A Series of God's Promises: Nothing is Too Difficult for the Lord

A few years ago, I started a practice that has become popular among Christian circles (and maybe other circles too, I don’t know) of praying about what one word would define or guide me in the new year. Some years, that word comes quickly, and sometimes, like this past year, it’s pretty elusive. However, eventually it comes to the surface and seems to appear everywhere. While I think that this year may hold more than one word, the word that I publicly want to focus on is “promise.” Emily P. Freeman often says to pay attention to what makes you cry, and in December, I found myself crying every time I heard the song lyrics “promise keeper” in the song “Waymaker.” Just that one lyric. It has also popped up in more places than I can count since then. So, in pondering this word for 2020 and wanting to be intentional, I first mined my soul for what connotations I may already have had with the word, and they were two-fold.

1) I have been struggling to view the world and life through the lens of promise. Rather, I have tended to view the world as a hostile place, and I’ve been holding my breath in defensive preparation. I was not always this way. Havilah Cunnington describes the alternative in her book Stronger Than the Struggle as “discovery mode.” It’s when we’re driven by curiosity, and the presentation of an obstacle isn’t a death sentence that the world will always cause me more fires than I have the water to put out. Thus, it’s an invitation both to oneself to troubleshoot and maintain hope but also an invitation to allow God to do something supernatural beyond anything that we could do. I used to live in discovery mode when I first moved to Honduras. Everything was new and thus an opportunity to learn. But, with time, the disappointments, betrayals, and heartbreak piled up in such a way that they formed walls I couldn’t see out of. Curiosity isn’t possible when you’re too scared to peer over those walls. But flipping that switch out of defensive mode and into discovery mode isn’t something that is automatic, and I don’t think it’s something that we can fully do on our own. We need healing hearts around us to spur us on, and we need the healing hand of our Heavenly Father. Yet, our part is the decision to ask Him to lead us back into that soft place of innocence even if it is now gilded with the wisdom of better discernment and boundaries.

2) I think living defensively can also lead to forgetting about God’s promises. We can tend to construct a God in our minds who confirms our worst fears. We stop actually knowing Him and content ourselves with serving a caricature of Him that we keep at an arm’s length. Yet, He is the Word, and His promises are not like that of the mechanic who promises your car will be done by Tuesday or the man coming to fix your cable that said he’d be here at 1 pm (and that was three hours ago). He cannot lie. He cannot violate His very nature. But, I find myself fuzzy on my remembrance of His promises and have decided that perhaps the way that I can start walking back into discovery mode is by starting to remind myself of who He is and what He has promised. And, I’ve decided to also do so here. Once a month, I plan to seek out a specific promise from God in the Bible and take a deeper look at how that can apply to my own life (and perhaps yours as well).

But before I get to the promise I have in mind for today, I want to delve just a bit deeper into that word “promise.” Throughout the Bible, Hebrew etymology tells us that there are many different ways to translate that word “promise.” According to Jerusalemofgold.org.uk, here are some words for promise and also what they mean:
davar – to say, to speak, to declare, to subdue, to destroy, or to entreat as well as the noun form of a command or promise

dover – a pasture or remote place (this could include when Jesus goes off to a remote place, and we can consider this act almost as if He is also retreating into Himself)

davar/d’veer – an inner sanctuary

dibber – the Word of God

dever – a plague or illness, a thorn

omer – to say or promise or something said or a thing; this word shares a root with the next word immar

immar – male lamb

I recommend checking out that website just because it has some great points, but the one that stood out the most to me was: “In Hebrew a Promise of God is by definition every time He speaks!”

I guess the response to that could be “well, duh, of course it is; He’s God,” but something about that wording struck me. I think we find it easier to believe through the negative lens (and on a cerebral level more than anything) that God cannot lie. But, when we flip it through the positive lens, every thing that He says is a promise just because He said it! That also makes me view a promise as simultaneously immovable and concrete while also being living and breathing and residing in a person, in the Lamb of God. He is our Promise and our Promised Land. He is our sanctuary safe place. And, whatever other answers we seek for our circumstances, He is always the final answer.

This truth brings me to the beauty of this month’s promise:

Genesis 18:14: NOTHING IS TOO HARD FOR THE LORD

Here are a couple of differing versions of this same verse:
“Is anything impossible for the Lord?” – Christian Standard Bible
“I am the Lord! There is nothing too difficult for me.” – Contemporary English Version
“Is anything too difficult for the Eternal One to accomplish?” – The Voice

The context of this verse is in relation to elderly Sarah being told that she would finally bear the heir and the start of the nations she and Abraham would mother and father. And, indeed, it came to pass and has reached out to the touch the present generations like a stone thrown into a pond rippling water outward. Is it too far of a stretch for us to grasp onto this promise for whatever our impossible circumstance is? I don’t think so! The entirety of the Bible is a series of impossibilities made possible by the person of Promise.

Here is some real talk--getting this blog post done has felt impossible. I started it last week and have been utterly swamped with busyness and a to-do list I never seem to make a permanent dent in. And, if any of my fellow Bible study ladies reads this post, they may think that I was inspired by the Quest study by Beth Moore that we've been doing since this same verse and promise popped up in one of our daily devotionals. But the truth is that that was merely a confirmation of what the Lord is saying--maybe shouting--to me at this time since my half-finished blog post was already in progress before I got to that day in our devotionals. Currently, there are many situations in my life that feel oh so impossible. Some of them are out of reach because of finances. Some infuriate because they've occurred because of someone else's negligence, manipulation, or lying. And some are merely the mysterious tension we live in as humans as we seek to be satisfied in the Lord and simultaneously grieve over our losses and unfulfilled desires. Yet, all of these situations present an opportunity to invite God to supernaturally intervene. We don't know if He will, and we may even feel like we're emotionally holding our breath with the question of "But what if He doesn't _______?" But, this is the faith that was credited to Abraham as righteousness--that he held all of this mysterious tension and unanswered desires and questions but still pursued relationship with God. Sometimes, we want to treat God like a vending machine where if we push the right buttons with our prayers or good deeds or church going or Bible reading, we are entitled to the unlocking of the desire we seek. But, God is a Person who exists outside of time, and He is too creative to ask us to live in a world as lemmings who live out mere religious formulas. Yet, here is the security blanket in our time-bound frailty: As God's children, we are always allowed to ask. We are always encouraged to grasp onto this promise of who He is and yell it in the face of adversity.

So, here is my advice to myself that maybe you can also benefit from--before flying into a frenzy of what-ifs and plan Bs and depleting yourself by doing things in your own strength, start from a place of standing on the promise "There is nothing too difficult for the Lord." We may have to speak it to our situations with clenched fists or tears streaming down our faces. It may be reduced to a doubtful whisper in the face of great waiting. But this is the faith that will be credited to us as righteousness--that we not distort our relationship or perception of who He is based on our current circumstances and that we keep asking with the faith of a child until He moves or tells us no. He is the Lord. He does not change. If he spoke out this promise, it is both true and the very nature of Himself. He may not always feel good because He hasn't moved yet, but we choose to believe that He is good. We choose to give Him the benefit of the doubt even as we live in the tension of time.

If you're like me, it can take some meditating and worship to exit the tunnel vision of the desires and needs that have yet to be fulfilled. And in that case, I leave you with a song to spark your faith and give words to speak to your own soul and to the mountains that need moved:

"Awake My Soul" by Hillsong

And when He moves
And when we pray
Where stood a wall now stands a way
Where every promise is amen

And when He moves
Make no mistake
The bowels of hell begin to shake
All hail the Lord all hail the King

Here is another good (longer) version by Upper Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hguZbL0YNeg