All things possible

I was thinking this morning that if I were asked to suggest one verse that a Christian would do well to repeat to himself once a day, every day, it would be this:

". . . with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

I like its negative phrasing too:

"Nothing is impossible with God" (Luke 1:37).

There are lots of runners-up, of course. And if you catch me in another mood, I might offer instead John 3:16; 1 John 2:17; Psalm 86:11-12; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Galatians 2:20; Psalm 31:19; or an almost limitless number of alternatives.

But where I personally am most challenged in daily living is to believe in God's impossibilities-bending power over my personal theories about "how things work." I am all too ready to pronounce that such and such an outcome is unlikely and statistically improbable.

This is why it is just "what the doctor ordered" to repeat to myself every morning: "Nothing is impossible with God!" And then at noon: "Nothing is impossible with God!" And in the evening: "Nothing is impossible with God!" Try it yourself---out loud, preferably---and you will see that your entire outlook changes. It's good to say it loud because you have to talk over your own unbelief.

The blessed effect is partly psychological, I suppose (whatever "psychological" means), but mostly because the voicing of God's Word is music to His ears and releases supernatural power into your life. God honors His own Word. Why should I be surprised?

One's prayer life is a useful index of one's level of faith. If your prayer life does not contain a certain amount of outlandishly improbable scenarios for the advance of Kingdom of God, for your children's salvation, for your own sanctification---if, in fact, your imagination has never even been stretched to entertain such requests---maybe you can join me in this daily exercise too: "Lord, I believe that nothing is impossible with You! I believe that You can (fill in the blank with your personal impossibilities)."

During most of my Christian life, if there was a wild-eyed Christian fanatic praying for something miraculous, and next to him a more "reasonable" Christian, I would go with Mr. Reasonable. That is to say, I would "lean to my own understanding." My own understanding, personally speaking, is pretty narrow, and conservative in expectations, basing prayer requests on what I have seen.

We like to quote Winston Churchill's 1941 speech to Harrow School in which he said to "never, ever, ever give up." We find his words inspiring---and he was only counseling reliance on the power of determined human spirit. Why should we not put more weight on the power of determined Holy Spirit?

Never mind "let God be true and every man a liar," as Paul says in Romans 3. There are two ways of looking at everything that life throws up at us. We can always be "reasonable" (but watch out for low expectations of God masquerading as reasonableness) or we can say, "With God all things are possible." The latter is the spirit of Caleb (Numbers 13,14). When confronted with a choice, I have typically leaned toward what I can understand and what I have seen. Here is what God says about that kind of "leaning":

"Trust the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).

If Moses and the Israelites had leaned on what they could understand, or on the precedent of anecdotal past experience, they never would have crossed the Red Sea: It was not something they could understand, and they had never done it before. Do you think Moses used to rehearse to himself in his tent, saying, "Nothing is impossible with God"?

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