The Power of Possibility Thinking

In John chapter five we are told that Jesus comes upon a man that has been paralyzed for thirty eight years. He asks him a question, “Do you want to be made well?” His reply, “Sir I have no one to put me in the pool.  Every time the water is troubled, I make my way down but someone steps in front of me and I get cheated out of my miracle. Jesus then says to the man “Take up your bed and walk.” This was a totally different approach to his problem.  He was being faced with a proposition, “I need you to forget about your past, push beyond the problems and entertain the possibility of what can happen in your life if you follow my procedure.”  He was being asked to do some possibility thinking. Robert Schuller in his book, “Peace of Mind through Possibility Thinking” says: “A possibility thinker is a person who, when faced with a mountain does not quit. He keeps on striving until he climbs over, finds a pass through, tunnels underneath, or simply stays, and turns his mountain into a gold mine with God’s help.  A possibility thinker looks for all the possibilities in every situation instead of impossibilities.” This kind of thinking is reflected in the gentleman I read about recently who was panning for gold and found a large diamond worth $3,000 dollars. Dan Fagnan's friends thought he was "a fruit loop" for panning for gold near his home in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, but the amateur prospector kept on.  He found the expensive jewel in a wet pile of sand and rocks excavated from 120 feet below the surface. A close friend was digging a well and invited him to sift through the piles of debris. Dan could have said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Yet he saw something no one else could see--potential success. Maybe you are like the paralytic who faced one disappointment after another. Maybe all you see before you is a pile of rubbish. Why not take another look in the midst of those circumstances; through the power of possibility thinking you might just uncover a miracle.