My daughter, now approaching a two-year wedding anniversary and a birthday party for her one-year-old son, once mentioned that their family budget did not look possible on paper, but that somehow it worked out every month. And they had money in the bank. She smiled with a shrug and said, “It’s God math.”
God is one God and yet is three unique persons. We call that concept the Trinity, even though we don’t really understand it. 1+1+1 = 1. God math.
Five loaves of bread and two fishes fed 5000 people, and there were leftovers. 5 servings+2 servings = 5000 servings. There was some miraculous multiplication in there somewhere. God math.
In preparation to fight armies of hostile nations “thick as locusts…(whose) camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore” God did not add to Gideon’s army of Israelites, as one might expect, but subtracted from it until it numbered only three hundred fighting men. God and Gideon’s army prevailed. God math.
In my own experience, God has multiplied my time on occasion. In the most dramatic demonstration, I received a call at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday morning from our Community Bible Study teaching director who had prepared to give the lecture that day. She was very ill, and I would have to give the lecture with three hours of preparation. I had given many lectures by that point, but my average preparation time was about twenty hours. Yet, on that morning, three hours was enough. In fact, after some very focused work at my computer that morning, I glanced at the clock, fully expecting an hour to have gone by. It had only been minutes. I seriously felt like time had slowed down time for me that morning. It was God math.
I do not believe God solves math problems created in the service of our own selfish pursuits. Bibilical demonstrations of God math demonstrate God’s power, glorify him, and advance his Kingdom.
By far the most stunning of God’s supernatural calculations was worked out on the cross, when Jesus, fully man and fully God, died under the weight of the sins of the world. “So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28). One sacrificial death = countless eternal lives. God math.
Have you ever experienced God math? I’d love to hear your stories.
