Luke 9:12 Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.”
The twelve disciples had been following Jesus for a while and had seen many wonderful and miraculous things. They were learning from Him daily. On this particular day, a large crowd (probably more than 10,000) had been listening to Jesus teach and preach. Such a big crowd assembled to hear their master must have filled the disciples with a measure of pride! But there was a problem. The crowd was huge but they were in a remote spot. There was no-where for them to eat and it was time to eat! The disciples had a problem and they went to Jesus.
It seems like the right move. If you have a problem, you take it to Jesus. But they didn’t exactly do that. They had a problem, but they didn’t take the problem to Jesus as much as they took their own worked-out solution. They didn’t ask Jesus for help, they told Him what to do. They were being helpful! They took initiative! Don’t we often to just that?
We have problems that we can see. They may be problems in our own lives or they may be situations that others are suffering with. So often we expend a lot of energy ‘solving’ the problem and only come to Jesus with the solution. Handing out the paper for Him to initial. I think that that method is not exactly what Jesus is interested in.
The disciples should have realized, and we need to realize, that there are not ‘Jesus’ problems and ‘us’ problems. Sure, there are some things we can do and should. (Often the cause of problems is due to us not following the solutions (The Bible) He’s already prescribed!) But for the life of the committed follower of Christ, we should see our lives as a unified whole - everything under the banner of Jesus.
I need to learn to trust Jesus more with the situations in my life. I can breathe a huge sigh of relief knowing that Jesus isn’t waiting for me to come up with the solutions that He will just okay! The twelve didn’t have any idea how to feed those people. Their idea was to send them away and let them fend for themselves. They never imagined that Jesus had a much more creative (literally!) solution to the problem. Is it possible that Jesus has creative solutions to our problems? Is it possible that seeing Him work on them might be a matter of us taking our problems to Him, rather than our solutions? I think that the more we do that, the more likely we will be to see Jesus working in our lives and the lives of others!
Blessings,
Pastor Russ
