For with God, nothing shall be impossible. – Luke 1:37 (RSV)

 All you need is a Bible, a few three-by-five cards or prayer notebook/journal, and a mustard seed faith.

For what?

For your impossible prayer list.

And what, you ask, is an impossible prayer list?

A list of prayer requests that are humanly impossible to answer.

The idea for an impossible prayer list originated with my friend Virelle Kidder. She told me that she faithfully prayed over her list daily, then, when no answers seemed forthcoming, eventually forgot about it. Until a year later when she dropped her Bible and everything stuffed between the pages fell onto the floor.

There, on her knees, she read over her impossible prayer list: a kidney for a friend who’d already had two failed transplants—answered; a healthy baby for her daughter who suffers from lupus—answered; healing for six broken marriages—all but one greatly improved (and that couple, she noted, was in counseling); personal financial needs—money appeared, she said, “out of nowhere”; godly wives for her son and his friends—two matches made.

Out of 10 impossible prayer requests, seven had been answered. Not all in ways she’d envisioned, and not in her time frame. But they were answered.

Whatever happened to faith? I wondered. The kind of faith that moves mountains, the James 1:6–7 kind of unwavering faith.

I thought about my own shield of faith, shot full of holes, corroded by the rust of doubt. I thought about my own prayer requests—all safe because they didn’t require the impossible to be answered. No requests that would stretch my faith.

I needed the faith of a child—simple, pure, uncorrupted by the cynicism of the world.  I needed to take God at His Word:

• “Ask and you shall receive” (Matthew 7:7)
• “If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11)
• “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory (Philippians 4:19)
• “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you” (Psalm 50:15)
• “Call unto me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things” (Jeremiah 33:3)
• “Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20)
• “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16)
• “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20–21)

God’s Word is pretty clear. My choice is whether or not to believe it.

“Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 16:14)

Forgive me, God, for my weak faith. I believe You hear and answer all prayers—mustard-seed sized and mountain-sized, possible and impossible. I believe I’ll see Your perfect answer to my impossible prayer in Your time and in Your way. And I give You the praise and the glory, now, before I even see it. Amen.

Read and meditate on Matthew 7:7–11

(c) 2017 Michele Huey. All rights reserved.