Even If

When the Impossible Confronts You

By Paul Covert

One Sunday afternoon, while I was training a prayer team for a trip to Indonesia, my dad called. That was rare on a Sunday because my folks (in their 80s) worry they might catch me in a meeting or during a teaching time. I knew something was up.

Dad left a message that sounded like he had just gone through an atomic bomb. “Paul,” he said, his voice shaking, “we just went through a tornado. It is all gone. The house, barns, and the garage—they are all gone.”

After a long pause he said, “Call me.”

At that moment, everything was beyond our control and we felt helpless. We had so many questions. Where were they going to live? What do you do with the few things that were not destroyed in the storm? Why them? The house a quarter of a mile north and the one to the south did not lose even a shingle. Why did God take their dream house and turn it into splinters?

It was a time that called for unusual faith and trust.

Simply Not Possible

The setting in 2 Kings 7 is an equally desperate situation. The Arameans have laid siege to the city of Samaria, there is a famine in the land, and the people are in crisis.

In the midst of the darkness, the prophet Elisha matter-of-factly predicts that by this time tomorrow there will be an abundance of food. In verse 2, the officer attending the king scoffs at Elisha’s prediction. “Look,” he says, “even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” Even if. In other words, this is not even in the realm of possibility. Does Elisha not realize how desperate they are—and that even a little food is not an option?

The story’s action continues at twilight with four lepers making a desperate decision to go over to the Aramean camp. They reason with each other (v. 4): “If we stay here, we will die of starvation. If we go over there and they spare us, we live, and if they kill us, we have lost nothing” (my paraphrase). But when the lepers reach the Aramean camp, what they see is beyond their wildest belief: the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots, horses, and a great army. The Arameans had become so afraid that they dropped everything and fled to their homeland.

So the lepers eat and drink and loot some tents of valuable items. They hide some of the spoils but then decide to tell the others in the city about their good fortune.

They go back and call out to the gatekeepers, telling them everything that had transpired (v. 10). The gatekeepers relay the message to the king, but he is convinced it is a trap. So he sends out a few soldiers to investigate. They return with news that verifies the lepers’ story.   Pandemonium breaks out among the starving people as they rush madly out of the city to get their share of the plunder from the Aramean camp. And what happens to the officer who seemed so confident this could not happen? He is trampled to death as the people run out to get their share of the bounty.

He underestimated the power of the God who reigns in heaven!

“Even If” Faith Principles

I have been processing this passage for a number of years. I believe the simple words even if, and their implications, can teach us several valuable lessons:

1. The king’s officer looked at the situation through natural, faithless eyes. The king’s officer isn’t the only one who has lived faithlessly. I sometimes do the same thing. Unfortunately, I reside there more often than I want to admit.

This kind of weak praying and faithlessness is the opposite of the way we are called to respond to desperate situations. Biblical heroes demonstrate a different kind of faith and prayers.   When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced the blazing furnace, they had a different take on even if. They spoke confidently:  “Even if [God does not save us from the furnace], we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” (Dan. 3:18). These three young men looked at their dire straits through eyes of confidence in their God. He was the determiner of their futures, and they completely trusted Him.

Queen Esther exhibited this same “even if” mindset. Approaching the king on behalf of the Jews that Haman was about to destroy, she confidently proclaimed, “If I perish, I perish” (Est. 4:16). She was willing to move forward even if it cost her very life.

2. Faithful praying and living are not based on circumstances or people. My wife Ann and I have needed to put into practice this kind of faith and praying several times during recent years. After my dad’s desperate phone call, we left the following morning to help dig out from the tornado devastation. Along the way we needed a new level of faith and a different kind of prayer posture. The prayers we prayed on behalf of my parents demanded an intensified trust and faith level.

After the tornado my parents decided to summer in Missouri and winter in Arizona. So they packed a few things in a U-Haul, and I flew out to get them and drive the U-Haul to Arizona. Seventy-five miles from home their vehicle was rear-ended by an 18-wheel truck. Mom’s back was broken, and she had to have a four-inch titanium rod placed in her back. The accident also ripped the leads of Dad’s pacemaker from his heart. Later we learned that his back had been broken. Neither of them was paralyzed, but both needed a big rig’s worth of care.

Again we moved into that unique kind of praying and faith we learned from 2 Kings 7: Lord—even if we don’t understand how my parents can experience even more devastation—we still pray and trust that You will meet them in this situation.

3. We can learn to capture our struggles and missteps under trial. When I was in high school biology, I remember dissecting a frog. After each incision we would peel back some flesh and use large push-pins to hold the flesh in place so we could see more clearly the organs of the frog.   In crisis it is as if God is peeling back the layers of protection we’ve strategically placed in our lives—those ways we want to be viewed positively by others. With those layers out of the way, the difficulties allow us to see motives, plans, thoughts, and actions that are not pure or that need work to bring them into submission to Christ. The key is to capture those offensive thoughts or actions as they surface so we can deal with them when the storm passes. These fleshly parts of us are hidden unless we are in the worst of trials.

Capturing those thoughts and actions helps us pray over them and repent where we need to. We learn to view trials as our loving Father’s allowing us to see our struggles clearly—and then helping us step up to greater maturity. We all have a long way to go, but we can be grateful that God goes before us.

4. The goal is to be continually grateful. I have witnessed people who are fearful or angry or have shut down their emotions. It is clear they are still siding with the king’s officer of 2 Kings 7, living without trust or deep prayer.

By contrast I have met a few who trust the Lord so completely that nothing fazes them. When something happens they shrug it off with words like, “The Lord has protected me so beautifully before, He will do it again,” or, “I am so grateful that the Lord handles all my struggles so wonderfully.” These people are rare—but, boy, do they stand out! We admire their grateful hearts and trust in God.

My friend Jake (not his real name) is like that. He is the most grateful man I know. Nothing rattles him. His faith, trust, and prayers cannot be shaken because of his appreciation for what Jesus has done for him already. Learning this level of gratefulness has opened unusual doors for him. Recently the monarch of a wealthy country invited Jake into his home, introducing him to the monarch’s family and close friends. Jake’s gratefulness and trust are magnetic to the people around him—even people of different faiths.

New Level of Effective Prayer

True confessions: I am certainly not there yet. I complain and whine too much. I am too often like the king’s officer in 2 Kings 7, expressing that something can’t be done. But I have in my sights the goal of greater faith, and I am striving for it. I want to be like my grateful friend Jake and those biblical heroes who could not be shaken.

We need a new level of the faith-filled prayers that Elisha and others demonstrated. This is the kind of faith that says from the heart, “Even if I can see no hope in my surroundings, I will trust in God. I will pray to Him for what I need. And even if everyone else is faithless and against me, I will have faith.” God can open the windows of heaven at any time and display His power and grace to us. Even if.

PAUL COVERT is the prayer pastor at Central Christian Church, a multisite church in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan area. He is the author of Threshold: Transformational Prayer, Transformational Prayer Leadership.