>Two years ago God informed me that He is the God of the impossible, and that nothing is too hard for Him (for the whole story, see this post.). We have made decisions in the past two years that hopefully are moving us toward being debt free. We stopped using credit (of any kind). We have started to go through our “stuff” and find things that we don’t “need” and have begun to sell them.

I have decided to sell my motorcycle because I did the math and figured out that, even though I save money on gas riding it to work, it is costing us more money because we don’t own it outright, and the payments are more than the gas it saves us. So I have listed my motorcycle on eBay (bidders, you can go here to bid on it). We are canceling our DirectTV service and trying to find anything else we can to trim down our expenses. We hope God rewards our efforts.

With all that, I’ve been wondering recently when God is going to start doing some impossible things (like a biig check in the mail or something). Today I looked at another person to whom God said “nothing is impossible”: Abraham. So let’s look at how long he had to wait.

1. Genesis 11:30 says that Sarai was barren. In Genesis 12:2 God promises that Abram will be a great nation. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old at this point. In Gen 12:7 God gets more specific and says “To your descendants I will give this land.”
2. Genesis 15:4-5 God tells Abram that his descendants would be so numerous that they would be difficult to count. He then makes an unconditional contract with Abram, and tells Abram about the 400 year slavery in Egypt (ended by Moses).
3. Genesis 16:3 says that Abram had been in Canaan 10 years when Sarai got the idea of giving him Hagar to bear children. That means he was 85 at that point.
4. Genesis 16:16 says Abram was 86 when Ishmael was born.
5. Genesis 17:1 says Abram was 99 when God appeared to Him, renamed him and Sarai, and promised him specifically that Sarah would give birth to Isaac in one year.

What does this all mean? God kept promising, and kept getting more specific on how the promise would be fulfilled, but it finally took 25 years for the initial promise to be fulfilled. It’s been two years since God promised me He would do the impossible (and I take that to mean He will pay off my debts so I can get back in the ministry, since that was what I was asking Him for at the time). Hopefully He doesn’t make me wait 25 years, but even if He does, Psalm 27:13-14.