God of the Impossible

About 4 months ago, we left the church that we had been actively serving in for over 18 years.  We felt God calling us to "go", so we stepped out in faith and are trusting that God is directing our feet. And we now find ourselves in a period of transition as we search for our new church community.

The church searching has been hard and great and weird and amazing all at the same time.  We have visited several churches and do feel that God is leading us to connect with a particular church community soon.  However, in the search and in the journey, I have just been reminded yet again of how BIG and awesome my God is. He is the God of the impossible.  Now, I know that searching for a new church family is not "impossible".  I'm not saying or even implying that.  But through the challenge of visiting and putting myself out there to meet new people who know nothing about me or my love for God's Word or my desire to teach His truth or that I'm extremely introverted and not at all a people person, I have been reminded that my God is bigger than all of this and that His plan is always big and always best.  

At this church we are currently stalking, the Pastor is teaching from Isaiah.  The first week we heard him preach, he threw out a quick challenge to read Isaiah in its entirety.  I took him up on that and am on chapter 30. So far, it's a whole lot of what God is going to do (or already did) to the nations, their people groups, and lands of the Middle East.  However, in the midst of that, a few verses have continued to come back to my thoughts over the past couple of weeks.  

In Isaiah 7, God is speaking to King Ahaz via his Prophet Isaiah.  In verse 11 God tells this King to ask Him for a sign of confirmation of all of these things that are being told.  But not just a sign...God say to "make it as difficult as you want - as high as the heavens or as deep as the place of the dead."  He says, "Ask me for an IMPOSSIBLE sign.  Something crazy and out of this world.  Something that will have to be 100% Me.  Go ahead...ask for it?"  Well, Ahaz says, "No".  He feels that this would be testing God and doesn't want to participate.  So the mouth piece of God, Isaiah, says, "Listen up!  You have exhausted human patience and now you are exhausting the patience of my God!  So the Lord Himself will give you a sign...a crazy, impossible sign.  Listen to this...'The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means 'God is with us').'" (Taken from Isaiah 7.11-14)  

God says, "Here you go.  A virgin, from whom a child would be ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE, will conceive a child.  This child will be a son and she will give birth to him and he is the Messiah, Son of God, God in flesh!"  God's sign to King Ahaz, through the mouth of Isaiah, is impossible!  This only even resonates a semblance of possibility to us because we live in the AD side of history.  This must have sounded like absolute gibberish to the King.  I would think that as the words flowed from Isaiah's lips, even he would have wondered about the 'whats' and 'hows'.  But we know that in the Gospels, the virgin Mary gives birth to the Christ child, Jesus Messiah - just as Isaiah's prophesy, God's sign, foretold.  

So as we continue to search for a church, homeschool and raise 2 young men in the way they should go, and try to live our lives in a manner worthy of the calling of Christ, I pray that we would always see God in the impossible.  I want us to remember that He is so much bigger than anything in our path.  And that if God says it, then I want us to believe that no matter how impossible it may seem, it will be done! 

This is where the blessing is - in believing God in the impossible.  
Luke 1.45 says, "You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said."  

May it be so.