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The Impossible

God wants to accomplish the impossible in our lives. He wants to do things that are unexplainable and beyond our imagination. This is an exciting reality, however, it means that we must have unsurmountable obstacle in our lives for this to happen. God proves himself to be God in the face of the impossible.

In the Old Testament, God commands his people to celebrate three Pilgrimage Festivals (Shalosh Regiloth in Hebrew). These Festivals serve to commemorate deliverance from their slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt.

The story of the exodus is filled with major obstacles and likewise major miracles. The miracles surrounding the exodus come to a climax in the crossing of the Red Sea. For starters, it was a miracle that God was able to convince Pharaoh (via the ten plagues) to let his people go. To find a way for Israel to cross the Red Sea with the Egyptian soldiers at their back is another matter altogether. It was one thing for Israel to sit back and watch God break Pharaoh’s will, but now this miracle of crossing the Red Sea will require Israel’s participation driven by faith. Israel didn’t need to do anything to get God to send the locusts, the frogs, or turn the Nile to blood and the sun to darkness. They didn’t even need faith, God did that on his own. Here, on the banks of the Red Sea, however, it’s a different story.

Israel’s crisis was God’s opportunity to do the impossible. It’s much the same with us.

I believe that this model for faith isn’t by accident. I wonder what it would have meant for the Hebrew people to not be able to look back to their Red Sea crisis in which God intervened. How would this nation-defining moment be different if the obstacle were anything less than impossible?

God allows unsurmountable problems in our lives to demonstrate his presence with us; to verify that He’s involved. It’s only when we stand on the banks of the proverbial Red Sea, the obstacle that is humanly impossible to overcome, that God proves himself to be God. If it were something from which we could deliver ourselves, then we would always wonder if God really was ever involved, or if it was God’s will to begin with.

Do you ever wonder what direction to take in life? The one in which God must perform a miracle to make it happen is the one he wants you to take.

I think this is why salvation is ultimately summed up in the defeat of death through the resurrection of Jesus. Death is the one thing that we cannot escape. It is THE insurmountable obstacle. No created being can defeat it. Jesus can. God can.

Matt is the Lead Pastor of Wellspring Church in Madison, Mississippi.

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