I Know I Can

"Sometimes, He needs us to do what looks impossible to prove He's behind it."

Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end. - Edward Whymper (on climbing the Matterhorn) 1879

IT’S HARDER to go through the narrow gate. It requires determined effort. Prudence, as Edward Whymper said. Looking well to each step. The Matterhorn is some 15,000 feet in elevation. To climb even one face takes many hours, and Edward attempted it several times before reaching the summit. Others were not so fortunate. We, in the church, don’t like thinking about this, that anyone has failed. We’re inclined to blame God, or at least, barrage Him with accusatory questions. “Why, God? Why?” is something I have personally refused to ask. It can be asked, and God will answer. But for me, it isn’t a question of faith in His goodness but usually out of frustration in what I just can’t see.

A difficult place must be pushed through. There isn’t any way around it unless God chooses to take you to the other side. He did this with the boat after Jesus calmed the storm on Lake Galilee. He also took the disciple Philip from the desert into the city, after he ministered to the Ethiopian eunuch. But when the apostle Paul asked God to remove the difficulty someone, acting like a very thorn-in-the-flesh, was causing, he was told that God’s grace was sufficient. He had a part to play in being free. Endurance and continued faith were required. It is faith AND patience that inherit the promise God has made. But, as I always say, faith and patience WILL INHERIT the promise. There always comes a time of fulfillment.

”At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” (Paul to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:16-17)

The devil squeezes us into a narrow place to force us to make a decision. God places us in a wide open space to allow us to make a choice. The devil wants us to trip and make the wrong decision. God wants us to seek His Spirit and choose in faith based on what God has planned for us. And sometimes that is not a sunny walk down Easy Street. Sometimes, He needs us to do what looks impossible to prove He’s behind it. Think of Abraham, who changed his name to “father of a multitude” when he was 99 years old. God needed a nation founded on an impossibility, and He needed a man to squeeze through a narrow place to accomplish it. Which is the other reason God asks us to do what looks impossible. Because He needs someone who will go, and maybe that’s you. What if the prophet Isaiah had said “no” when God asked, Who will go for me? What if Daniel had agreed to eat the king’s food? But he refused to turn his back on God’s will, and so God gave him great influence in a foreign land. No one else was in the position he was to do what needed to be done.

Look at Joseph for an example of God’s plan through narrow places. He had to suffer the hatred and humiliation of his brothers. He had to adapt to slavery in Egypt. Then when Potiphar’s wife made a false accusation, he had to live in prison and not be depressed by the state of his life. He only became the most powerful man under Pharaoh by pushing through the narrow places. And for another example, we have Peter. He was just a fisherman when Jesus called him. Not a scholar, not a student of the law, not even in the ancestral line of priests. He had the greatest revelation, that Jesus was the Christ, then fell so far as to deny him three times. That was a narrow place, but he didn’t sit down there. Instead, he ran to see that the tomb was empty, greeted risen Jesus on the shores of Galilee, and preached the first Pentecostal sermon in the midst of Jerusalem where over 3,000 were saved.

No two people walk the same pathway. My life is not like your life nor anyone else’s. What I am called to do isn’t the same as any other. I have been in the narrow place, have felt the walls crowding me in, and have had to climb difficult terrain, but I did so knowing God was with me, He empowered me to do it. I stared the darkness in the face and took another breath, focused on the Word of God alive within me, and the promise of God to me. Though I couldn’t see how it would work out, I trusted God to work it out, and let all fear and doubt and worry fall to the ground. They’re just feelings. This mentality saved me more than once. Feelings lie. What does God say? By refocusing on the Word and seeking the presence of God in worship and prayer, I’d see my way forward again. I could do this.

I know I can. I know I can. And so can you. Minister Bill Johnson talks about how to strengthen yourself in the Lord. He says most times we’re looking to people for help, and that’s a good thing. Faith-filled people can be of great encouragement. But there is that moment where it’s just you and God, and you have to know how to push aside the devil’s voice and hear Jesus speaking. In that difficult place, so close to the narrow gate, your view obscured by the rocks and boulders, or a forest full of trees, it is vital to walk in the Spirit. He holds the future. He is the future, and our way is secure in Him. We must meditate on God’s truth until we know that we know it. Then the narrow place becomes the narrow gate which takes us into the Promised Land. Only by walking across a divided river did Israel cross over. Yet another impossibility. Only when a virgin gave birth to a son was Jesus Christ here on this earth.

And the pathway before Him one only wide enough for Himself and no one on it but His own footsteps and the Spirit of God manifested within Him. I am thankful for His courage and determination, for His true grit that pushed Him past the garden to the cross and from it to Resurrection, where a hilltop became a valley with a trail in the midst of it that leads us up to heaven.

“And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Mark 14:34-36)

Image by LUuy from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com