What Cannot Be Done?

As we submit ourselves to God’s will we will be challenged to enter into and join God’s plan, God’s work – God’s God-sized ambitions that He means to accomplished through His people by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our character will determine our assignment.

By world standards and by the fleshy lens through which we look His plan is dim, fuzzy and distorted. We struggle to grasp it. We think we have to do it by our own power. We think we have to invent it or embellish it. So He reveals the true plan a bit at a time according to our capacity to understand clearly and handle it. Only upon reaching the destination can we appreciate the grandeur and the profundity of His vision. One saved soul and a great global mission work are all the same to God if they glorify Him and the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But that one saved soul and that great mission are equally resisted by the world.

Where God guides he also provides. Philippians 2:13 “… for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”  We have to take that scripture to heart and rely on His provision to DO IT. What we are to do is what He convicts us to fearlessly and cheerfully do moment my precious moment. This is hard in a world full of its expectations and models for success that push and pull us away from a calm, patient, God-centered focus and demeanor.

In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” Act 4, Brutus proclaims, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”  I like that quotation because it resonates with my belief that God provides those opportunities and those tides that we are to take advantage of in performing His inspired and Spirit initiated works. The “shallows” and “miseries” are the frustration and regret we experience for having taken control through our disobedience and fear. When God says “go” and we respond “later” – the tide does not wait.

 All of us have a ministry and all who are His are called to obedience and trust – because that is how we express our love for God.

Our responsiveness to His initiatives will effect to a greater or lesser extent our joyful experience of God throughout the adventure He has for us. We will be convicted to lay down sin and take up righteousness. Decisions will be made and God will be obeyed or ignored. We will listen to Him or we will listen to others. We will tire of trying, on our own power, to measure up to the expectations of people (perhaps well-meaning and even loved ones) – or we will embrace God’s love and rest in His guidance and draw from His reservoirs of refreshing strength. Psalm 1:3, John 7:38, Jeremiah 2:13 …

Every day is different but some mornings my devotion time is mired by my worries, my plans, the distractions of others and the world. I broadcast pleas and send up supplications and “jam the frequency” with my transmissions without allowing the Creator of the Universe to respond. I find no peace or fellowship and I enter those days without a peace that surpasses understanding. The truth be told - that is probably the majority of the time. But there are days when I manage to untangle myself from myself and submit in silence to Him. What follows is resource, understanding, order, calm and security.

Today He led me by way of circumstances and one connection after another which I cannot possibly recount here - to a poem mentioned in an obituary of a man who died over five years ago. Oddly it was a man who lived a few streets away from me. A quiet man, somewhat misunderstood in our neighborhood. A man of the sea who took walks along the shore of our community beach in his knee high seamen's boots and an old foul weather jacket. He seemed to favor foul weather days to be on that shore. A retired Navy career man of WWII and Korea who I never got to know despite, as I found out in the obituary, all that we had in common. I might have shared a few yarns and the Gospel with him … cause for pause and a twinge of regret.

This man’s favorite poem was mentioned in his obituary, the obvious recollection of a loved one who was impacted by it. The poem is titled, “It Couldn’t Be Done” by Edgar Guest and it perfectly ministers to me and the challenges I presently face;

It Couldn’t Be Done ~ Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But, he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn’t,"
but he would be one who wouldn’t
say so until he had tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
on his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle it in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That "couldn’t be done," and you’ll do it.

God willing ....

All the best!

Bill