The Lord's Specialty

The Lord's Specialty

October 15, 2018

Isaiah 43:13 "Yes, and from ancient days, I am He. No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?"

In Isaiah, the Lord speaks to the Israelites, but does so in slightly confusing verbiage. He says He is doing a new thing, making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. In hindsight we know He was specifically talking about making a new way for redemption through the coming Jesus Christ. And while it is important to keep the  Bible in context, there are some amazing attributes about the  Lord we can glean from this text. If you read the verses surrounding these words, you'll see the Lord reference the exodus from Egypt as slaves. He recounts parting the waters and taking care of them against Pharaoh's army. Recall that was a massive miracle, letting the Israelites walk on dry ground and then pulling the waters back over over the army and wiping them out. The Lord says to remember that amazing event and then says what He is about to do makes the prior miracle look like child's play. 

The Lord wanted to make a point, that He is in the business of doing amazing things, not just in the past, but an ongoing basis. This means new miracles, new and unexpected ways that He can show up. His words are specifically a path in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Both of those carry a degree of impossibility. In the wilderness, a jungle scenario, there are no pathways. It takes a trailblazer to have gone ahead, to make a path that is not there. And rivers in a desert are impossible. Water does not travel through sand to make a river. The two do not exist well together, as a desert absorbs all water because it is so dry. The Lord says He is able to sustain a river in the impossibility of the desert. The Lord is establishing He is not limited to the imagination of the past nor the impossibility of the future. It can be done, with ease. And in the same verses, He says that when we creates, when He acts, no man or force can reverse it. No one can combat the miracle of the Lord; He is unstoppable.

Your life undoubtedly has road blocks and deserts and wildernesses, and paths that seem impossible to traverse. I get it. No Christian will tell you their life was easy or perfect or without obstacle. But if you were to survey any Christian who has been a Christian for a duration of time, you'll find each one has a miracle story of what was seemingly impossible. I have a daughter who is unable to walk, paralyzed since birth. Her spinal cord is severed and no doctor can reverse it. There are days when I pray with her and I completely avoid praying for the healing of her legs; I don't want to get her hopes up of ever running or dancing or even feeling the sand between her toes on the ocean's edge. It's not that I doubt the Lord's ability, but sure, I doubt. I know He can do it. He has done it before. He specializes in making a path where none has ever been made. He can make a path to  channel her nerve endings and grow a new spinal cord for her. He can do the impossible. And so I pray for the impossible anyway. It may never come and she may never be able to feel the fresh summer grass under her feet, but still I pray. I pray to the God who is the way-maker, the doer of the impossible. The impossibility is His specialty.

I encourage you to stop limiting your imagination of what the Lord can and will do in your life. If you don't hope and pray for the big things then you've limited what God might do in your life. He can make a way in the wilderness and a river to exist in a desert. He can do the impossible in your life and no one can stop Him.

Don't take my word for it; look it up: Gen 18:14, Is 43, Jer 32:17 & 27, Matt 17:20 & 19:23-30, Luke 1:37, Phil 4:13