Praying the Impossible

Praying the Impossible
 

I heard a story the other day of an older woman who when asked how she and her husband had stayed in ministry for so long answered, “I pray the impossible.”  When questioned further she said, “I believe that when I pray, God gathers the angels and says, ‘Look over here. Something is about to happen.’ But when we pray small, God says, ‘Sit down angels. They can handle this in their own power.’ I don’t ever want to make the angels sit down.”  Now that’s probably not doctrinally or theologically accurate, but I feel like there is something in that, and it got me thinking.

Habakkuk 1:5

Look among the nations, and see;

wonder and be astounded.

For I am doing a work in your days

that you would not believe if told.

That’s my prayer for this project. That’s my prayer for my life. I pray that God will work in and through me the impossible that even if I were told about it before hand, I wouldn’t believe it were possible.

There is something about praying the impossible that takes you outside of yourself. It’s something you can’t do alone, and so it forces you to rely on God. It puts the pressure on him to act and on us to just believe faithfully with patience in obedience.

I want to make demands on God’s grace because I serve a God who wants to work on behalf of his people.

Matthew 7:7-8,11

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.

I serve a God who loves me and the people of this world and wants to use me to help them and reach them in impossible ways. So why not pray for the impossible from God?

Luke 1:37

For nothing will be impossible with God.

We always try limiting God, putting him in a box, recreating him in our image, but God is so much more than we can even imagine. A view of a small God makes for a big world, but a view of a big God makes the world seem a lot smaller and easier to handle.

Isaiah 55:8-9

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Why can’t we trust in those ways, which are greater than our own and believe God will work? So often it seems we are afraid to ask too much from God as if we are going to offend him. Or are we really afraid that he won’t do what we ask and what that might mean? Do we really have such little faith?

Matthew 17:20

Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there.” And it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

We serve a God who works through his people. We are his plan for reaching the nations. How will he accomplish great works in this world if His people have too little faith to expect such things from him?

John 14:12-14

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

Christ said that his people will be able to do greater works than even he could do. The word used for works includes signs, teaching, and prayer. We can do this in the power of his Spirit that he has given us. Why do we often have such a small view of that power?

Ephesians 3:20

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.

So even more, God can do all of these impossible things by the same power that is at work in us, in his people, in me. This should give us confidence to act and pray expecting the impossible.

Another reason to pray the impossible is because Christ did it. After he had withered the fig tree in front of his disciples, he said,

Matthew 21:21-22

Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to this fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea,” it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith

So I want to learn how to pray the impossible until it’s the only way I know how.