God of Abundance

Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

- Mark 8:17-23

Everywhere Jesus went in the gospels, there was abundance. 

There was leftover food, there was healing. 

There was deliverance, provision, feasting. 

There’s so much feasting that the Pharisees even get miffed that Jesus and his disciples aren’t fasting. 

You just don't see lack around Jesus.

And everywhere Jesus went the Pharisees also went. 

They were deeply faithful, religious people. People who knew their scriptures backwards. 

People who were trying as hard as they could to follow the instructions God had given the Israelites that set out a way to live the good life.  

People who were waiting for the Messiah, Israel’s king, to arrive as he had promised.

And because they were so faithful and patient and religious, they thought they would be first in line to be part of the Kingdom of God. 

Except they looked at Jesus, looked at how he lived out from that place of trust in God, looked at his mindset of abundance, and still they couldn't see. 

Jesus lived from a place of “there is enough” even when there objectively was literally not enough. They cannot break out of a mindset of lack and scarcity.

I mean, seven loaves is just not enough to feed 4000! 

But in the real scarcity and lack, Jesus trusted in God. Trusted in his abundance and then he actually lived out of that truth. 

The Pharisees who bought into the lie that we can be abundant without dependence on God. They lived out of a mindset where they tried, really tried to overcome human brokenness by their own effort. 

They accumulated rules and regulations and ways of right behaviour and religion. The tragedy of course is instead of making themselves like God it set them against God.  

It led to scarcity not abundance.

So instead, spend some time with the God of abundance and ask, what next?

What does it specifically look like in your life, while in the midst of scarcity, holding just seven loads with a hungry crowd of 4000 to feed….  What does it look like to step out trusting in the abundance of God? 

Holding on to the lesson that there was more than enough to feed 4000. That there was an abundance of leftovers besides.

May we be good hear-ers and good see-ers. 

May we trust what Jesus said and do what Jesus did.