Impossible Possibility

 January 10, 2024

”Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” 

They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; 

not one of them does good! 

Who will come from Mount Zion to rescue Israel? 

When the Lord restores his people, 

Jacob will shout with joy, and Israel will rejoice.“

—Psalm 14:1, 7 

What would it be like if Christians were to live on the edge of impossibility? I like my comfort as much as anyone else, but while comfort is…well…comfortable, it rarely is the stuff of legends. I remember as a kid when my father would demand that I turn off Saturday morning cartoons and get outside, and remember telling my boys when they were young that they would never look back and say, “Remember when we were playing that video game? Or watching TV?” When old men look back on their youth, it’s not the comfortable times they remember; it’s the moments of hair-raising danger, when it felt like they might not survive.

I had been pastoring Park church for about ten years when I looked at my life and ministry and thought, “If I have to do this the rest of my life, I don’t think I can stand it.” Life was comfortable. We were operating out of the old meeting house building; it required three services to be able to fit everyone in. We began talking about expansion, and it looked impossible. We could have kept doing ministry the same old way without even thinking about it. It took little or no faith. A new building would mean more expenses; could we do it? We didn’t know, but playing it safe wasn’t an option for me. I never told anyone, but in my heart I was saying, “If the people want to grow, I want to help make it possible and am willing to stay as long as it takes. If on the other hand, they’re content to maintain the status quo, I’m outta here.” 

My father lived a very conservative life; he avoided unnecessary risk. I don’t fault him for it, but I decided that I wasn’t content with contentment. For me, to be faithful meant stepping out when I didn’t know how things would end up. In this 14th Psalm, David talks about the wickedness of mankind; “There is none who does good; no, not one.” He bent low under the weight of oppression. Years later when Israel was in exile in Babylon, these words took on additional meaning. They were captives in a foreign land, reeling under the heavy hand of a pagan world power. Could there be any hope of deliverance, or would the nation fade away into oblivion, assimilated into the foreign culture? Such a hope had never materialized before nor since. 

But our God is the God of the impossible. David doesn’t say “IF the Lord restores his people, 

Jacob will shout with joy, and Israel will rejoice; he says, “WHEN the Lord restores his people.” God did it, and he did it again in 1948. If God can raise the dead (he can, and did), if he can make Ezekiel’s dry bones live, he can make the impossible possible for you and me.

But we must be willing to step out of the realm of what we think possible into the realm of impossibility if we want to see God work. So my question is, “What am I attempting that has no chance of success if God isn’t in it? If by myself I can figure out a way to make it happen, I don’t need God. And when only what I think possible comes to pass, I have no reason to shout with joy. But when it can only work out with God’s intervention, when that day comes, there will be plenty of reason to shout and sing with joy!