It was my turn to lead the Bible Study for our Welcome Home English group. I’d been reading in Mark and I was at chapter 8 – the feeding of the 5000. God seems to show me something new every time I read this story. The last questions in our study model are along the lines of “How does this apply to you? or What are you going to do with this information?” 

I began to dig in for my answer. 

And this is what I saw in the passage: Jesus asks, “How much bread do you have? Go and find out,” he says. And the application there I think is that we are to take stock. That when we have a problem that we want to bring to God, first of all we should identify what we actually do have to bring to the problem.

The second thing I saw in the passage was that what they had, very obviously wasn’t enough to do the job, and yet, interestingly, Jesus didn’t tell God what they needed. He and the disciples didn’t sit down and calculate the shortfall, how many people there were, who would eat how much food, and then tell God how much they believed they needed to do the job right. They didn’t do that. Instead, Jesus gave thanks for exactly and specifically what they did have, and that’s all.

So first of all, they took stock, and secondly they gave thanks, thirdly they shared what they did have, and fourth God multiplied what they brought.

I realize that much of my life doesn’t exactly follow that model. Even when I think about our team, I often don’t take stock of what we do have, who we have, and give thanks for that. It’s easy to start telling God what we need, or what we think we need, or to make “suggestions” to Him for how he might fix that.

You know, “LORD, please help so-and-so see that her thinking is unhealthy” or “LORD, please draw so-and-so to You.” “LORD, please please please, do do do, these and these and these things to fix the problems as they appear from my vantage point.”

I’m not saying there is no place for petitioning in prayer. But I was impressed by this model of
1) TAKE STOCK
2) GIVE THANKS FOR WHAT YOU HAVE
3) SHARE WHAT YOU HAVE
4) WATCH GOD DO MIRACULOUS THINGS