To Do the Impossible...

Last night I did something that I don't always do.  I chose not to pray for any specific requests until God told me what to pray.  Sometimes I feel like I can fall into a rut of going down a "list" of sorts, praising God, asking blessings upon my wife and children, thanking Him for the Landman family and all those who are supporting me...these things are all fine and good to pray for.  But last night I said, "God, I'm not going to pray for anything until you tell me what to pray or how to pray.  My prayers are lame."  Then His words came to me like an invigorating rain upon my parched soul:  "Pray for the impossible."

Consider the implications of the statement.  How often do we limit our prayers to what is possible?  How common is the prayer that asks God to do what we could do ourselves?  What a difference it makes in our prayers when we pray for God to do what is impossible for us to do.  This works upon us in several ways:  1) it causes us to look to God's all-sufficient strength, wisdom, and power; 2) it causes us to admit our helplessness, weakness, and blindness; 3) it causes us to grow in faithful expectancy that what God has promised He is able to perform; 4) it allows God to be God.  Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.  When the disciples heard that, they were shocked and asked, "Who then can be saved?"    "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).  A rich man will trust his riches and not look to God to supply his physical or spiritual needs.  He is sufficient in his own eyes.  When we limit our prayers to the possible, we limit God by our senses.  Spiritually speaking, this is nothing short of a catastrophic disaster.

Psalm 78:40-41 discusses the conduct of the children of Israel in the desert after God brought them out of the land of Egypt.  "How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! [41] Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel."  Did you catch the second part?  Because of their unbelief, the Israelites provoked, grieved, tempted, and limited God!  When we pray according to sight and not according to the power of the Spirit, we limit God by our superficial prayers!  Isn't it ironic that prayer is the very means God has devised that we would use to release His power upon all the earth, yet that is the same means that can limit God?  We can be like king Joash, who struck three arrows into the ground when he should have struck five or six times.  Elisha was furious with the king, who was content with three victories instead of total victory.  It would not be enough to destroy Syria, the enemy of Israel (see the story in 2 Kings 13:15-19).  What a shame to not pray for victory because we cannot see how God will do it!

Receive this encouragement from the LORD to pray the impossible.  Are you afraid that God will not do it?  Are you concerned that God cannot do it?  Then you are not praying to the real God in heaven, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the great I AM.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and without Him I can do nothing.  For our God the miraculous is common operation.  Give God the freedom with an open invitation to do miraculous things in your life.  If this makes any sense to you at all, it is likely He already has!