Mission: Impossible

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

And so we find the Christian quite like the Queen of Hearts, seeing the scripture, “Nothing is impossible with God,” as a reiteration, from a different angle, of the scripture, “With God, all things are possible.”

But it is not.

What it is saying is, “No thing is impossible,” which is a declaration that mirrors, “My word will not return having accomplished no thing.” God’s efforts never fail to achieve a desired thing, or end. All things will be done, and expended effort will never achieve no thing.

Our view of this verse has led to a God who’s name is Ethan Hunt. Regardless of the impossibility of the situation, God will find a way. This God can also be thought of as a master mechanic, because he can fix any broken system.

We see this in the arguments about creation. Life would be impossible in the universe if it were not for:

  • The distance from the earth to the sun.
  • The type of star that is our sun.
  • Solid water (ice) is less dense than its liquid form.
  • The precision of the interaction between the fundamental forces.

And the list goes on. Richard Dawkins calls this God the knob twiddler, because he is continuously fiddling with the radio dials in order to improve the reception. In this, I don’t disagree with him.

We also see this God in the spiritual, trying to fix:

  • The rebellion of Lucifer.
  • The fall of Adam.
  • His rejection by Israel.

Today I want to present a new vision of God to you. This God isn’t a God of the impossible, but a God of the inevitable. This is the God found in Job, where it says that God’s will cannot be thwarted. This is the God who’s word does not return void, but accomplishes all it was spoken to do. This is God the master designer, for whom all goes according to his plan and purpose, not the mechanic who is consumed with adjustments and repairs.

In Genesis and in Proverbs, the Spirit of God is shown to be present at the inception of creation. That Spirit brings life, therefore life was not an option, not an impossibility to overcome, but life was a guarantee, an inevitability despite all obstacles and battle lines.

The kings of the earth (this encompasses more than humanity, but includes the rulers in high places that Paul speaks about), set themselves against the Lord and his anointed, saying, “Let us make his plans come to no thing,” but the Lord scoffs at them (causes them to become spiritless).

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