Doing the Impossible

The Friend on the Road and Other Studies in the Gospels: Chapter 18 - Doing the Impossible
By John Henry Jowett


"Stretch forth thy hand."--Mark iii. 5.

THAT was the one thing he couldn't do! And he was asked to do it! Christ named his great incapacity and demanded the impossible. For years and years the shrunken, shrivelled thing had hung helplessly at his side, a poor mockery of a hand. "Stretch forth thy hand!" Impossible! But he did it! "And his hand was made whole like unto the other."

I very much like an epitaph which is found upon a woman's grave in New England--"She hath done what she couldn't!" Strange achievements hide behind that significant line. She did the impossible. Nobody would have dared to prescribe such things for her. Nobody ever thought she could do them. But she did them. "In watchings oft!" Long night watchings in nursing the sick! Night after night, day after day! "You'll never be able to do it!" But she did! Or she made prolonged vigils in quest of God's lost children, on desolate wastes and on cold nights. "You'll break down!" But she didn't. "She hath done what she couldn't!"

And that is to be the Christian's distinction. "What do ye more than others?" We are not to walk in the average ranks; we are to march in the van. We are to triumphantly beat the average. Anybody can do the possible. We are called to do the impossible, the things we cannot do. We are to make a living, and at the same time to ennoble a life. We are to get on and get up. We are to be ambitious and aspirant. We are to be creatures with wings, and yet to be the busiest folks on the hardest roads.

And harder things than these we have to do. We are to go to lives where hearts are like flint, and we are to melt them with the ministry of light. Impossible! Yes, we are to win great battles, and we are to have no other equipment than "the armour of light." We are to overturn mighty strongholds with the forces of the spirit. Impossible! "Things that are not are to bring to nought things that are." Such is to be the Christian's distinction. We are to march beyond the stern borders of the possible and set our feet in impossible lands.

Our Lord commands it. What is the secret of the achievement? This is the secret. His commandments are always the pledge of the needful endowments. The blind man obeys his Master, and goes forth to find his sight in the pool of Siloam. How impossible! Yes, but he went, and Christ's holy power went with him, and he came back seeing. The cure was not in Siloam, but in the journey; not in the mineral spring, but in the obedience. "As he went he received his sight." At Christ's bidding faith sets out on the most astounding errands, "and laughs at impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done!'"

God Moves in Mysterious Ways

By A.W. Tozer


To the child of God, there is no such thing as accident. He travels an appointed way. The path he treads was chosen for him when as yet he was not, when as yet he had existence only in the mind of God.

Accidents may indeed appear to befall him and misfortune stalk his way; but these evils will be so in appearance only and will seem evils only because we cannot read the secret script of God's hidden providence and so cannot discover the ends at which He aims.

When true faith enters, chance and mischance go out for good. They have no jurisdiction over them that are born of the Spirit, for such as these are sons of the new creation and special charges of the Most High God.

While sojourning here below, these children of the eternal covenant may pay token tribute to nature; sickness, old age and death may levy upon them, and to the undiscerning eye, they may seem to be as other men. Here, as in all its other judgments upon Christianity, the world is completely fooled by appearances, for it cannot see that these believing ones are hid with Christ in God.

Satan's Tools

By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman


"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and, let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1).

There are weights which are not sins in themselves, but which become distractions and stumbling blocks in our Christian progress. One of the worst of these is despondency. The heavy heart is indeed a weight that will surely drag us down in our holiness and usefulness.

The failure of Israel to enter the land of promise began in murmuring, or, as the text in Numbers literally puts it, "as it were murmured." Just a faint desire to complain and be discontented. This led on until it blossomed and ripened into rebellion and ruin. Let us give ourselves no liberty ever to doubt God or His love and faithfulness to us in everything and forever.

We can set our will against doubt just as we do against any other sin; and as we stand firm and refuse to doubt, the Holy Spirit will come to our aid and give us the faith of God and crown us with victory.

It is very easy to fall into the habit of doubting, fretting, and wondering if God has forsaken us and if after all our hopes are to end in failure. Let us refuse to be discouraged. Let us refuse to be unhappy. Let us "count it all joy" when we cannot feel one emotion of happiness. Let us rejoice by faith, by resolution, by reckoning, and we shall surely find that God will make the reckoning real.--Selected

The devil has two master tricks. One is to get us discouraged; then for a time at least we can be of no service to others, and so are defeated. The other is to make us doubt, thus breaking the faith link by which we are bound to our Father. Lookout! Do not be tricked either way.--G.E.M.

Gladness! I like to cultivate the spirit of gladness! It puts the soul so in tune again, and keeps it in tune, so that Satan is shy of touching it--the chords of the soul become too warm, or too full of heavenly electricity, for his infernal fingers, and he goes off somewhere else! Satan is always very shy of meddling with me when my heart is full of gladness and joy in the Holy Ghost.

My plan is to shun the spirit of sadness as I would Satan; but, alas! I am not always successful. Like the devil himself it meets me on the highway of usefulness, looks me so fully in my face, till my poor soul changes color!

Sadness discolors everything; it leaves all objects charmless; it involves future prospects in darkness; it deprives the soul of all its aspirations, enchains all its powers, and produces a mental paralysis!

An old believer remarked, that cheerfulness in religion makes all its services come off with delight; and that we are never carried forward so swiftly in the ways of duty as when borne on the wings of delight; adding, that Melancholy clips such wings; or, to alter the figure, takes off our chariot wheels in duty, and makes them, like those of the Egyptians, drag heavily.

The Baffling Call Of God

By Oswald Chambers


'And all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished ... And they understood none of these things.'
Luke 18:31,34

God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ's life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God's. But what seemed failure from man's standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God's, because God's purpose is never man's purpose.

There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. The things that happen do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God. God is working out His purposes.

If we are in communion with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, we shall no longer try to find out what His purposes are. As we go on in the Christian life it gets simpler, because we are less inclined to say - Now why did God allow this and that? Behind the whole thing lies the compelling of God. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God.

It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps

By A.B. Simpson


United to Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, we are accepted in the Beloved. He does not merely take our place as a man and settle our debts. He does that and more. He comes to give a perfect ideal of what a man should be. He is the model man, not for us to copy, for that would only bring discouragement and utter failure; but He will come and reproduce Himself in us. If Christ lives in me, I am another Christ. I am not like Him, but I have the same mind. The very Christ is in me. This is the foundation of Christian holiness and divine healing. Christ is developing a perfect life within us. Some say man can never be perfect. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. We are all failures. This is true, but we should go further. We must take God's provision for our failure and rise above it through His grace. We must take Jesus as a substitute for our miserable selves. We must give up the good as well as the bad and take Him instead. It is hard for us to learn that we must relinquish even the good in order that we will depend upon divine impulses rather than even our best attainments.

"God giveth grace unto the humble" (James iv. 6).

  
Days of Heaven Upon Earth

      "God giveth grace unto the humble" (James iv. 6).
     
      One of the marks of highest worth is deep lowliness. The shallow nature, conscious of its weakness and insufficiency, is always trying to advertise itself and make sure of its being appreciated.
     
      The strong nature, conscious of its strength, is willing to wait and let its work be made manifest in due time. Indeed, the truest natures are so free from all self-consciousness and self-consideration that their object is not to be appreciated, understood or recompensed, but to accomplish their true mission and fulfil the real work of life.
     
      One of the most suggestive expressions used respecting the Lord Jesus is given by the evangelist John in the thirteenth chapter of His Gospel, where we read, "Jesus, knowing that He came from God, and went to God, riseth from supper and began to wash the disciples' feet." It was because He knew His high dignity and His high destiny that He could stoop to the lowest place and that place could not degrade Him.
     
      God give to us the Divine insignia of heavenly rank, a bowed head, a meek and lowly spirit.

The Power to Love

By Theodore Epp


1 John 4:7-21

The apostle did not say, "Try to create and produce love." He said, "Let us love." In other words, we are to release that love.

Some may protest and say they cannot love certain people. That is true from the natural standpoint, but we are not dealing with natural love. It is divine love, the love with which God loved us when we were unlovable and our sins had separated us from Him.

God, as to His nature, is love. And this love is shared with the believer. It has been shed abroad in the heart of each one (see Rom. 5:5). This love of God will grow within us and flow through us in an unbroken stream if we will let it. The Christian life, which is the power of the Holy Spirit within, is a life of love.

This love of God matures the Christian. I have seen many of God's people grow older in the Lord and grow more Christlike as they walked with Him from day to day. They took more time to be with the Lord and had their hearts filled with Him. Through this, their love was perfected toward others. This mature love expressed through God's people demonstrates to others that Christ lives in us.

"The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" (Jer. 31:3).

The Vision of the Restitution of all Things

The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Chapter 48 - The Vision of the Restitution of all Things

By Horatius Bonar


"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth--for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away--and there was no more sea."--Revelation 21:1.


Of these two last glorious chapters, we could say, 'You have kept the good wine until now!' They take us into the shrine of shrines--into the very heart of the glory--into the paradise of God; into the royal banqueting-house--into the very splendor of eternity! What a summing up of God's purposes is here! What a conclusion of the divine oracles! What a termination to the long, long desert-journey of the Church of God, calling forth from us the exulting shout which broke from the lips of the Crusaders, when first from the neighboring height they caught sight of the holy city, 'Jerusalem! Jerusalem!

The first book of Scripture--and the last--fit well into each other; the first two chapters of Genesis and the last two of Revelation fit together like the two halves of a golden clasp set in gems. Enclosed between the two is the history of six thousand years. And what a history! What a beginning, and what an ending! It began with the new, and it ended with the new--the strange checkered 'old' lying mysteriously between.
'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'
'I saw new heavens and a new earth.'

Of these Revelation visions, some were seen by John on earth, and some in heaven, according as the point of view suited best the vision and the prophet. His sight of Jesus in His priestly glory was from earth, Patmos itself. Jesus had come down to him and showed Himself face to face. The epistles to the seven Churches are written from Patmos also.

But after this John is called up to heaven, like Paul, to see and hear unspeakable things, which, however, unlike those which Paul saw, would be 'lawful for a man to utter;' and most of the subsequent visions are from this heavenly standing-place. What eyes must his have been--to look upon such terrors and such glories unmoved and undazzled!

Let us notice a few of the many things regarding which he says, 'I saw'--while standing in these heavenly places. We cannot cite even one half. 'I saw twenty-four elders sitting,' 4:4. 'I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice,' 5:2. 'I saw under the altar the souls of those who were slain,' 6:9. 'I saw, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands,' 7:9. 'I saw, another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud,' 10:1. 'I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire,' 15:2. 'I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored best,' 17:3. 'I saw the woman drunken with the blood of saints,' 17:6. 'I saw an angel standing in the sun,' 19:17. 'I saw thrones, and those who sat upon them,' 20:4. 'I saw a great white throne, and Him who sat on it,' 20:2. 'I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God,' 20:12. 'I saw a new heaven and a new earth,' 21:1. 'I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven!' 21:2.

This new heaven and earth which John saw were still future. He saw the future as if it were the present. Yet this new creation shall not be shadowy, but real--as real as that described in Genesis. The former creation passes away, and the new creation comes--new heavens, new earth, new sea. The old creation is not annihilated but only purged and renewed. It passes away as the gold passes into the furnace--to come out purified. It passes away as this 'vile body' does into the grave, to come forth glorious and immortal, yet the same body. The 'restitution of all things' is to do for earth and heaven what resurrection is to do for the body. What a change! What a perfection! What a holy blessedness! Oh when shall the day break, and the shadows flee away!

This first verse most significantly brings before us such things as these--all of them blessed.

I. Here is the end of SIN. The world has lain in wickedness--but it shall do so no more! The overflowing flood of evil shall then be dried up, and sin be known no more upon this earth and under these heavens. What an ending shall be the ending of sin! For six thousand years it has triumphed--then its triumph ends. Not the 'shadow' of sin or evil in any form shall pass over this fair globe. It shall, even more than at the first, be very good!

II. The end of the SERPENT and his seed. How many ages had run out from the time that the serpent seduced Eve and ruined our world--from the hour when God said, 'You are cursed above all cattle--I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed!' The seducer's triumph is now over--he himself is cast out of this earth and bound--the terrible battle of so many ages has been fought, and the battlefield cleared forever--earth is now no longer at Satan's mercy--and no trace of his long dominion over it remains. The creation that he marred, rises from its ruin and sorrow more glorious than at first. His reign is ended--his legions are in chains--his spell is dissolved--his work of disfigurement all undone!

III. The end of the CURSE. From this time there shall be 'no more curse.' He who was made a curse for us, has cancelled earth's curse forever! No cursed thing in any shape shall again be seen--only that which is blessed and holy. The earth and its fullness shall then be the Lord's, in a way until now unknown. Blessed kingdom, and blessed King! From every particle of dust--from air and earth and sea--shall the curse be expelled forever! O fair and spotless creation, great paradise of God! The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose!

IV. The end of CORRUPTION and MORTALITY. These are the FRUIT of the curse--and with the curse they disappear. Death is no more. The grave is emptied. Disease is abolished. The inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick. Feebleness and weariness are unknown. The head aches not, nor the heart. The eye grows not dim, nor the ear dull. All is immortality and incorruption--and beauty and eternal health.

V. The end of SORROW. Into this new creation no grief shall ever enter. The days of mourning shall be ended. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. God Himself shall wipe away all tears. There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying. There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun--for it is written, 'The Lord shall be the everlasting light, and your God your glory!' 'You shall weep no more.' Everlasting joy shall be upon our heads. The valley of tears, shall then be the land of song!

And with the end of these things, shall come the beginning of the glorious and the blessed. The old passes away, and the new comes up like the sun in its strength. Winter is over and gone. It is sweet spring and perpetual summer now. It is the kingdom which cannot be moved--the undefiled inheritance--the reign of righteousness--the reign of the righteous King. Into this nothing that defiles shall enter--nothing unworthy of the presence of the glorious King!

All this for those who once were sinners--the lost and worthless! Blood has brought it. The cross has done it all. Through death, life has come. The crucified Christ has opened the gate for us--and all may go in. The same Jesus who has brought the glory for us, bids us come. Far and wide go out the messages of invitation--Come in, Come in! At each gate waves the blessed hand afar, beckoning us with all urgency to enter. Echoing amid earth's valleys and hills, through every land, the trumpet sounds that summons the wanderer, and assures him of most loving welcome. Will you hesitate, O men, or neglect, or scoff, or refuse? All this glory waiting you! These open gates inviting you! And this poor, dark, death-stricken earth speaking to you each hour, and saying, "This is not your rest--I have nothing for you but sorrow, and pain, and despair!" O men of earth, will you miss the prize thus placed within your reach? Will you despise the love that yearns and weeps over you in your folly? Will you not listen and live? Will you not listen, and go in, and become heirs of the glory and the joy?