Dear Amy,

How can we receive it when God speaks the impossible?

We have many examples of God speaking something impossible. Why does he do that?

Joshua was told to march the Israelite army around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls would collapse, but even before he was so instructed, we find this.

The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.”

― Joshua 6:2

As if it had already happened! Joshua had to act on the basis that something impossible would happen. (And it did.)

Arguably Abraham had it even harder. He had to wait on an impossible promise, for twenty-five years! Waiting is perhaps harder than doing. And waiting for twenty-five years?!

There are other examples in the Bible of God speaking the impossible. But here’s the thing: he is still doing it today.

“I the LORD do not change.”

― Malachi 3:6a

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

― Hebrews 13:8

The Bible itself teaches that we are to understand it in terms of our own experience when it says that Paul, Barnabas and Elijah were human beings like us and that Jesus knows how we feel in our weaknesses because he himself “in every respect has been tested as we are” (Heb 4:15). It means that their experience was substantially like our own.

We must pray for the faith and for the experiences that would enable us to believe that such things could happen to us. Only then will we be able to recognize, accept and dwell in them when they come.

― Dallas Willard, Hearing God, Chapter 2

How then can we receive it when God speaks the impossible? It is in fact a high honour, an invitation to demonstrate radical faith, and to grow in that faith. Perhaps God reserves such things for those for whom he has great plans, which will require great faith. (That’s a little scary, isn’t it?) No-one starts with such faith, but the Lord in his wisdom knows what he is doing. Again, consider Abraham.

And so I hold on to this verse, which has kept me going for some years, and was itself given to me in a miraculous way.

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?

― Numbers 23:19

This remains even if the promise is impossible.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: “I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”

― Jeremiah 32:26-27

Wait on the Lord in faith, Amy, knowing that he who promised is faithful (Heb 10:23), even if it seems impossible! 🙏