With God, “I Can’t” Becomes “I Can”

We all wonder why we are sent insurmountable tasks, crazy deadlines, impossible relationships, and chaotic experiences of life. “Surely it cannot be God sending these to us,” we say to ourselves.

But there is an opportunity with these circumstances of life that prove exasperating.

God is a master of taking us to various “I can’t” places, in order that we would learn how to believe, think through, and find ways of living in the “I can” place. Belief is one thing, thinking in the paradigm of possibility is another, and yet again another thing entirely is trust in God enough to live in the “I can’t” situation, in “I can” ways.

Wherever Impossibility Seems to Reign, Possibility Lurks

It may be an overused cliché that God can do the impossible, and, as a matter of fact, he does. But this idea of God taking us to various kinds of “I can’t” places, in order that we learn how to believe, think through, and find ways of living in the “I can” place is an everyday reality. Only when we are open to this does life in the hard lane begin to work.

The trouble is we bemoan or fear these “I can’t” places.

We tend to go around and around and around the same desert territory of thinking, and that condemns us to feeling discouraged and somewhat condemned. This challenge in the “I can’t” place is a thinking challenge—a thinking challenge requiring habitual and unrelenting self-discipline, resilient beyond lapses (for we all have lapses).

The moment we notice that God makes a way for possibility to lurk, where impossibility seems to reign, we invite the Spirit to open our minds to what might be done to bring about an “I can” situation of thought.

There Is Always An “I Can” Possibility At Hand

We don’t just need to be positive thinkers or people of faith to believe there is always an “I can” situation afoot. We only need to see that our thoughts, and our mental processes, are severely limited—especially as they are constrained by our perceptions.

We really are swayed by many things, including mood, fortune and misfortune, the other people we relate with, and even our hormones.

We can see that this is about perspective. And when we have God’s perspective, slowly but surely—over the weeks, months, and years—we begin to see the “I can” situations unfold. God wants us with eyes, ears, mind, and heart wide open. When all our faculties are pointing, attuned, to heaven—the broader perspective—we do begin to see, hear, think, and feel the truth, and willingly so.

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God is a master of taking us to various “I can’t” places, in order that we would learn how to believe, think through, and find ways of living in the “I can” place. God doesn’t change our situations, but he gives us opportunities to adapt, to improvise, and to overcome. With God, “I can’t” can inevitably become “I can.”

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.