Pray for the Impossible.

As I have shared before God is teaching me more about real faith. In the last few weeks God has shown me that I have made faith just an extra help for my own efforts. In other words I would work hard on things and then ask in "faith" for everything to go well. Faith was not for God to do something in and of Himself, it was kind of the like the icing on the cake. My only risks were for me to fail in what I was trying to achieve. I relied on God to strengthen me but I did not rely on God to do it for me. At any rate, God put me to the test and showed me real faith.

This started when my wife and I gave money to the church even though it meant we couldn't pay some bills. This request put me in a situation in which I had to step out in true faith. God was saying to me, "Let me do the impossible". Sounds Biblically simple but practically nuts. In spite of my little faith we gave. Unfortunately nothing happened overnight, not even the next day or the next day. What made it bizarre was that I had more faith each day. We would talk together about how we were going to get through this and I would cheerfully say, God has to do something. On the very last day that we would suffer the consequence for not paying a bill God provided. The check we received was the exact amount that my wife had prayed for. This is one of those times when you are surprised but not surprised. Holding the check in my hand I was laughing at myself saying "what did you expect, you serve the almighty sovereign Dad."

The example I have thought of was Peter walking on the water. This was truly real faith because there was nothing that Peter could do to make this happen. It was simply impossible. This is now my prayer that I will pray more for the impossible that only God can do. This is one of the ways the Lord teaching me about real faith and I don't think this will ever end.