Faith

I have been thinking about Faith a lot here lately and in its application to the various portions of our lives. For those of you who have actually read my blogs you may know that I think in terms of a big unlimited God. But there are times that I feel I limit what God can do. Here in the city of Cleveland, TN people are always praying for rain, "because the good Lord knows we need it"! While several states perhaps they pray for no rain. Praying for rain in Cleveland, TN or for no rain in Killeen, TX and having the faith that God will answer your prayers is easy. But God promises us so much more, in fact in his word there were times when the impossible happened for his people. The first faithful man of God to request the impossible and to expect it to happen was Joshua. He stood before the people of God in prayer and said let the sun and moon stay where they are so that we can finish the job. He didn't pray that they could hurry up and get the job done or that the enemy would turn around and come back. These things would have been the easy faith thing to do, instead he asked for the passage of time to pause. Elijah was one who came to mind when I thought of all the prayer rquest for rain. He did something that truly required faith, in fact if he had been wrong he would have looked rather foolish.
Now Elijah, who was from Tishbe in Gilead, told King Ahab, “As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives—the God I serve—there will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word!” It happened just as he had faith it would and God honored him for his faith. Can you imagine if we prayed for no rain in Cleveland, TN until the wicked people turned to God? Can you imagine going up to someone and instead of saying "hey I prayed for rain and it came", you said "man I prayed for no rain until I said so and its been three years and still Cleveland, TN hasn't seen rain!" I am not saying that praying for rain is wrong, just that limiting your prayers to the normal course of things is. Pray Faithfully for the impossible it will shock you with the things that arent really impossible.