This week's Theme: Our God Can
Day 1: Facing the Impossible
Not long ago, I was discussing a need with a spiritual mentor and friend. As my friend listened to the “impossible” scenario I outlined, he laughed outright. “I think you are forgetting who God is,” he told me.
He was right. We believe a lot of theoretical things about God, but it is often difficult to put faith into practice when we are facing the "impossible". Sometimes even as we pray, our mind grasps at outrageous straws, or casts around wildly for “solutions”.
Don’t get me wrong, God often works by guiding us towards creative solutions to our dilemmas, or by opening doors that we are supposed to walk through. But some difficulties are reserved for God’s special intervention into the impossible.
For Abraham and Sarah it was age and infertility (Genesis 17:17-21); for Paul and Silas it was prison chains (Acts 16:16-40); for me, a tangled, multi-faceted dilemma. For you, what? In the words of a popular contemporary Christian song, “What’s your impossible?”
I came across the following words of encouragement entitled, “He Can” written by an anonymous writer. It reminds us that we serve a God who is able to make something out of nothing:
In looking to God for deliverance of any kind, we are prone to try to discover what material He has on hand to work on in coming to our relief. If we are praying for financial help, we are apt to look over the community to see if we can think of anyone whom the Lord might influence to lend some money. If there are no apparent probabilities in that direction, we find it difficult to believe for hard cash.
If it is employment we need for the continuance of our bread and butter, we make diligent inquiries in the industrial centers, and if we find that the shops, stores, and factories are more than full-handed, it is pretty hard work to be hopeful that we are going to get work.
If we are ill and there is no hopeful signs or relief from pain, it is not at all easy to convince ourselves that we are going speedily to recover.
To need a sum of money and not to be able to think of a friend, a man, or a monied institution from which it might be obtained, gives a dark background to the scene. To need work, and to find that throngs of others as needy as yourself are also idle, makes the human outlook very dark.
To be in bed day after day, feeling no better, but rather worse, bills increasing, business suffering, and patience giving out, makes a situation in which relief does not seem very probable. The trouble is, there does not appear to be a single human prospect to begin on. The outlook is all liabilities, with no resources to help out.
Now, to God’s child, what is the real situation? Are there nothing but liabilities? Much in every way. Are there no resources? Yea, thousands, millions, billions, trillions. Where are they? Above you, below you, around you. Earth and air are full of wealth untold.
Can’t see it, eh? You don’t need to see it. Keep your eyes on Him. Just think a moment. It is not at all necessary for you to see help in sight, nor is it really necessary for God to have any relief on hand.
He does not need anything to begin on. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” What did he make them out of? Nothing, absolutely nothing. When the earth was made, what did he hang it on? “He… hangeth the earth upon nothing.”
Pretty satisfactory earth to be made of nothing, eh! Remember, not a scrap of anything was used in making it. It hangs all right, doesn’t it? Very well, then. A God who can make an earth, a sun, a moon, and stars out of nothing, and keep them all hanging on nothing, can supply all your needs, whether He has anything to begin to work with or not. Trust Him and He will see you through, though He has to make your supplies out of nothing.
I pray that we are all encouraged in our "impossible" as we remember this writer's words, and the prayer of Jeremiah:
‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You (Jeremiah 32:17 - NKJV).
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