Doubt and the Power of Doubling

(Almost) Every night we pray for our church missionaries. Our church has a small spiral notebook they hand out once a year with descriptions and prayer requests for the missionaries the church supports. Today I prayed for an Indian couple. Their goal is to plant 100,000 churches by the year 2050. Their prayer request is for team unity in accomplishing this goal. As I prayed this prayer for them, I found myself thinking, "Well that will never happen!"

Almost immediately I started thinking, "Well, why not? Can't God plant that many churches if He so desires?" The answer of course is "Yes." This also got me thinking. If you look at it from a numbers standpoint, how long would it take? The numbers reminded me of a math problem I had in 7th grade. It dealt with frogs doubling and the population of the frogs.

In regards to this church planting effort, I thought, "If they plant one church the first year and then that church plants another church in the second year, and then each of those two churches plants one church the third year..." ...you get the picture. Anyway, it would only take about 17 years to accomplish the goal with the church number doubling every year. Since there are still about 38 years until 2050, this is a very attainable goal. It may sound impossible at first, but God often works the impossible.

May God bless their efforts and may He help my unbelief. -J