Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son. Genesis 18:14

“According to your faith,” said Jesus Christ, “be it unto you!” (Matthew 9:29, KJV).  What a statement!  He was talking to a man who was blind from birth.  This was no mere psychological stunt; no slight-of-hand trick.  Here was a man who had never seen the white clouds float by, or the smile of a child or the thin wisp of smoke as it curled over a hut in a distant village.  “In the same measure you believe, it will happen to you!”  Is it merely the power of positive thinking, the teaching that believing makes it happen, or is there a missing element in the whole picture?

Jesus was talking to a man who could not be helped by medical science.  Unlike some people’s physical problems stemming from psychosomatic causes, this man was without hope in the natural.  He was blind, and no amount of positive mental gyrations could change that fact.  Yet Jesus flatly asserts that what he desires will happen in relationship to his faith.  Faith in whom?  Faith in what?  The blind man’s faith rested in a person‑‑Jesus Christ.

His perspective was that of a child who had been promised something by a loving Father who could be trusted, and—be very sure—what the blind man wanted— what he asked—for happened.  His eyes were opened and he saw!  Those things just were not supposed to happen.  They were contrary to the laws of nature, contrary to human experience, contrary to everything that men knew to be true; nevertheless, his faith in God produced the impossible.

May I put it in very plain English?  It is easy to assume that things such as I have just described do not happen today.  It is intellectual to be convinced that a man who is blind remains blind unless medical surgery can restore his eyes.  It is the tendency of the unregenerate man to assume that God is uninterested in our condition—if there is a God; but the eyes of faith recognize that there is a totally different perspective, a totally different realm, a different set of rules, one which knows no impossibility.

It is the life of faith, a faith that rests simply in God’s power to do for us what medical science cannot deliver.  There is a theme found in both the Old and New Testaments which, like a haunting refrain, keeps coming to my mind.  This is a question that on at least two occasions God put to men and women.  To Sarah, who had been promised a son when she was an old woman well beyond the age of childbearing, the Lord asked, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14).  Later God put the question to Jeremiah, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27, NKJV).

How about it?  Dare you on the wings of faith be so preposterous as to believe God for the impossible?  “According to your faith,” Jesus still says, “be it unto you!”  The secret is faith in the might and power of God.  Faith is not wishful thinking, not simple uneducated presumption.  As Martin Luther put it, “Faith is a lively, reckless confidence in God.”  George Mueller defined faith, “It is the confident assurance that what God has said in His Word is true, and that you can act upon it.”  Faith is standing on the revealed promises of a God who laughs at the impossible.  For a moment think of the biggest challenge in your life.  What is it?  Putting a marriage back together?  Bringing your business back from chaos?  Regaining your health?  Now ask yourself, “Is there anything too hard for the God of all flesh?”

 

Resource reading: Hebrews 11:1-39