Nothing Will Be Impossible

June 14, 2021

And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you (Matthew 17:20).

The promise, nothing will be impossible to you, is a conditional promise. I know of folks who take this promise out of context and believe that as a Christian we can ask for whatever we want and God has to make good on this promise. I remember in my first staff position in a church a man came to me quoting this verse and said, “If I want to drive a brand new Cadillac, all I have to do is ask God for it and I will have it.” I asked him, “Why aren’t you driving a new Cadillac?” He said, “Because I don’t want a new Cadillac, and because that money could be better spent in ministry.” I didn’t believe the first part. I did believe the second part.

Believing that nothing will be impossible to you is conditioned upon the will of God. To have faith in that promise means you have to have faith in the God of the promise. And to have faith in the God of the promise means you have to believe in His will for you and for any situation or circumstance or issue you face in life. You cannot move mountains because you have faith in faith. You can only move mountains if you have faith in God, and it may not be God’s will that a mountain be moved.

I have counseled many a young couple who wanted to get married because they were ‘in love’. No doubt they were, but too often they were not necessarily in love with the other person as much as they were in love with the idea of being in love. In the majority of those cases the marriage did not survive, and those that did didn’t always turn out to be a healthy. We marry because we love a person, not an idea. And the love we have for the person is not just emotional - it is also committal, it is based on our commitment to the person in life, throughout life.

The promise, nothing will be impossible to you, is based on Jesus’ rebuke of the disciples - they had a little (weak) faith and they were not governed by prayer. When we prayerfully persist in faith to do God’s will we will know what God’s will is, we will desire to do God’s will and not our own (or anyone else’s), and we will do God’s will to His honor and glory (and not our own). Clearly this was not the case with the disciples, and sadly it is not the case with many Christians. But the promise is available to us as long as we meet the conditions.

“Thank You, Lord Jesus, for the promise of success and victory in life and in ministry, and for the conditions that govern that success. Keep us prayerful and persistent in faith so that Your Kingdom will increase, lives will be changed by the power of Your Gospel, and You will be exalted among us as a people who believe in prayer, are faithful in prayer, and who persist in faith in doing Your will. To Your honor and glory I ask, Amen.”

Pastor

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