41. Nothing impossible
Matthew 17:20 If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed…nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Mark 10:27 With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
This unconditional promise is subject to so many explanations and interpretations as to render the promise and its condition so mitigated as to be impossible of fulfillment itself. The normal experience of every human being argues against taking this promise seriously. If you have faith, then nothing will be impossible for you. Can this be literally true?
First, “faith as a grain of mustard seed” signifies a small amount of faith; any amount of faith is enough. One cannot say, “You don’t have enough faith.” Jesus’ answer is simple, “You have enough faith.” The answer to prayer is not dependent upon the degree, amount or kind of faith inherent in the prayer. The answer to a prayer is dependent on the will of God. Period. Faith does not make it happen, nor does lack of faith keep it from happening. It is the power of God, not the human faith, which makes it happen. God’s power is unlimited and, by definition, He can do the impossible. The example used is moving a mountain from here to there. I have never heard of this event suddenly or magically happening. It is not a question of “mountain-moving” faith but of a “mountain-moving” God. In Mark, Jesus is talking in the context of a spiritual mountain: Salvation, entering the Kingdom (camel through a needle). You can’t save; only God can.
However, our experience is not allowed to, nor able to, make a judgment as to whether something may or may not happen; but our experience cannot sit as judge over the Word of Jesus. “Moving a mountain” is simply impossible for any human being, but it is not impossible for God. This graphic physical representation is used to get us to visualize the possible in the hands of God. The mountains in front of us are often used as pictures of spiritual obstacles that are too big for us. It doesn’t take great faith to believe that nothing is too big for God. Use the old advice, “Don’t tell your God you have a big problem; tell your problem you have a big God.”
We are quite often confronted with problems that look too big and too impossible for us to handle. The point of this promise is get us to see that no problem is too big for God to handle. Though it looks impossible and feels overwhelming we do not need to be afraid to ask the Lord and believe Him. That is why Jesus gives us this promise: to encourage us to ask big.
The promise is not that God will do the impossible but that He can. Naturally, we also recognize a difference between what God can do and what He will do. Is it His will? What is His purpose? We do pray, “Thy will be done…” This promise of Jesus about the impossible does not address that question. But we also have this promise in 1 John 5:14-15: “If we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that have the requests that we have asked of him.” For us who “believe in the name of the Son of God…this is the confidence we have toward him.” (1 John 5:13). Therefore we pray, “Our Father (He will) who art in heaven (He can).”