EquippedMama

How often do we try to manipulate our circumstances to make things work out?

Maybe we’ve bitten off more than we can handle with our time or our recourses or our money. And now we’re stretched too thin. It is so easy to see the limitations of our own resources and think, “How am I gonna do this?”

Jesus’ own disciples found themselves in a similar spot. Jesus had been teaching in a secluded area for a length of time. And a crowd grew. And as crowds do, they got hungry. Before long, the disciples were sizing up the situation and figuring out the physical needs of the people. Scripture lays out the situation like this:

¹³ Now when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed Him on foot from the cities. ¹⁴ When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.

¹⁵ When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, “This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶ But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!” ¹⁷ They *said to Him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸ And He said, “Bring them here to Me.” ¹⁹ 

Matthew 14:13-18, New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.

The disciples saw their physical limitations- lots of hungry mouths, and insufficient food to fill those mouths. They knew the people needed to eat, so their solution was to send the people away. They didn’t want to deal with them. But they discounted Jesus’ ability to do the impossible. Scripture shows us how Jesus handled the situation;

¹⁹ Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, ²⁰ and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. ²¹ There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children.

Matthew 14:13-21, New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.

Jesus showed his disciples that he didn’t need their resources to meet their need. He was more than able to supernaturally feed each of them from an impossibly small amount of food. The key wasn’t the supply of food, but the One who could multiply it.

In our situations, Jesus is more than able to multiply, too. He doesn’t need us to force our situations to “work out”. We don’t need to make our day planners leaner or schedules stretch further, we simply need to trust God to multiply what only He can. Applications for this are endless, but the heart posture is the same: humility. We begin to see God’s working in our life when we understand how much we need Him to do the work.

And that’s when we see really great things happen.