The impossible.

The majority of the time i look at the World from the viewpoint of what's actually possible..... and so often i forget that God is the God of impossibilities.....

I was thinking about Isaiah 41.17-18, which says:

"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry lands springs of water."

That's quite an amazing promise. When there is NO water at all - not even a trickle, but literally NONE, and people are parched, dying with thirst... then God will answer them and cause land that is completely DRY to spring with water. That's the kind of verse that i sometimes take for granted and forget how amazing it really is - how desperate the situation is, and how impossible it naturally would be for dry land to suddenly spring with water. If i'm honest, i've felt very thirsty recently - thirsty in my heart, but so thirsty that it seems to have seeped into my whole being and i feel a consistent literal thirst too. It means i'm drinking a lot of water - but my thirst is still there - it's actually the strangest sense of 'thirst' that i've ever felt..... but i know it can't be literal water that i'm craving, so i think it's living water - Jesus Himself. Even if the thirst does have a physical origin, it still matches my inward state too. I know He promises that if we are thirsty we can come to Him and drink....  and i do believe that promise..... but if i'm honest, i still can't shift this thirst, however much i drink of Him.....

Anyway, i guess i was encouraged by that verse in Isaiah.... encouraged that God delights in doing the impossible and that He is more than capable of doing the impossible. I was reminded of Ezekiel 37, where the dry bones are brought back to life and made into a whole army. Now that definitely is a natural impossibility... but with God all things are possible. I love the fact that God continuously breathes life into dead things and restores broken things. I love how we can have HOPE for EVERY situation, because God can transform anyone or anything. I love that when things seem to be at their very worst, it just creates even more of an opening for God to come and work. How when we are weakest, there is most room for Him. 

I was feeling a little disheartened about Church situations recently, but read the following quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which links with what i've just been saying... and encouraged me that there is hope for anything, because of the resurrection power found in God.

"Believers have to see reality as it truely is, not in a certain light.... and against everything and beyond everything they see, they believe in GOD ALONE and in HIS POWER. They do not believe in the world or in the capability of the world to develp and improve; they do not believe in their power to improve the world in their goodwill. They do not believe in people or in the good in people that ultimately must triumph; they also do not belive in the Church in it's human power. Rather, believers believe SOLELY in GOD, who creates life out of death, who has called the dying Church to life against and in spite of us and through us. Bur God does it alone."