Challenging The Impossible

Have you ever experienced a challenge so overwhelming that forward movement seemed impossible?

Perhaps all of us have experienced such a force. Many of our global missionaries and national leaders also contend with seemingly impossible challenges. Sometimes we make a move of confident faith to discover seemingly insurmountable obstacles before us. We experience fears and doubts of which others are not aware. We find ourselves fearful about the future. We war with self-value, the right decisions, success in our job, providing for our family, etc.

Then there is the earthshaking warfare that drives us to examine what we truly believe about God: the bouts with incurable illness, the heartbreak and failure of our children, and natural disasters that bring total devastation. Are we alone in the warfare of life or is there a God who is in control of our life and the lives around us in the world? We really only need to experience real fear once to know that it matters whether or not there is a divine power outside of ourselves who can overcome any threat in our lives. God is never irrelevant.

I have always enjoyed lessons learned from the Scripture passage in 1 Samuel chapter 17. It is one of the great narratives from the Old Testament. Most of us know the background concerning the warfare between the Israelites and the Philistines. It was a long history of conflict—back and forth over land, power, and resources. God had given the land to the people of Joseph when they left Egypt in search of the Promised Land. He had gone before them and driven out the great and strong nations before his people (Joshua 23:9). And now, many generations later, the Israelites had failed to obey the Lord’s directives completely and were still laboring to achieve that which had been supplied for them in the battle of Jericho.