Embracing The Impossible

Hi, I’m Nick Park and I’m Janice Park and together we lead the Church of God in Ireland and we’re delighted to be able to join with you to share about embracing the impossible. You know, in the second book of Kings in chapter 7, there’s this famous passage of scripture where the Syrians were fighting against the Israelites. And I guess it’s nothing new under the sun because they’re still doing that today. And uh the the Syrians were besieging the city of Samaria. And uh it was a time of real hardship and starvation. The Israelites were even resorting to cannibalism. And uh it says that you could buy a donkey’s head for about 80 shekels. And uh even just uh even just uh uh half a liter of Doug Dove’s dung cost five shekels. So that was the menu choices. So it was tough times. And uh the the king was actually going to try to have the prophet Elisha killed because a lot of people they they blame God whenever things go wrong. But uh anyway, Elisha said, “Look, by this time tomorrow, food will be incredibly cheap.” And uh one of the soldiers there said, “Sure, even if the window of heaven was opened, that couldn’t happen.” Well, thank God we have a God who specializes in opening the windows of heaven. And God did it by using some people who looked like they had very few resources, but they set out to do the impossible. There were four lepers that were at the gates of the city. And I mean, they’re in the worst case of anybody. the people, even the people that are starving inside, don’t want anything to do with with the these four lepers because they’re unclean. They’ve got a foreign invading army there. And finally, they say to themselves, “Look, we’re going to die anyway. Let’s go into the camp of the Syrians. Maybe they’ll take pity on us and won’t kill us after all.” And so those four lepers set out for the Syrian camp. Now, there would have been nothing more feeble than the sound of four lepers making their way out of the city because uh you know lepers like there’s you know that there’s bits falling off them and everything. They’re they’re not even walking. They’re shuffling. These four ragged lepers are shuffling their feet and it says at twilight they set out for the camp of the Syrians. But the Bible also says that at the same time at twilight, the Syrian army heard the sound of a massive invasion force coming toward them. And they thought it was the Egyptians that had come to relieve Samaria and fled in absolute panic. But they heard that noise at exactly the same time that those lepers set out. You see, God took the shuffling, pathetic footsteps of four ragged, begging lepers and God amplified that into the sound of a mighty army. And that’s how we achieve the impossible. We set out and we we can’t seem to do very much, but we we begin to even step out taking little shuffling steps into the impossible and daring to believe God for the impossible. And then God does something huge and amazing and amplifies our efforts. That’s what God can do for for us. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. I love the idea of the shuffling steps. You know, when I think of embracing the impossible, I what first comes to me is a mountain. And I think of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. And you know, most of us in a lifetime will never even dream of climbing Mount Everest and maybe not even have a desire to climb it. But you know, every mountaineer that has climbed that mountain has not flown to the top. They’ve done lots of training, lots of preparation. But the key thing is that they have taken one step at a time. They have got to the summit by one taking one step. You know, sometimes in in my life and in life circumstances, as with all of you, uh sometimes when I look at difficulties and problems, they’re like this enormous mountain. And the first thing that I feel, which I’m sure you do, too, is this sense of overwhelm. This is just impossible. You know, overwhelm can cause us to just totally give up. Say, “What’s the point? What’s the point? It’s it’s just too big.” But if we can embrace this idea of just one at a time, one step at a time, one prayer at a time, one life at a time, one step at a time will get us to that summit, will get us to our destiny. Uh I I talking about Elisha, I was thinking about Elisha as well because in the book of Kings, Elisha went to retrieve an axe head and it it had fallen into the water. He says, “Show me where it went.” And he performed a miracle and retrieved this axe head. And sometimes when we’re going up our mountains or our circumstances, we get off track. We go the wrong direction. And I just believe that we need to go back to where the axe head has fallen. Don’t give up. Don’t feel, oh, I’ve lost my way. What’s the point? Just get back on track. Go back to where the axe head has fallen. and God will show you, oh yes, that when you did this, that’s where things went wrong. So go back. Don’t give up. Just keep taking those simple steps. And we can indeed embrace the impossible. Amen. Amen. And you know what I love about the phrase of embracing the possible, the impossible, it’s about how much you can put your arms around. Because sometimes we hear somebody setting a goal that’s so huge that we just can’t get our arms around it. It it’s too big for us. Now, we do need to remember that with God, there’s no such thing as a big miracle or a small miracle. It’s all the same to God. You know, it’s it’s as easy for God to provide you with a million euro for a need than it is for him to provide you with€ 10. It’s just the same to an omnipotent God. So there’s no big or small miracles with God, but there are big and small miracles with us. And uh so instead of just paying lip service to something you can’t put your arms around, start with what you can put your arms around. You know, years ago when we were starting the work of the Church of God in Ireland, uh I heard people talking about you have to have great goals. And I remember talking to Jean Rice who was the director of world missions at the time. And he said, “Well, what’s your goal for Ireland?” And I said, “We’re going to plant a hundred churches by the year 2000.” Now, actually, that goal was one I couldn’t even put my arms of faith around it. I couldn’t embrace it and I couldn’t even get started on it. We were struggling to plant one church. And you know what? Every time I went to a general assembly, I would get in the the elevator and Gene Rice would be there and he’d say, “Here’s the guy from Ireland that’s going to plant a hundred churches. How many of those churches have you planted?” And I’m saying like, “Well, one.” And you know what? It got so embarrassing that when I was at a Church of God international event and I saw Gene Rice, I avoided him like the plague because I know he was going to go on about those 100 churches and I knew that I was nowhere near it. You see, I had I couldn’t put my arms around it. So then we said, “Okay, let’s plant two churches in the next two years.” We planted a church in Dublin. We planted a second church in the city of Dada. And God enabled us to do that. And and then we said, “You know what? We could plant some more churches.” And so we began to believe God for a couple more and here we are now. I mean we’ve been going for 30 years and we we’ve now got 42 churches and more opening this month as well. So you know what? We’ve achieved something that everybody thought was impossible. But actually we didn’t get there by putting our trying to put our arms around something that was too big for us to embrace. We started what we could embrace. And that enabled us then to do things that nobody else thought we could ever embrace. And so I want to encourage you. You know, if you hear people talking about goals and they seem a bit much for you and you think, well, I can’t just can’t my faith can’t embrace that. That’s okay. You know what? You embrace what you can embrace. Even if it’s only starting one church, e even if it’s only reaching one other person, whatever it is, believe God for something that might seem impossible, but it’s enough of the impossible for you to embrace. And you will find as you embrace enough of the impossible as your arms will go around, God will lengthen your reach and you will embrace more and more of the impossible in God. So, we’re going to pray now. Janice, could you just start us off in prayer? Yes, Lord, we thank you. We thank you, Lord, that you are the God of the impossible. We thank you, Lord, for your word that tells us, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And Lord, I thank you this morning, Lord. I thank you today, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing. I thank you, oh Lord, that you can make a way where there seems to be no way. Lord, we we pray for those who may have feel that they maybe feel overwhelmed, maybe feel that things are impossible, maybe feel that it’s all too much. I thank you, Lord, that you will make a way today where there seems to be no way. I thank you, Lord, for those that maybe feel have got off track a little bit, Lord, that you will bring bring that alignment again. Lord, bring them back on on course. And Lord, I thank you that you will help us just to take bite-sized pe pieces, simple steps like those lepers, just shuffling along, just doing something rather than doing nothing. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. And Lord, as the women of excellence in Europe reach out in faith and embrace the impossible, I pray that you will lengthen their reach. I pray, Lord, that the impossible will become possible. so they can reach out into more of the impossible in Jesus name. I pray this for our ladies. I pray it Lord for uh I pray it for every national leader. I pray it Lord for pastors and pastors wives and church workers and every volunteer, every member. Lord, I pray that we might see the church of God all across Western Europe achieving the impossible both individually and corporately as a movement of people. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. God bless you. God bless you. Have a wonderful day today.