Multiplying What’s Already in Your Hand

“But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; you give them to eat. And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them here to me. 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 broke, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” (Matthew 14:16-21)

Here’s the situation. There were about ten to fifteen thousand people listening to Jesus and now they were hungry. Jesus tells the disciples to feed them, but of course, they didn’t have enough food on hand. Instead of taking rocks and turning them into bread or turning sticks into cinnamon roles, Jesus MULTIPLIED the bread that was on hand and filled twelve baskets full of scraps after they had all eaten.

At a different time and place, when the fishermen had caught nothing all night, Jesus told them to throw their nets in on the other side. They caught so many fish that it just about sunk the boats! I believe He MULTIPLIED the fish and filled their nets. Here’s the point… The fisherman needed provision and God worked through their natural means. He multiplied their fish. He didn’t turn their boat anchor to solid gold. When they needed bread, He multiplied what they already had.

So stay with me…. When you are faced with shortage and fear is raging within, the first thing as I mentioned last time is to feed on His faithfulness. Lose the fear by feeding on things that feed your faith. Then, ask the Lord to show you how He can take what you already have and multiply it in ways you have never imagined.

Just today, He showed me a way to do that with something that will be a huge blessing to many of you. I was really stuck on a problem with no clear way out and it was causing plenty of anxiety. I spent time feeding on His faithfulness, then got with my wife and we began talking about how God used the things people had in their hand (bread, fish nets, etc) to funnel His solution through to them.

We began to see how God wants to meet needs through the things we are often quite familiar with. He wants to not only meet our needs, but also and more importantly perhaps, the needs of many, many others as was the case with the fish and the loaves. So here’s my word of advice to you today. Feed on His faithfulness. Shut down the voice of fear. Then brainstorm with the Lord. Maybe it should be called Spiritstorm? Trust Him to show you something simple that when applied will meet the needs of many, including you! Have a blessed day today!