I hope your week is off to a great start. By the way, if you haven’t gotten my latest book, Desolate Places, you can pick that up at desolatebook.com.
Today, I want to talk about a story from Mark chapter six. It’s also in the other gospels. It is the feeding of the 5,000. Now, the thing that I want to really acknowledge with this story is, Jesus gives his disciples a task that is monumental and overwhelming. In fact, as you read through the gospels, what you find is, Jesus actually turned towards Philip and said, “You need to feed these people.”
History tells us there were 5,000 men present. We know that that doesn’t include the women and children. So in reality, this crowd could have been anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 people in number. Here Jesus is telling Philip, “You need to feed these people.”
Now, if you’ll remember from scripture, Philip begins to tell Jesus all the reasons he can’t. It would take almost nine months worth of wages to begin to feed these people. Where would we find the food? The list goes on. Finally, the question doesn’t go away. So Philip and the other disciples begin to scour through the crowd, looking for what they can find. What they find is a young boy who has five loaves of bread and two fish. So they bring it to Jesus and say, “Here you go, Jesus. This is all we could come up with, five loaves and two fish.”
Of course, we know the rest of the story. Jesus takes the loaves and the fish into his hands. He gives thanks and He begins to break it apart. The disciples begin to deliver the food amongst the crowd. Once everyone has eaten their fill, they actually collect 12 baskets of leftovers.
Now, here’s the principle I want you to see. The dream that’s in your heart, this God-given dream that’s deep within you is bigger than you are. In fact, if it’s something you could accomplish in your own strength and your own capabilities, it wouldn’t be big enough. It’s so much bigger than you are, in fact, it’s intimidating. The danger is, most people want to give up on the dream. Just like Philip, they begin to give all the reasons why that dream can’t be a reality in their life, “I don’t have the right relationships. I’m not smart enough. I’m not good looking enough. I’m not a good speaker. I don’t have enough money.” That’s a big one, “Where would I even come up with the resources to make that happen?”
Now, the lesson we need to learn from this scripture is, Jesus is not interested in what you don’t have. He’s interested in what do you have. So ultimately, the question doesn’t go away and the disciples finally understand they need to bring Him what they have, even if it doesn’t seem significant enough. So they bring five loaves and two fish. In their hands, those five loaves and two fish aren’t near enough. But here’s the key. In the hands of Jesus, it becomes more than enough. Not just more than enough for the immediate need, but more than enough to feed people beyond the immediate need.
Here’s the aha I want you to catch, is that if you will bring the dream, the challenge that God has given you and you will bring what you have, not your excuses, not your limitations, not your reasons, but just simply bring what do you have in your hands, and you’ll put it into the hands of Jesus, what’ll happen is something amazing. What once was not enough will become more than enough and just like it was with the disciples, it didn’t magically multiply as he prayed for it. It multiplied as they began to distribute it. The resource became inexhaustible.
When I look at my own business, I started my businesses homeless, living in a friend’s spare bedroom, using a used laptop computer that a friend had given me. In my hands, it wasn’t near enough to bring about the dream God had put in my life. But in His hands, it has become more than enough and it has gone on to fuel other people’s dreams and other people’s livelihoods. It has made a bigger impact than even I could imagine.
I hope you find this thought helpful to you today. Would love to talk to you. If you haven’t joined our private group, do so, biblicalgrowthstrategies.com, and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
