<p>9:23 <em>And Jesus said to him: Rather, if you can All things are possible to him that believes</em>- The father of the child was asked whether he could believe i.e., that Jesus could cast out the demon. The man replied that yes, although his faith was weak, he believed that Jesus could cast out the demon. His faith was focused on by Jesus, rather than his wrong beliefs. Faith above all was what the Lord was focusing on <em>in the first instance</em>. We frequently commit the horror of limiting God in our attitude to prayer. All too often we see ourselves in the man who believed and yet still had unbelief: &quot;If thou (Jesus) canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible&quot; (Mk. 9:22,23 AV). The man thought that Christ's power to help was limited: 'If you can do anything to help, well, please do'. The Lord Jesus turned things right round: 'If you can believe, anything's possible' - in other words, God can&nbsp;do anything, but His ability to directly respond to some particular need is limited by our faith, not by any intrinsic lack of ability within Himself. The man hadn't thought about this. He saw God as sometimes able to help a bit; Christ turned the man's words round to show that God's power is infinite, limited only by our faith. The same message is taught by putting together the fact that with God nothing is impossible (Lk. 1:37), and the fact that nothing is impossible <em>unto us</em> (Mt. 17:20). God&rsquo;s possibility is our possibility; and this is what the Lord was teaching the man who thought that it all depended upon the Lord&rsquo;s possibility alone. There are other instances where the extent and nature of the Lord's healing seems to have been limited by the faith of the recipient (Mt. 8:13 &quot;as...so&quot;; 9:29 &quot;according to&rdquo;; 12:22 &quot;inasmuch&quot;).</p><p>The word &quot;believe&quot; is omitted from many texts and from the NEV. Thus we could paraphrase: &ldquo;Regarding that &quot; If you can...&quot; which you said- as regards that, well, all things are possible&rdquo;. This is&nbsp;the view of F.B. Meyer and Marvin Vincent. The RV reads: &ldquo;And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst All things are possible to him that believeth&rdquo;.</p><p>It is clear enough that God at times limits His power. He <em>could</em> save everybody, indeed He wishes to do this, yet He allows human freewill to be genuine and meaningful, to the extent that not all will be saved. Israel in the wilderness &ldquo;limited the Holy One of Israel&quot;. He was left by Israel as a mighty man powerless to save. The Greek word <em>dunatos</em> translated 16 times &quot;mighty&quot; is also 13 times translated &quot;possible&quot;. God's might is His possibility. But our freewill can limit that might. All things are possible to God, and therefore all things are possible to the believer- but if the believer has no faith, then, those possibilities of God will not occur (Lk. 1:49; Mk. 9:23; 10:27). And so I have no problem with a God who limits His omniscience.</p>