Sometimes God teaches us to go and do, but we stand and make excuses.
This is not a new problem.
When Jesus was on the earth working miracles, even His disciples had difficulty believing that what they had was enough to accomplish what He asked them.
Remember one time, when Jesus was teaching a vast group of people? His disciples told Him to send them away because they had nothing to eat. In Mark 6:37, Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.”
Confounded by the logistics of feeding so many, Jesus' students asked, seemingly sarcastically, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?”
“But He said to them, ‘How many loves do you have? Go and see.’
And when they found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish” (Mark 6:38, Unless otherwise stated: Scripture is taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Used by permission. All rights reserved).
Luke added that, after finding the bread and fish, the disciples were still convinced that the only option was to go buy food.
“But [Jesus] said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.’
And they said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people’” (Luke 9:13).
They had missed the point. Jesus wasn’t trying to fill everyone’s stomachs. He was filling their hearts, minds, and souls with the teachings of the kingdom of heaven and evidence of Who He is. He used what they had and fed 5,000 men, not to mention women and children. Because He is the Son of God, He didn’t need them to give Him enough to feed everyone. He would make it enough. It’s not for us to know how Jesus will do it, but to know that if we bring Him what He asks for, He will do it, and it will be enough – more than enough.
“So they all ate and were filled and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them” (Luke 9:17).
It is not for us to tell God why we can’t do the things He sends us to do. Nor are we to fret over how little it is that we are capable of. We simply give Him what we can; He makes it enough.
More than enough, by the power of God,
Van
