The Impossible Is Where God Begins

One of the greatest lies we believe is that God's power begins where our ability ends. It doesn't. God's power was never waiting for ours to run out. The problem is that we spend most of our lives convinced we are capable, and as long as we believe that, we never see how utterly dependent we are on Him.

When Jesus told His disciples how difficult it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, they were stunned. If those who appeared successful, disciplined, and blessed could not enter on their own, who possibly could? Jesus did not soften His answer or lower the standard. He looked directly at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)

Most people read that verse as though Jesus were giving motivational advice. He wasn't. He was exposing the bankruptcy of human ability. Salvation has always been impossible for man. We cannot forgive our own sins. We cannot change our own hearts. We cannot manufacture repentance. We cannot produce faith by sheer determination. We cannot make ourselves love God. Everything our pride wants to believe about human ability dies in those few words: "With man this is impossible."

That is exactly why the gospel begins with surrender instead of self-improvement.

Modern Christianity spends an enormous amount of time telling people what they are capable of becoming. Jesus spent His time showing people what they were incapable of becoming apart from God. Those are not the same message. One feeds human confidence. The other destroys it. Christ never came to make bad people slightly better. He came to raise the spiritually dead, and dead people do not participate in their own resurrection.

The same truth reaches into every part of the Christian life. We call forgiveness impossible because we measure it against our own strength. We call freedom from sin impossible because we have failed so many times before. We call obedience impossible because we keep calculating the cost instead of looking at the One who commands it. None of those things are difficult for God. They are impossible for us, and that is precisely the lesson Jesus wanted His disciples to learn.

The greatest miracle in Scripture is not the parting of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho falling, or even Lazarus walking out of his tomb. The greatest miracle is that God takes people who love sin, hate His authority, and have no desire for Christ, and gives them a new heart that longs to know Him. No preacher can accomplish that. No church can manufacture it. No amount of religious activity can produce it. Only God can do what only God has always been able to do.

Perhaps that is why so few people experience the power of God. We have become addicted to believing in ourselves. We admire self-confidence, celebrate self-reliance, and applaud self-sufficiency, then wonder why we struggle to trust God. Scripture never points us toward confidence in ourselves. It points us toward the God for whom nothing is impossible.

The impossible has never been God's obstacle.

It has always been ours.

The moment we reach the end of ourselves is not the moment hope disappears. It is often the very place where God begins to show us that what He requires, He also provides. That has always been the testimony of Scripture. Human strength eventually reaches its limit. God's never does.