It can be tempting to believe that our power in prayer and a relationship with God aren’t up to snuff with those we hear give testimonies of God’s goodness.  We don’t see the answer immediately, so we put ourselves in a lower category.  Or maybe we only see the outcome of their prayers – we know the ending, so the fact that they waited for the answer, for the miracle, for the breakthrough, is diminished.

It’s one of the problems of knowing the Bible.  We know that David defeated Goliath, so we can read the story with victory in mind.  We know that Jesus rose again, so we aren’t devastated by His death.  We know the ending, so the troubles and possibilities are diminished by the hope of the good that we know will result from the battle or situation.

Many of these situations were impossible in the moment, with no way out.  The Israelite army didn’t know that David would be able to defeat the giant.  They could only see that if this went badly – and it probably would, given the odds – then they’d still be under the thumb of the Philistines and probably worse off than before.  The disciples had heard Jesus say that He would rise from the dead, but they had no clue what that meant.  They only knew that the hope and joy they had experienced for the last three years was irrevocably gone and with it all their hopes and dreams of a kingdom free from Rome.

Impossible doesn’t mean final.  But as we work our way through our lives, it’s easy to get distracted by the negative circumstances around us.  We don’t know the ending, so we can’t live our stories knowing how the victory will work out.

I have encouragement for you: No matter how big your impossibilities, you still have the power of Christ to overcome them.  You have the Holy Spirit – the very breath of God – inside of you.  That’s more than enough power to not only survive but thrive in whatever situation you find yourself in.  (It’s also enough power to give you wisdom in every situation so that you can make good decisions, but that comes with practice and patience.)

James wrote, “Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years!” (5:17).  It’s wasn’t Elijah’s super-human prophet status that made his prayers effective.  He was a human being, no different than any other human being.  But with his earnest prayers, he effectively changed the course of Israel’s history.

You may feel that you’re nothing more than human.  But the truth is that you’re light years ahead of Elijah.  He was human, without the Holy Spirit.  You’re born again with the Holy Spirit inside of you.  Just because you see the darkness or impossibility doesn’t mean that there’s not victory on the other side.  Earnest prayer changes reality, and you have the power of God in your prayers to see that reality – “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).