All Things Are Possible With God: What Jesus Actually Meant

It is one of the most quoted lines in the Bible and one of the most often misapplied. A devotional on Matthew 19:26 in its original setting, and how to pray it honestly. Day 28 of the Bible in One Year plan.

By Cruzsilla Gutiérrez · April 24, 2026

The verse

"But Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" Matthew 19:26 (ESV)

The words have been stitched on pillows and pasted on mirrors. They are true — wonderfully true — but if we lift them off the page without looking at what provoked them, we end up with a slogan instead of a promise. All things are possible with God is not a blank check against reality. It is a specific answer to a specific question, and that question changes everything.

Context

A rich young man had just walked away from Jesus. He had kept the commandments, he said, from his youth. Jesus looked at him and loved him (Mark 10:21) and told him to sell his possessions and follow Him. The man went away sorrowful, "for he had great possessions" (Matt. 19:22).

Jesus turned to the disciples and said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were "greatly astonished" — in their world, wealth often looked like a sign of God's favor — and they blurted out, "Who then can be saved?" (v. 25).

It is there, into that question, that Jesus speaks our verse. The impossibility He is first talking about is not unpaid rent or a stubborn diagnosis. It is the impossibility of a sinful human heart turning toward God on its own. Salvation is the first impossibility with God all things are possible is meant to solve.

What it means

Because it is anchored in salvation, the verse reaches everywhere else without losing its edge.

No situation is closed to God. If He can raise the dead (Matt. 19:26 is close cousins with Luke 1:37, spoken at the conception of Jesus), He can reopen files that the world has stamped closed. A marriage that looks finished. A prodigal who has cut contact. A habit that has ruled you for years.

But possibility is not the same as prediction. The verse does not tell you what God will do; it tells you what God can do. 1 John 5:14 adds the second half: we ask "according to his will." Faith is the trust that He can do anything and the humility that He knows what He is doing. Without both, the promise curdles into either fatalism or demand.

The hardest miracle He ever performed was the one the young ruler refused. He did not want to let go of his wealth. He could not imagine life without it. Jesus did not chase him down the road and negotiate. He let him grieve. Then He turned to the disciples and said, essentially, "You cannot make yourselves willing. Only God can." The most impossible thing in the Bible is not a sea parting. It is a human heart willingly letting go.

Luke 1:37 is the angel's version of the same truth. Gabriel tells Mary, "For nothing will be impossible with God." She believes. Her cousin Elizabeth, old and barren, is already six months pregnant as evidence. The verse runs from the rich young ruler's sad back to the Messiah's first breath, linking salvation and conception under one promise.

How to apply it

1. Bring Him your real impossibilities, not polite versions. Name the exact thing: the debt, the diagnosis, the child who won't speak to you, the addiction. Vague prayers lean on vague faith.
2. Ask first for the greater miracle. Before you ask for circumstances to change, ask for your heart to be changed. "God, if I cannot have this, still keep me." That is the camel going through the needle.
3. Pray Mark 9:24 when your faith is thin. "I believe; help my unbelief!" Jesus answers that prayer. He does not wait for a stronger version.
4. Refuse two errors. Do not shrink God down to what you have already seen Him do. Do not use the verse to manipulate Him into doing what He has not promised. Stay between those two ditches and walk.
5. Rehearse past impossibilities. Write down three things God has already done that you could not have done. Faith grows on memory. Every believer's history is a catalogue of camels that somehow made it through.

Related verses

• Luke 1:37 — "For nothing will be impossible with God."
• Genesis 18:14 — "Is anything too hard for the LORD?"
• Jeremiah 32:17 — "Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth… Nothing is too hard for you."
• Ephesians 3:20 — "Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think."
• Mark 9:23 — "All things are possible for one who believes."

Reflection

The verse is bigger than a slogan. It is tethered to a Savior who looked at a wealthy man with love and told him the truth, who raised the dead, who opened wombs and tombs. Bring Him your impossibilities today — not so He can do tricks, but so He can do what only He can do: soften the heart that is about to walk away.

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