The Holy Spirit was ministering in my worship today. As I was praying, I received a word from the Lord. He began to speak to me about how we often profess that nothing is impossible with God but that word spoken by our own lips, never reaches our heart. In our heart we doubt. We think that there are some things in life that are impossible and so we begin to consider our Lord as the God of the probable.
We place him a box, in our mind, of what we as humans deem possible and impossible, just due to our life experiences. We wonder if the things we hear and see are truly miracles or just good luck? In our most spiritual time we see the wonders of God’s creation yet in our daily life we take it all for granted. We vacillate between one opinion and another never knowing what quite to do with our God. Yet, when we take God out of the box, and we let him do his thing, we experience adventure in huge measure. Not comfort necessarily but adventure!
I am seeing intently the 100 years that Abraham walked with the Lord and the things he saw in those 100 years. While he never saw the completed promise on this earth, still he never wavered in his faith of impossibilities being possible.
Hebrews11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. 8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age–and Sarah herself was barren–was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. 13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.
Wow! To walk with the Lord 100 years is a feat in and of itself. The fact that he never turned his back on the Lord, though he wasn’t perfect, he was obedient. To never have said the words that so carelessly have fallen from my lips in my lapses of faith, “Lord where are you and did you really mean this?” To live in tents for the remainder of my days on earth as Abraham did, never knowing if this stop would be my last or one of many seems hard for me. My husband is fond of saying, “The King can do no wrong”. Meaning that whatever God chooses is the right thing whether we like it or not.
Only wait a second, this is the life we lead when led by Christ is it not? Our flesh is a mere tent, lest you think you are really getting a mansion in heaven, another blog for another day. We are aliens and sojourners aren’t we? We don’t really LIVE in our house and our life here on earth.
Oh, if that were true. Most days I do find the life I lead is probably more like Lot, setting my tent near the city, liking a little too much the way luxury feels on my skin. Trying to be righteous and failing miserably and trying again the next day. Maybe it’s not that God can really do all things, maybe it’s that I stand in the way, therefore making things probable. Maybe when I set out to try to fix things in my own power I cancel out the possibilities of God.
This is why being child-like is so important. Jesus said:
Matthew 18:3 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
When I was a child, I thought I could fly by merely tying a towel to my back. I wanted so desperately to be Wonder Woman. You can probably see the remnants of that little girl in me today as well. It was that faith in the impossible that made things possible. It’s not that God will probably do it, maybe. It’s that I have to believe that the impossible is possible. I have to know that I can soar. I can’t be worried about what people will say. When I see Noah building an arc when it hadn’t rained I get encouraged. When I see Abraham taking his son to be sacrificed, never having seen a resurrection I get encouraged. I begin to believe that all things are possible. When I see a man at the altar weeping because the doctor has told him that cancer has eaten his body and that he needs to go home and prepare to die, and two months later he has no cancer whatsoever, true story, I get beyond encouraged.
So if you see me with a towel wrapped around my neck, don’t think I’ve gone crazy. Maybe I am just believing that I don’t serve a probable God but I serve a possible God and maybe I’m feeling like Wonder Woman.
Pastor Susan 