of harshness in the presence of the kind Christ? Of hardness in the presence of the Forgiving Christ? Lukewarmness in the presence of the zealous Christ burning like a fiery flame? The worldliness and earthliness in the presence of the heavenly Christ. I think we ought to repent.

Now I don’t know I say whether I’ve reached you or not. I only know this, there’s a prayer room in here. And while we sing very softly, some number, our brother, would you start. Don’t announce it, just sing something very gently and we’ll join. Just come in here and we’ll have a little prayer meeting. If your heart, has God spoken to your heart? Come on into the place of prayer.

Tags Omnipotence, Prayer

Messages

A.W. Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 1, 2026

“Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?”

Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord Download

Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 9, 1958

I want to talk on a subject very important to the Lord’s people. I want to give a talk on why God seems so far away; why when we pray sometimes God seems so far away, and why generally to Christians there’s a sense of remoteness. I want to talk about it tonight, and I think it will be worth your hearing.

This morning, in the 18th of Genesis, the Lord appeared unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself to the ground. He said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. And they said unto him, where is Sarah thy wife? There were three of them, and now it’s become one. He said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life, and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door. She was supposed to be inside, but she was listening. They’re all alike. And Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind him.

Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure, my Lord, also being old? And the Lord said unto Abraham, wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, shall I of a surety bear a child, I which am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? The time appointed I will return unto thee according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not, for she was afraid. And he said, nay, but you did laugh.

I want to take a question from verse 14. Is anything too hard for the Lord? This is what is called, of course, a rhetorical question, which means simply that it contains its answer in itself. And of course, there is only one answer.

Now, God asked this question as a rebuke and a promise, and His deed supported His words. We might as well be realistic enough to admit that much religious talk is fanciful and unrelated to reality. The Christian message carries its own power in it, and where there is faith and obedience, that power emerges into practical deeds, as we’ll see here.

Now, God asked the question, Is anything too hard for the Lord? And I have examined into this very closely, so I’m not uttering mere shreds of opinion. I guessed when I read this that the word hard there in the original Hebrew was a bit different from our word hard when we say, for instance, that it’s hard to lift something. I figured that wouldn’t be the word used, and I looked it up and found that it is not the word used. There are two meanings to this word, hard and difficult, and they’re not quite the same.

Hard means tough and severe, as when it says, Pharaoh made their lives bitter with hard bondage. The hard bondage was the bondage where they labored as slaves, hard labors, the word we use. He was sentenced to hard labor. It means that he had, it wasn’t necessarily to do any skillful work, but he had to do work that required bone labor, hard muscle.

Then the word hard means great, difficult, and wonderful, and that’s the word that is used here. Is anything too great for God? Is anything too difficult for God? Is anything too wonderful for God to do? That’s the word here.

Now, you’ll notice that this question here wasn’t one of physical energy. It didn’t take muscle and power. It was a difficult thing. Sarah herself knew and chuckled over the idea, as it was proper that she might have. You see the difference, don’t you, between a thing being hard and a thing being difficult.

Let me illustrate it from the world of sport. Take a weightlifter, a great muscular fellow with a huge chest and bulging biceps. He lifts weights. I don’t know enough about it to know how many hundred pounds, but I understand that one fellow lifted over three hundred, perhaps much more than that, but I do know at least that much. He lifted straight up over his head.

Well, now, that wasn’t difficult. Anybody could do that that could do it. All you had to do was reach down, pick it up, push it up in the air. If provided, of course, you had the physical muscle, you were tough enough to do it. That’s what you call hard, meaning that it takes great energy.

But let’s look at another man. Let’s look at a man, why it bothers him, God knows, that never bothered me and will bother me now, but there is a man, a businessman, a hardworking man, he might even be a president. And there he is out on a beautiful little green, almost as beautiful as a green carpet, about the size of this platform. And right in the middle of that, or maybe off a little to one side, there’s a hole, a cup. And there lies a little white ball there. And his job is to get that little white ball to fall into that little cup.

Now, it isn’t going to take the muscle of a weightlifter. There’s nothing hard about that, but it’s difficult. It’s so difficult that you don’t even dare sneeze, nor make any noise while he gets down on his knees like a devotee burning incense to a rubber ball, and sights along to see just where that falls. And then, with great difficulty, taps it toward the cup.

And the last time I played golf was 20 years ago, I think. And I got that ball all over the green, every place but in the cup. I threw my golf clubs down and said to Mr. Lessard, with whom I was then playing, this is the last, and brother, it was. It wasn’t, it didn’t take muscle, but it took a coordination and skill that not only I didn’t have, but never could develop. There’s a difference, you see, between hard and difficult. It’s difficult to sink a shot, but it’s hard to lift a heavy weight.

Now, nothing is hard for God by either definition. God having all of the energy there is in the universe can, of course, naturally do the hardest thing there is to do. And God having all the wisdom there is naturally has all the skill there is to do it.

Now let’s look at why some things are hard for us. There are four or five reasons why they’re hard for us, difficult or hard. Some are hard because they require energy that we just don’t have, it’s beyond us, either physical energy, mental energy, and it’s beyond us. We just don’t have it, so it’s hard and we can’t do it.

But is anything too hard for God, or it requires a knowledge beyond our store? For instance, could you have sent up that rocket, that ill-fated rocket that went up a few hundred miles and then came back? I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have the remotest idea what to do. The nearest I could get to it would be a slingshot or throwing a rock in the air. I don’t know how they do that. I don’t know. And I don’t feel any sense of inferiority. It isn’t my field; I’m not interested in it. I know some things they don’t know.

So you’ve got to have knowledge to do some things, and if you don’t have that knowledge you can’t do it. But is it possible to conceive of anything that requires a knowledge that God doesn’t have, when God knows all there is to know instantly and effortlessly?

And then third, it may require a wisdom beyond us, for you see, there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Man may be very wise and not very knowledgeable, or he may be knowledgeable and not very wise.

Alexander Pope, in the oft-quoted little jingle, talked about the learned man whose head was full of knowledge, but he didn’t know what to do with it. He said, he’s a bookish blockhead, ignorantly read, with loads of learned lumber in his head. And that means he has lots of knowledge but no wisdom and doesn’t know what to do with what he knows.

Well, it may be that you have knowledge about how to do a thing, but the wisdom escapes you. But God possesses infinite wisdom.

And then maybe there are so many enemies, for instance, running to make a touchdown. Now it wouldn’t be hard or difficult either, but it’s both because of the enemies that are pitted against you. You grab it and you take two jumps and somebody’s on you. Well the enemies are there, that’s the game. I don’t care much for football, really, but then that’s the game, I understand. One fellow wants to get the pigskin across, and two or three or ten other fellows determined he can’t. So they block him.

And the devil is a great player, he blocks constantly, only he’s dead serious about it. And when you try to do something, he blocks it, he hinders you. And he pits himself against you and often brings you down, so you can’t do it.

But is it conceivable that the great God Almighty, the great God who telleth the stars and calleth them all by name and knoweth the number thereof, is it possible that God can be stopped? No, God doeth as He pleases and the armies of the heaven and the armies of the earth, and there’s nobody that can stop Him or say, what are you doing? He has His way in the whirlwind and the storm and the clouds and the dust of His feet.

He’s the sovereign God, and all the devils in hell could deploy themselves in whatever formation they chose, like players on a football field, and God Almighty can walk through triumphantly toward His goal, because He is God.

Jesus Christ walked straight toward the cross without hindrance, and rose from the cross without hindrance, and went to the right hand of God without hindrance, though they were trying to hinder Him all the way. You see, God demonstrates His power and His wisdom.

He said, is there anything too hard for me, and then proceeded to do something so difficult that nobody in the world could do it, cause a ninety-year-old woman to have a child.

And later on, there was Pharaoh. I’ve just been going through the book of Exodus on my knees. I’ve been reading it in my room down on my knees. And then God talked to me about Moses and Pharaoh and Aaron and the ten plagues and the power of God. Wonderful what God did.

No wonder Israel talks about it down to this day. No wonder it’s woven itself into history and into literature and into music. No wonder we sing about it. God opened the Red Sea and took Israel through and cast up the enemy dead upon the shore. God showed what he could do.

Later on there was Sennacherib. There he was with all of his mass people. It was like, say, it was as if England, yonder, England or the United States, were to decide they were going to have war with little Israel over there, tiny little Israel. There’s no parallel, certainly, between the Israel of Sennacherib’s day and the Israel that we know today over there.

But let us imagine that if a country the size of ours, with our unlimited potential, should decide to make war on little Israel, well, how are you going to stop them? How are you going to stop Sennacherib? How are you going to stop it?

Hezekiah the king got a nasty, blasphemous, obscene letter from one of the underlings of Sennacherib, and he read it out loud to the embarrassment of the women and to the horror of the king and those around him. And Hezekiah took that letter, turned it around and said, O God, read this. And God read it, and God sent Isaiah to say, don’t you worry about that, I’ll handle it.

And so, the angel of death spread his wings on the blast and breathed in the face of the foe as he passed. And the eyes of the sleeper waxed deadly and chilled, and his chest deep at once and forever grew still. And the might of the Gentile, unsmoked by the Lord, melted like snow at the breath of the Lord. God Almighty can handle it. So he proved that He can do it, and He’s done it all down the years, He’s proved it.

Now, why do we see so little of this? Why do we see so little of God’s ability to do the hard thing and His ability to do the difficult thing? Why do we see so little of it?

I want to read you a passage here. It was Jesus talking, and He said, I tell you a truth. Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.

And if that isn’t bad enough, many lepers were in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet. But none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. And all lay in the synagogue when they heard that these things were filled with wrath. Notice later why they were filled with wrath.

But notice why when Jesus came to Israel with wonder at His fingertips, wonders, ability to do the hard thing, the difficult thing, at His fingertips, why was it that Israel saw so little of it?

Well, Jesus said the reason may be noticed, may be gotten, is hinted at, and may be gathered from the way God worked back in Israel. He said in the time of Elijah there were lots of widows in Israel. And yet those Israelitish widows had gotten accustomed to satisfying their religious yearnings with stories of other days. They looked back at other and grander times. They talked about Pharaoh and the Red Sea and Aaron and all the others. They no doubt were well versed in the history of Israel and the power of God for Israel, but they had gotten accustomed to satisfying their religious yearnings by talking of something that had happened and was now history.

And so there was a closed heaven. God never spoke to them. And when He had a prophet that He wanted to get, have entertained and wanted to feed, there were widows in Israel by the hundreds, maybe thousands in Israel, but there wasn’t one of them God could go to. They were God’s chosen people, and they were religious above all on the face of the earth, those Jews were. But God had to leave all the widows in Israel to sit.

And He went to Zarephath of Sidon and picked a pagan woman who was not of the seed of Israel and sent Elijah there because that pagan woman brought a fresh mind to the contemplation of divine things. She brought a fresh mind and when the man of God came to her, he said, give me to eat. And she fed him. After his experience by the brook here, she fed him and God fed her.

And Jesus said, don’t you see, you’ll read your Bible, can’t you interpret it? Don’t you know that all the power there is lie in these 10 fingers of mine, all the power I have it. Why is there so little of it manifest? Why was there so little manifest in the days of Elijah? There were lots of widows in Israel, but not one of them got any help because they were women of closed minds and non-expectation.

Then He went on and rubbed it in further still and said there were many lepers in Israel in the days of Elijah, but they went uncleansed because they had become accustomed to living with their sores. This is the tragedy of an old church or the tragedy of an old denomination.

We get used to living with our sores. The sophists come along, and the casuists and they spin a philosophy, a rationalizing. They rationalize a philosophy of explanation about why things aren’t better than they are. And the result is that we get accustomed to living with our leprosy.

They were orthodox, those lepers, but they were lepers. They were orthodox and they believed all they should have believed creedally, but their minds were closed. But a Syrian general brought an open mind, a Syrian general that was accustomed to kneeling in the house of a false god, went to the prophet Elisha and Elisha told him to go bathe in the river.

At first he was angry. At least he had enough gumption to get mad. He was angry about it and then when he saw that he was wrong, he humbled himself and went and bathed and lo, came with his flesh as the flesh of a little child.

God healed Naaman the pagan, the Syrian, and left the lepers in Israel uncleansed, though nothing was too hard for God to do. God could have spoken the word, and a wave of healing would have run throughout Israel like the light at the rising of the sun. And every leper would have been instantaneously healed, but they couldn’t take it because their minds were closed. They were religious people, and they had gotten used to their sores. And today that’s our trouble.

Is anything too hard for the Lord? No, impossible that it should be, but we bring God closed minds. And the customary becomes the normal in religious churches. The customary, all you have to do is to make a statement that sounds a little bit away from the customary and they challenge you immediately.

All you have to do is to suggest something that’s a little bit off the beam and that is a little bit off the regular path of things, the custom thing, and they’re raising their eyebrows and zut-zut-zutting and chuck-chuck-clucking and saying, what’s the matter with our pastor?

The lepers in Israel went uncleansed and the widows in Israel went unblessed, while the woman in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian were blessed of Jehovah God.

And today, we have whatever is customary, that’s normal, and we get a psychology of the customary. We can change our body model in the automobile. Women can change their body models very rapidly if somebody in Paris says they’re to do it.

And we make all sorts of changes, but when it comes to God, we expect God to behave Himself and to act according to the way He’s been acting and forgetting that He’s been acting like that because we haven’t had an open mind to allow God to assert His power. Today we’ve got the closed minds, and yet we’re orthodox, and yet we’re unbelievers.

You know, there are two kinds of unbelief. There is the bold, arrogant unbelief of the sinner who comes out and says, I don’t believe your Bible, I don’t believe your God. If there’s any God, why is there leprosy and polio and war and all that kind of thing? No, thank you, I’ve had enough, come, let’s have a beer. I don’t want any more of your religion, I’ve had enough, I don’t believe in it. That’s the man Jesus said, I wouldest thou wert hot or cold. There’s your cold man. He doesn’t believe in it at all and says so outright.

Then there is the unbelief of the religious man. He wouldn’t say, I don’t believe the Bible; he does believe the Bible. He buys them and gives them as presents and reads them assiduously. He doesn’t say, I don’t believe in your God. He does believe in God.

But he just can’t believe for anything new. He can’t believe that God means us now, that he means him. He can’t believe that this is the hour, this is the day.

God to him is always historic, and the Bible a historic book. He can’t bring himself to believe in the God of the present, the living God, the God of today and tomorrow. He’s perfectly willing to believe in the God of yesterday.

Believing in the God of yesterday makes us orthodox. Believing in the God of today releases God’s power into the midst. We bring God a closed mind and we have developed a chronic non-expectation.

I think that’s generally what could be said, we have a chronic non-expectation. We have a psychology of continuing defeat. We don’t expect anything else, and so we begin to make terms with our defeat, make terms with our captors.

We begin to learn to live in Babylon, the Church is learning to live in Babylon, slowly learning the language of the Babylonians. Blessed gorgeous old Hebrew, we still use it at home, but out in the marketplaces we use the language of Babylon. Because we don’t have God Almighty’s power released, why, we have to think our way through and confer our way through.

You want to see a pastor; he says he’s in conference. We’re conferring our way through. And we’re acting as if Christ was still dead, instead of having risen from the dead. You know what I think? I think that we ought to begin to magnify the resurrected Christ more than we do.

Dr. Walter Wilson has a brother, Dyke Wilson, he’s been writing me lately and sending me things. He’s quite a character, really, and there’s one thing that he insists upon, and that is that the cross is past, and that he did his work there, and that’s over with. But that one point where we should place our interest is the throne, that the Jesus of the throne, the Christ of the throne, the resurrected, glorified Savior, should be the object of our interest now. Not back to the cross, but up to the throne.

I believe he’s perfectly right. And I think that we are wrong in this. I don’t mean to say that I stand here to give sight-unseen approval to everything that Mr. Dyke Wilson believes. I merely quote him as saying that this is where his emphasis falls.

And incidentally, that’s where the emphasis fell in the early days of the Alliance. And that’s where it fell even when I got into the Alliance 40 years ago. They were then talking about, Jesus can do everything, Jesus is risen from the dead, the Lord is on the throne, he can do anything, is anything too hard for Jehovah?

That’s the way they were talking then. But we soon got over that, and now we’re acting as if Christ was still dead. Why do the children of the King go mourning all the day? Because they think the King’s oldest son is still in the grave.

He is not in the grave, but He is long ago risen from the dead, and all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth, and that Power is waiting for you and me to dare to put away our psychology of non-expectation, put away the mental attitude of being satisfied with defeat.

What’s the result of this Christ that’s still dead? What is the result of this psychology of defeat? Well, the devil is satisfied, that’s sure enough, quite satisfied. And I believe also, and this is terrible, that the Spirit is grieved. I believe the Holy Ghost is grieved.

Did you notice that when Jesus charged Israel with unbelief, their wrath burned against Him, and they took Him out to throw him over a cliff and kill Him. They said, We’re orthodox, what do you mean? And believing to them means accepting a creed.

Believing to Jesus means accepting a creed and expecting something from the God of the creed. They could go halfway, but they couldn’t go the rest of the way. And it was this charge that caused them to snarl and grind their teeth at Jesus.

And there was the animosity that grew in intensity until they killed Him at last on a cross. But the God that finds nothing hard raised Him from the dead easily the third day. But the Spirit is grieved, my friends.

The Spirit is grieved because of our unbelief. We look to each other for help instead of to God. And our altar fires burn very, very low, and we are forced to look to the flesh and misplace our confidence.

Israel was always running to Egypt for help, looking somewhere and sending to this heathen king and saying, come over and help us. And they were always defeated when they did. God said, you’re My people and I’ll look after you, and He says the same to us today. So, we’re driven to the methods of the world.

This may shock some of you and make some of you downright mad. And if it does, don’t let it bother you, I don’t mind at all. But I am going to studiously stay away from all discussions on methodology. I’m going studiously to stay away from it altogether.

Maybe it has a modicum of good in it, but it seems to me that when we accept without knowing it the belief that Jesus is still dead, and we accept the customary as the normal, and we get a psychology of non-expectation and don’t expect heaven to open, then we develop methods. If God were to open heaven, we might have to get some methods to hold things together, you know.

The Methodists were called Methodists because they had methods. But they had methods to take care of a glowing, wondrous power that had come. But we don’t have the power, but we’re trying to generate it by methods. And it won’t work, my brethren, it’ll never work.

If a young couple marries and gets into a tiny little house and babies begin to come, and one every year, they’re going to have to have a bigger house. And they’re going to have to have methods of looking after them. They’re going to have to have budget, watch their money, and change some things, and live a little bit more according to the book. But it’s to take care of expanding life.

But suppose two silly young people were to marry and say, now we’d like a house full of children, let’s get a budget. And also let’s build two nurseries and three extra bedrooms. You can’t have life by a budget, and you can’t have life by a method.

And yet the Church of Christ has turned to methodology, and we act as if Jesus Christ was dead. If Christ is not risen, why monkey with the whole business anyhow? If Christ is not risen, why try to keep a church going at all? If Christ is not risen, we’re of all men most miserable. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, and have as good a time as we can before we die.

But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. He is risen, and if He’s risen, we don’t need these other things. They got our confidence misplaced; you see.

Whole magazines have gone over to methodology in recent times. The Alliance Witness is one of the few that’s still holding on to the editorial position that we ought to feed the souls of men. You can learn how to pet and how to make dates and how to build buildings and how to heat the parsonage. You can learn anything from the magazines now. They’ve gone over to methodology. Methodology without the Holy Ghost is a sepulcher, a whited sepulcher full of bones.

But where there’s faith, there’s God. And we ought to take this seriously and do some real repenting, my brethren. We ought to do some real repenting. We ought to call a moratorium on requests and do some real repenting, for the Spirit is waiting, hovering over chaos, ready to say, let there be light when we’ll believe Him. Let’s repent.

Let’s repent of our mentality that takes things as they are, as things as they should be, and accept the customary as the normal, forgetting that God says, talk not about the old things, lo, I will do a new thing, now shall it spring forth.

I will even make a way in the wilderness and streams and the desert, and I will plant the chitaw tree at the top of the mountains, and I will do the impossible things, for I am God.

That’s our God, my brethren. That’s the God we have. That’s the Christ we have. Let’s have an afternoon of repentance. Let’s go to God and ask him to forgive us.

Israel got mad when Jesus talked like this to them. Are you going to do it that way, or are you going to humble yourself and ask God to give you a refreshed mind.

A psychology of non-expectation, chronic defeatism, with Christ at the right hand of God, looking down eagerly, ready to help us in the power of the Holy Ghost right here in our midst? Why can’t we believe?

Let’s repent, and let’s ask God to blow away the fog that shrouds us and take the dust off our souls and remove this miserable business and dare to believe again, dare to believe again.

Then when we are believing and the grace of God is flowing, we may have to look around for channels to let it flow into. That’s normal and right. Paul did that, so he had his methods. But he didn’t try to substitute methods for the Holy Ghost. Let’s not do that, either. Let’s look to Jesus Christ, risen and glorified, and expect him to do the impossible for us. Amen

Brother McAfee, I’m going to close differently this morning.

Dear friends, you’ve heard me, some of you, 30 years, which means, I suppose that I have to preach twice as hard to get half as much impression. When we get used to things, we’re used to them. Are there those here who will say, I feel that in the measure you have described me, I feel that there is that sense of acceptance of conditions instead of daring to believe God boldly for my own life, for my home, for my business, for the Church.

I want God to release power into my life and into my home and church and business and life. And I admit that I’ve got this psychology of unbelief, and I want to be delivered from it. I want to bring to Jesus Christ these days just ahead an open mind and a sharp expectation. I want you to pray for me.

Are there those who will say, pray for me, Pastor, will you stand where you are, please? Is it clear? It’s a confession that this dull unbelief has spread over your mind to some degree. It’s not a confession of outbroken sins, but of this that Israel had, non-expectation, chronic defeatism. Don’t expect God to do anything, and consequently He doesn’t.

And you want to be delivered from it. You want to ask God somehow to throw you out into a crisis where He has to help you. And you’re ready to be daring and bold enough to pray that He will.

O God, God our Father, thou knowest we’re followers of thy Son. We know we are, and we’re not backing out, and we’re not allowing the devil to tell us we aren’t. We know we are. We’re known of him because we know him, and we bless Thee.

But O thou knowest, Father, the chronic non-expectation. Dear Lord, we are as Israel was in some measure anyhow. We don’t expect anything from Thee. We pray and pray and pray and pray the same words, Wednesday after Wednesday, and expect nothing. Forgive us, Lord, forgive us.

For all these who now stand saying, saying, pray for me, I do lift up my heart to Thee, and pray for myself too, O God. O thou knowest, Father, how easy it is to get into a mental rut, so easy to let yesterday dictate tomorrow, and let things that were, decide things that will be.

But Thou hast said, Thou art a God who maketh all things new, and we pray that Thou will touch the hearts of all these friends and give them a faith that will rise and dare to begin to believe Thee to do the unexpected and even the impossible. For Thou art the God of the impossible.

O God, break out, even over the next days upon us here, in such measure, in such fullness, that there will be, that Satan will begin to feel ajar, that he’ll know that he’s not running things. He’ll know that Thou hast risen. Bear Thy mighty arm, O God, and give us faith to trust Thee, that we may not grieve Thee by our chronic unbelief.

Everybody stand, please.

Now, Father, we ask that Thou will bring us to the house of God tonight, after an afternoon of penitence and waiting on Thee. Bring us to the house of God tonight. Bring in others and give us a wonderful, refreshing, glorious time together.

And now may grace and mercy and peace from the Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be with us forever.

Tags Omnipotence, Power of God