How many times have we said that? “God, I can’t do this. You will have to find somebody else.” In John 6:5 we read “Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?” This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do. Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a little.
Philip did what we do, we look at the size of the problem and compare it with the size of our resources and we say it can’t be done. That’s the wrong way of looking at things. When Jesus looked at the problem he compared it with the resources of heaven. In Matthew’s account we read (14:19) ”And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”
Jesus was looking up to heaven. Compared with the love and power available to him there, the problem did not look impossible at all.
We may think, “It’s alright for Jesus, He was the son of God.” That’s true, although he constantly referred to himself as the Son of Man to show that what he did was as a man, not as God. Though we are the children of men we are also children of God by faith in Jesus. What Jesus did, we can do, if we do it the same way He did, by total reliance on His father in heaven.
It says that when Jesus asked Philip the question, he was testing him. That doesn’t mean he was marking him to pass or fail. It means he was giving him the opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop. It’s the same for us. Impossible situations are not there to discourage us, to show up our failures, they are there for us to learn how to overcome them through faith. They are there to give our faith a workout, to develop our faith muscles.
If all we have is our selves, our human resources, we can’t do it. If that is all we consider we will never attempt anything beyond our abilities. Having tried and failed a few times, sometimes publicly, we learn to live within our resources. We do not want to risk humiliation and failure.
That is not all we have. I am human but I am not only human. I have Jesus, my Higher Power, living right here inside me. Philip had Jesus right there with him but he didn’t consider Jesus in the right way. If Philip couldn’t see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it then it wasn’t real, it didn’t count. Andrew was the same. He did his sums and counted 5 loaves and 2 fish. Then he counted the people, over 5000 men plus women and children. That did not add up to anything they could do. “Send them away to buy bread for themselves” was the universal decision of the disciples.
Do you ever look at the needs of others and want to help but feel totally inadequate? Of course you do, we all do. In ourselves, we are inadequate. In fact, if we think we are adequate we have a real problem. But Jesus wants to move through us to reach out and touch others. When we give Him the little that we have He blesses it, breaks it, and does wonders with it.
Do not look at yourself and give up. Look up and give yourself to HIM.