More than you realise …
It’s long, but you are going to love this. It’s a challenge, an encouragement and something of a call, all wrapped in a “God wants you to step up” gift-wrapper. Our starting point is one that draws on your deepest empathy. You read it, grimace, and then press on. But not today. The line in Mark 9 can either set you on fire with faith or crush you with quiet condemnation, depending on how you hear it.
“All things are possible for one who believes.”
So far, so good… Let’s walk into the scene.
Jesus comes down from the mountain of transfiguration into chaos. Arguments. A desperate father. A tormented boy. The disciples, who should have been walking in authority, are stuck and embarrassed. They had cast out demons before. This time, nothing moves. It’s not working. It’s broken. Everyone is looking. #awkward
The father explains to Jesus. Everyone can hear. The spirit has robbed his son of speech, thrown him into fire and water, tried to destroy him. I brought him to your homies. Nothing. They gave it all the ‘stuff’ they had done before. Zilch. You can almost hear the exhaustion in his words. It’s what happens when hope has been stretched thin for years. By the time he gets the words out to Jesus, he’s not giving a polished prayer. He’s giving the raw stuff. If you can do anything… have compassion on us… help us. It’s not tidy. It’s the cry you make when you’ve run out of strategies and all you’ve got left is the truth of how badly you need someone stronger than you.
If you can.
Jesus answers like a surgeon going straight to the nerve, unshaken, no trembling. If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.
Here’s the curious part. We all know the story, yet the man at the centre of it stays almost completely hidden. No name. No history. Just a father hanging on by a thread, carrying more desperation than anyone around him seems to realise.
No backstory. No credentials. Just a moment. And Jesus isn’t buttering him up or trying to make him feel better. He’s cutting through the fog, speaking straight to the place that actually matters.
He is exposing something. The issue in that moment is not whether Jesus is able but whether the father still believes he is. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is trust in a real, living, present Person.
All things are possible for one who believes does not mean, “You can have anything you can imagine if you just push your faith hard enough.” Faith is not a credit card. It is empty hands laid on a powerful Christ. Touching Him, reaching out – calling. Trusting.
So are all things still possible?
Yes. The God of Mark 9 has not changed. Prophetic word delivered. The risen Christ has not retired. The Spirit poured out in Acts has not thinned out with age.
Here’s what this really means. The kingdom hasn’t faded. It hasn’t thinned out over time like old paint. The same Jesus who spoke to that unclean spirit, who pulled that boy back into life and strength, is now raised, enthroned, speaking your name before the Father. All authority in heaven and on earth. All of it. And that’s not just comforting. That’s wild, hope-igniting news.
But there is tension in the story. In Mark 9, before the resurrection, with Jesus physically present and his chosen disciples on the scene, things still did not “work” automatically. The disciples failed. The father doubted. The crowd wavered. The boy suffered. Jesus groaned over a faithless generation who just didn’t get it.
Question. If one of the disciples were standing in your living room today, would he be able to do what you can’t?
Sometimes we imagine the early disciples as having a monopoly on healing and miracles . But Mark 9 is the Spirit’s way of saying, They were as dependent as you are. They carried real authority, but it was borrowed authority. It flowed from Jesus, not from their personality or technique. That’s a renewing, restoring and refreshing DM for you.
After the boy is delivered, the disciples ask the right question in private. Why could we not cast it out? They do not change the theology. They do not lower their expectations. They go back to the Lord. You have the same ‘why?’
Jesus’ answer is simple and cutting. This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.
In other words, you tried to operate on yesterday’s grace. You relied on past success. You drifted from dependence. You were doing spiritual work without fresh communion. Don’t beat yourself up over it though, there’s some encouragement to sweep up here. And you must.
Would one of the disciples today be able to do more than we see? Possibly. Not because he belonged to a different era, but because of posture. A life marinated in prayer, schooled in obedience, uncluttered by distraction, actually expecting God to act, will often see more than a life that agrees with all the right doctrines but prays as an afterthought.
But he would still be as helpless as you without the living Christ. Peter without Jesus is just a fisherman with stories.
Now bring this into our moment.
All things are possible does not mean “anything I want, on demand.” It means nothing that God has promised, nothing that God purposes in line with his kingdom, is blocked by a lack on his side. The deepest impossibility has already been challenged and unambiguously overcome. God has done the impossible in sending his Son to the cross for guilty sin-infected sinners, and then raising him from the dead, and pouring out the Spirit. On weak people.
Ultimately, if God can take a cold dead heart and make it beat, he can easily heal a body. If he can forgive a long lifetime of wicked sin in just a single micro-moment of repentance and faith, then he can break a demonic stronghold. If he can adopt rebels as sons and daughters, he can restore a marriage, deliver from addiction, steady a tormented mind.
But he does it as Lord, not as our assistant.
So what do we do with this?
We refuse two cheap exits. One says, “Those days are over, God does not do this now.” The other says, “If you just had enough faith, you would always get the outcome you want.” Both bypass the relationship.
Mark 9 shows us a better way. We come to Jesus honestly. The cry of our heart is I believe; help my unbelief. We take his words seriously enough that we ask and keep asking, and keep asking. We turn from prayerlessness, not to tick a guilt box, but because we’ve learned the hard way that silence with God becomes silence in our own souls. We ask for the Spirit’s fullness, not to chase some spiritual buzz, but because people are actually hurting and we want to see chains break, hearts mend, lives come back together. Set free. Whole.
And faith… faith is strange like that. One moment you’re telling darkness to leave in Jesus’ name. The next you’re standing by a graveside with your shirt damp from tears, holding on to resurrection hope with both hands because you refuse to let death have the final word. You know your story. You know what you’ve walked through. And you’re still here, still reaching for the God who meets you in both the fire and the ashes.
In both cases, all things are still possible with God. The cross and the empty tomb guarantee that. The question is not whether he has power. The question is whether we will keep bringing our impossible cases to him, with the same trembling cry as that father in Mark 9.
I believe. Help my unbelief.