Luke 18:27 And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
True story! In 1940, a large and wonderful Christian family, the Rudolph's, announced the birth of their 20th baby! Though the baby was not expected to live, having been born prematurely and with polio, she defied all odds. She did live, but by the time she was four she had suffered polio, pneumonia and scarlet fever. This little girl was badly crippled with hardly any use of her left leg. While her brothers and sisters enjoyed running and playing outside, she was left confined to braces.
"Will I ever be able to run and play like the other children?" she asked her parents. "Honey, you only have to believe," they responded. "If you believe, God will make it happen." And she did! Now and again, she would practice walking without her braces with the aid of her siblings. On her twelfth birthday, she surprised her parents and doctors by removing her braces and walking around the doctor's office unassisted. She never wore braces again.
Her next goal was to play basketball. The coach only agreed to let her play as a means of getting her older sister on the team. She was given an outdated uniform, but she was allowed to work out with the other players. One day she approached the coach and promised him if he would give her an extra ten minutes of coaching each day, she would give him a world class athlete. He laughed, but seeing she was serious, half-heartedly agreed. Before long her determination paid off. She became one of the team's best players.
Her team went to the state basketball championships. One of the referees noticed her exceptional ability. He asked if she had ever run track. She hadn't. He encouraged her to try it. So after the basketball season she went out for track. She began winning races and earned a berth in the state championships.
At the age of 16, she was one of the best young runners in the country. She went to the Olympics in Australia and won a bronze medal for anchoring the 400-meter relay team. Four years later in Rome she won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and anchored the winning 400-meter relay team -- all in world-record times. She received the prestigious Sullivan Award as the most outstanding amateur athlete in America.
This is the amazing story of Wilma Rudolph, an Olympic gold medalist, who believed the promises of God.
We must never allow our circumstances to dictate what we can accomplish or who we can become! Let's believe the promises of God for our lives and be encouraged to move forward for him! All things are possible to them that believe!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]These verses capture one of the most profound Messianic truths in all of Scripture. What man cast aside, God exalted. What the builders saw as flawed and unfit, God chose as the foundation of His eternal plan. Yeshua (Jesus), the rejected One, is the very cornerstone upon which salvation, identity, and destiny are built. This is more than a theological concept — it’s a divine reversal that reveals the heart of redemption. Rejection by man does not disqualify–it often qualifies you for God’s greatest purposes.
These verses are far more than ancient lyrics — they are a spiritual invitation. The psalmist doesn’t just admire the gate — he pleads for it to open. “Open to me the gates of righteousness…” This is the cry of a heart that longs for access to God, not by merit, but by mercy. In Hebrew thought, gates represent transition points — thresholds between the common and the holy, the outside and the inner court, the temporal and the eternal. These are not man-made doors — they are divine entrances into the presence and promises of the LORD.
As we continue our study in Psalm 118, I want to take a deep dive into verses 17-18, where the psalmist makes one of the boldest declarations in all of Scripture: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.” This isn’t the voice of someone untouched by pain — it’s the cry of someone who has been through the fire and come out declaring God’s faithfulness. This statement is not a denial of suffering; it’s a defiance of death. It’s the resolve of a heart that’s been chastened, refined, and pressed, yet remains confident in the God who preserves life — not just for survival, but for purpose.
Over the past two devotionals, we heard the song of the redeemed and stood at the wells of salvation. We saw how strength, song, and salvation flow from Yeshua Himself — how the joy of drawing from His presence is not just a poetic promise but a lifeline for our day. Yet today, we stand at a prophetic threshold. Something has shifted. Something has broken open. We are not only being refreshed — we are being awakened and called.
Yesterday, we heard the anthem of the redeemed rise like a trumpet blast: “The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation.” We explored how this was more than personal — it was prophetic, Messianic, and generational. We saw Yeshua not only as our Deliverer but as the very embodiment of God’s strength, the melody of our praise, and the fulfillment of every promise. We stood in awe as tents of rejoicing rose in the midst of warfare, and households became sanctuaries of celebration. But today, we go deeper — we step to the well.
There’s a reason this verse resounds like a national anthem of the redeemed. It’s not just a personal declaration—it’s a generational cry that echoes back to Moses at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:2) and forward to the final deliverance of Israel. The Hebrew word for salvation—Yeshua—makes this verse unmistakably Messianic. It isn’t a vague deliverance. It is the revelation of Yeshua (Jesus), the Deliverer, who embodies strength, becomes our song, and stands as the fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan.
The cry that shattered the stillness of Golgotha—“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46)—was not a random cry of despair, but the deliberate voice of Yeshua pointing to Scripture. As He hung on the tree, bearing the sin of the world, He invoked the ancient words of David—not only identifying Himself as the righteous sufferer, but signaling that Psalm 22 was unfolding before their very eyes. In that moment, heaven and earth bore witness to a divine mystery: the Holy One, seemingly abandoned, was fulfilling a prophecy written a millennium earlier. Yeshua did not merely suffer—He fulfilled every word, every shadow, every stroke of divine prophecy.