Some things never change. If you are like me you have probably felt that at times you are: Not smart enough, not equipped to really help, not educated enough, need more resources, there has to be someone else better for this than me, I have way too much baggage.
Don’t beat yourself up too much, this is something that has been going on for longer then you or I have been here. Even people that walked along side of Jesus struggled with understanding this. A guy that was a pretty close friend to Jesus wrote about a time something like this happened. It’s in a book called Matthew, in chapter 14. Matthew tells us this story of where Jesus is walking with some of His friends and this huge crowd shows up. Most of them just wanted Him to do some cool trick, maybe heal someone or say something really smart that they could tweet later (OK, I know they couldn’t tweet back then but I thought it was funny). Matthew tells us that there were over 5000 men, not counting the women or children and it was getting close to dinner time. So because He is Jesus, He tells the guys to get some food to feed the people. Can you imagine what it would cost to feed over 5000 men + women and children? These guys had no clue how they could do this, it would cost way more then what they had available even if they all pitched in and emptied their bank accounts. One of the guys gets this idea to ask some of the people, maybe they could scrounge up enough food to somehow make it work. He comes back with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, or a number 4 at Chik-Fil-A. Try to imagine this conversation: Jesus tells you to go get food, you can’t figure out how to do this and don’t have anywhere close enough money to make it happen, and then one of you comes back with a value meal and brings it to Jesus. “Um, Jesus. I couldn’t find anything else but I found some bread and a few fish. Maybe if we tear it into really small pieces?”
We do this. Jesus has something for us, something that is way bigger than we can see or understand and instead of joining Him we give Him excuses. Sometimes valid, sometimes made up and show some of our insecurities. God’s blessings are on the other side of our obedience. In VS18 Jesus says, “Bring them here to me,” and I think this is exactly what He is saying to us today. Stop bringing God your excuses and start just saying, “Ok God, I’m not sure what you will do with this but here You go.”
In a book by Andy Stanley called Deep And Wide Andy says something that has really challenged and stuck with me. He says: “If we, or the people in our churches, ever get to the place where we are willing to make what we have available to God, amazing things will happen.” God’s blessing is always on the other side of obedience and it is usually not what we expected.
If you don’t have it already, you should pick up Deep And Wide. You can get it here at Deep And Wide