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 She was given an outdated uniform, but she was allowed to work out with the other players.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]Here we have a stark word. Here we see the Lord testing Israel: “He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.” [Deuteronomy 8:16]. Yet Paul says that they put Him to the test. A great irony occurs when God is testing us, and we despise His discipline, thereby testing Him.
Paul exhorts the church at Corinth about grumbling and complaining. He reminds the believers of the judgments that befell the 10 spies who brought a bad report of the land – and were struck down by a plague, and terrible fate of Korah and those aligned with him that came against Moses and Aaron and were swallowed up by the ground under them.
For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.
For the past two weeks we have examined lessons from the OT account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt in hope of avoiding the errors and attitudes of the children of Israel. This week we will draw connections between the Exodus and the prophecies in the book of Revelation.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun a series of devotions based on the Exodus wanderings of the Children of Israel, and their tragic mistakes which we can learn from and avoid. One powerful influence common to their failures was fear.
The Lord spoke to Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt to be desperately cornered with the Red sea before them and Pharaoh’s chariots advancing upon them from behind. Overwhelmed with terror they cry out to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Having just miraculously escaped from the miserable life of slavery, and only beginning their new life of freedom, the children of Israel were faced with the most dire threat to their existence.
When Peter and John had gone up to the Temple for prayer [Acts 3], they saw a man who was lame from birth, and were moved to heal him in the name of Yeshua (Jesus). Immediately the religious leaders laid hands on them [Acts 4:3] and kept them imprisoned for a day. The following day, with boldness, they declared this miracle was done in the name of Yeshua. I love what the “religious” leaders said next — “they perceived that they were unlearned men and they marveled at their boldness!” Why were they bold? They had been with Yeshua, and the leaders took note of that!