All Means All

I wasn’t writing today.

I was just thinking about a verse.

“All things are possible to him who believes.” — Mark 9:23

All things.

I kept coming back to those two words.

Not some things.

Not only the things that make financial sense.

Not only the things medicine can explain.

Not only what seems naturally possible.

Not only what fits the timing, the season, my age, the circumstances, or what I can presently see.

All things.

Nothing exists outside of all.

And then I thought about Abraham.

Romans says he was fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised.

Fully persuaded.

That phrase stopped me too.

Because I began to wonder:

What am I not fully persuaded about today?

Where have I quietly reduced “all things are possible” to “all the things I can reasonably imagine working out”?

Where have I allowed a bank account to define possibility?

A diagnosis?

A calendar?

Someone else’s decision?

The amount of time that has passed?

What I have or haven’t seen happen before?

We can become so accustomed to living inside the boundaries of what appears possible that we don’t even notice we’ve drawn them.

But Jesus said all.

And all is still all.

That doesn’t mean pretending circumstances aren’t real.

It doesn’t mean trying to manufacture enough belief to make something happen.

It means there is always something greater than what I can see.

God is not confined by the thing that looks immovable to me.

And maybe being fully persuaded isn’t something I settle once and never revisit.

Maybe it’s daily.

Each day.

Each day I wake up to another day in which all things are possible.

Each day I get to notice where impossibility has slipped back into my thinking.

Each day I get to become persuaded again.

So this is my prayer today:

Holy Spirit, show me where I have quietly reduced “all” to what seems reasonable.

Show me where finances, medicine, timing, circumstances, experience, or what I can see have become the measure of what is possible.

Keep drawing my attention back to what is true.

Help me live fully persuaded.

Teach me to live awake to possibility.

keep reminding me that “all” still means all

and there is no part of my life outside of Your all.

And tomorrow?

I get to wake up and be persuaded again.