Christ did His part by gathering the crowd and providing the food. We are to do our part by using what He has provided to fulfill the Great Commission.

We all know that on one occasion Christ fed 5,000 men, plus the women and children (Mat. 14), and on another occasion, 4,000 men, plus the women and children. (Mark 8).

Our Lord could have fed every hungry person on earth if He wanted, but He responded to those who followed Him. On both occasions, though the people were seeking, they were not starving or even close to it; they were simply hungry from not having eaten all day. In these two cases, our Lord was not responding to a crisis but to a need. Regarding salvation, though every man needs to hear the Gospel, the closer a person gets to the end of their days, the more that need becomes a crisis.

On these two occasions, we also see an important lesson: if a need exists and our Lord has supplied it, then we have the responsibility to distribute His supply and meet that need. Otherwise, His provision was in vain. Imagine, after multiplying the food for all to partake, the disciples stood back, beheld the crowd, and reasoned, “This is just too much work for the few of us. We need to organize a conference and bring in other disciples gifted at serving; after all, our gifts are teaching and administration.” Had that logic guided their decision, the food would have rotted before they could have printed the conference fliers.

“That’s silly,” some would say. But is it? Did you know that Christians spend more money planning, promoting, and attending mission conferences than they actually give to missions? In short, we put more effort and money into buying or weaving the food baskets than we do into using them to take the Bread of Life to those who hunger for it. Christ did not tell us to go into all the world to strategize; He told us to evangelize. And often, those determining the strategy have little experience or understanding of Biblical missions, which is church planting and discipleship, primarily utilizing the nationals on hand as Paul did, versus Traditional missions, which takes an attitude of maintenance, by foreigners, rather than advancing the Gospel where it has never been preached before.

Christ did His part by gathering the crowd and providing the food. We are to do our part by using what He has provided to fulfill the Great Commission. And yes, some do have the gift of serving and others of administration, etc. Still, all of us should be able to pass out a simple evangelistic “happy meal” to those who are spiritually hungry.

Points to Ponder

• Why do we wait for a crisis to do what we already know needs to be done?
• What excuses do you personally give for not distributing the Bread of Life?
• How can we shift from being basket weavers to food distributors?