Pray for the Impossible

March 1, 2013

God loves a hard work and chooses the weak things to confound the mighty

By A.B. Simpson

Somewhere we have heard this strange message and with all its audacious boldness it rings true to the highest possibilities of God’s Word. It is easier for God to do a difficult thing than an easy one. The very structure of His infinite nature is such that He lives in the realm of the supernatural, the omnipotent and the infinite. When we ask Him for some easy and trifling thing there is always danger of our mingling with our faith a certain amount of human reasoning and looking quite as much to second causes as to God. But when we come out into the clear light and the high altitude of the impossible, then there is no place for anything but God, and He is not limited by our human reasonings and unbelief.

It is His glory to treat the hardest and mightiest things as mere trifles. When promising one of His greatest miracles through the ancient prophet He added, “This is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord.” When Jesus was about to heal and save the poor paralytic His words were very strange and striking. “Whether is it easier . . . ?” He asked. Man would have said, “Whether is it harder?” But the greatest thing was very easy for Him.

All God’s greatest acts have been things impossible for any but Himself. Creation was making a universe out of nothing. Redemption was overcoming a difficulty that was absolutely impossible for any human wisdom or power, to be just and yet the Justifier of the ungodly. Of the salvation of the sinner Christ Himself says: “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

The promise to Abraham, the father of believers, was something impossible. Israel’s deliverance did not come until they had reached the lowest depths of despair and all human hope was dead. God’s hour is the impossible and God’s opportunity is man’s emergency.

The support of Israel as a nation for half a century was a miracle of Providence. Jehoshaphat’s mightiest victory came in the hour when, baffled, perplexed and helpless, he could only say: “We have no might against this great company . . . ; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”

Daniels’ wonderful deliverance was accomplished after even King Darius had labored till the going down of the sun to find some way of escape for him and had declared it impossible. Jeremiah’s mightiest promise came to him when he was shut up in the inner court of the prison, when the Chaldeans were thundering at the gates of the city and all earthly hope was cut off. Then it was that God made him step out before the people and perform the mightiest act of faith of his whole life, that of purchasing the field of Anathoth as the pledge of the restoration of the land.

It was when Paul reached a physical condition of helplessness and self-despair, having the sentence of death in himself, that he was able to rise to victory and write that wonderful message in the first chapter of Second Corinthians: “We would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.”

Surely with these examples before us we need not fear to pray for the impossible—to claim our Master’s glorious promise, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).

Beloved, have you some friend beyond the reach of all human help? Pray for the impossible. Have you a temptation that you have been unable to overcome and that has for many a year baffled, defeated and trampled you in the dust? Pray for the impossible. Have you a physical infirmity threatening your life and impairing your usefulness? Pray for the impossible. Have you trials and difficulties in your pathway too hard and too difficult for any human power to remove? Pray for the impossible. Nothing is too hard for God.

Have you work you long to do for God? Are your resources cramped? Is your strength insufficient? Does it seem too vast for even the highest faith and the strongest hand? God loves a hard work and chooses the weak things to confound the mighty. Pray for the impossible and you yet shall sing with a joyful heart:

Nothing is too hard for Jesus,
No man can work like Him.

A.B. Simpson was the founder of the C&MA