“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.‘”
From Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
How many of you remember Ripley’s Believe It or Not? It was a television show in the 80’s that gave facts and stories that stretched the imagination. Lately, it seems to have been a theme in my life. I just finished reading The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, which was originally published in 1959. The concepts and exercises he gives on being successful are still applicable today, but one of the major points was to get rid of the word impossible from your vocabulary. He said if you believe it is possible, you will find a way to accomplish it, but if you think it is impossible, you will be blocked from ever accomplishing it. There is a biblical correlation to this idea.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
In the Polar Express, the main character is a little boy trying to decide if he believes in Santa Claus and ends up riding a train to the North Pole. At one point he meets a hobo who tells him, “Believing is seeing.” We like to be able to see everything laid out before us, fully explained and concrete, but the spiritual life is not like that. Sure, sometimes we get glimpses of things, but for the most part we are trying to see through a dirty window.
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.
John 14:11
Yet, if we look around, we can see God at work all around us. When we believe that He is who He says he is, then we see the world and events differently. Just looking at nature, really looking, shows us they we don’t really understand what is possible. Some animals can re-grow lost limbs. A tornado destroyed a church but the podium and the Bible on it remained untouched. Like the White Queen said, the “impossible” happens all of the time.
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
Luke 1:37
The trick is knowing who God is and what His will is. If God wants it to happen, He can make it happen regardless of the constraints of the universe because He created the universe. So, when we live in His Will, then we live in the sphere of the impossible being possible.
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Matthew 17:20
A mustard seed is one of the tiniest seeds on the planet but out of it grows a tree. It is an example of a faith in that it starts small and then grows into something that can stand time and the elements. When we believe in God and follow His Will, things will happen in ways that only God could accomplish.
What has God asked you to do that seems impossible? If He has given you a dream, a calling, He can and will make it happen if we only believe. But, it doesn’t stop at believing. If we truly believe, then we have to take a step of faith or a leap of faith if you will. We may not see the whole path laid out before us, but we know the next step. Once we take it, God will show us the next one, and so on.
So, get rid of the impossible and ask God to give you a heart and mind that imagines what great things He will do. Then do the next thing until what seemed impossible becomes not only possible but reality.