I was reading through the Gospel of
Matthew this morning and there was something that amazed me. I read
how Jesus provided food for five thousand men with merely five
loaves of bread and two fish. Now that is amazing and wonderful in
itself, but it was not what caught my attention this morning.
What amazed me this morning is that
merely one chapter later Jesus wanted to provide food again, this
time for four thousand men. And the reaction of the disciples was a
classic to me:
"And where would we get enough
food out here in the wilderness for all of them to eat?" Matthew
15:33
Even after they saw Him performing
the amazing miracle of feeding the five thousand men, they doubted
that He would be able to do the same and feed the four thousand. I
was amazed at how quickly they either forgot about His previous
miracle (which is highly unlikely), or how quickly they lost
faith.
Then just a little while later they
were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and they discovered that they
didn't bring any food along. And when Jesus told them that they
should watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they
immediately decided that He was saying this because they forgot
their bread. And Jesus was amazed at their little faith.
"You have so little faith! Why
are you worried about having no food? Don't you remember the five
thousand I fed with five loaves, and the baskets of food that were
left over? Don't you remember the four thousand I fed with seven
loaves, with baskets of food left over?" Matthew 16:8-10
When I read this I couldn't believe
their lack of faith either. It was quite obvious to me, that if
Jesus were able to feed five thousand, He would surely be able to
do it again and again?
But then I realized, we are just
the same. It is easy to point fingers at them, but we are exactly
the same. We tend to forget how the Lord looked after us in the
past, whenever a new problem peek its head through the door. We
tend to forget His promises. We tend to forget what He has planned
for us and fall in a rut whenever things don't go our way. We tend
to run to 'prophets' of our time, when we feel that we haven't
'heard' of the Lord lately. We tend to forget that God's prophecies
concerning us is binding and there to build on. We tend to forget
how powerful His Word is and that we can find comfort and
extraordinary power in the pages. We tend to forget that we are
part of His Kingdom and what a wonderful privilege it is to walk in
the reality of it every day. We tend to forget that all the
promises God made to Abraham is now ours too.
We need to look up to Jesus, the
One who fed five thousand, and trust Him enough to 'feed' us. He is
always the same, yesterday, today and forever and He is ready to
help. He lives mightily within us, just waiting for us to unleash
His power into our own lives.
Father God, we are sorry that we
look at our own abilities some times, instead of up to You. When we
look at our circumstances we tend to forget to look only at You. We
want to grow and stand up in all that we are due to what Jesus had
done for us. In Jesus Name. Amen