By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “That would take eight months of a man’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”
Mark 6:35-37
I recently read Kay Warren’s book, Dangerous Surrender. Her routine as a pastor’s wife, mother, and grandmother was interrupted one day when she couldn’t put down a magazine that told the gripping story of people dying from HIV/AIDS. She didn’t know that the majority of persons with the dread disease were women and that multiplied millions of children were orphans because of AIDS.
David Wilkerson, founder of Teen Challenge, had a similar epiphany in 1958 when he saw a drawing of New York City gang members on trial for murder. The Holy Spirit so impressed upon his heart their need for the Lord that he drove to the Big Apple, where he had never been, in an attempt to witness to them. Like Kay Warren, he was “gloriously ruined” by the plight of others in need of Jesus. Five decades later, over 24,000 men and women daily receive deliverance from life-controlling issues in Teen Challenge centers around the world.
Kay and David discovered what we all must—that serving people in the name of Jesus means stepping outside of our comfort zones and into the danger zones of others. It was that way in the situation described in Mark. A huge crowd gathered around Jesus. They had chased Him by land along the seashore as He traveled across the lake by boat.
The disciples must have been irritated. They had just returned from their first training mission (6:6–13) and wanted some downtime with Jesus. Instead, Jesus met the crowd and spent the rest of the day teaching because He had compassion on people. Now, it was nightfall and the Twelve had had it.
“Send the people away,” they begged Jesus. Their ostensible reason? “The people don’t have food.” Perhaps the unstated reason was more accurate: We want some time to ourselves.
Jesus, however, wanted them (and us) to be inconvenienced by people with needs. So, He told the Twelve to feed the crowd—something He surely knew they didn’t have the resources to do. They answered that it would take two-thirds of a year’s salary just to feed the crowd once—while Philip said (sarcastically) that even that amount of money “would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite” (John 6:7)!
What’s going on here? Jesus does with them what He does with us. “So you want to be My disciple?” He asks. “Then I’m going to throw things at you that seem impossible to do. You don’t have the necessary training, you don’t have the necessary resources, and you’re going to think Me unreasonable in asking you.”
Yes, if you want to be used of the Lord, then get prepared to be inconvenienced and overwhelmed.
A Prayer: Lord Jesus, I’m like the disciples. Just when I feel I deserve a break, you put others in my path who need help, and I want to send them away. But, if I did that I would miss the miracle You want to do. So, I offer myself to be inconvenienced at Your call.
Excerpted from Dr. Wood’s book, Fearless: How Jesus Changes Everything, available from Vital Resources.
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