Where the Resources

We find ourselves facing increasing difficulties that threaten to intimidate and discourage us. If we allow them to, they can give us excuses to doubt God and His provision for our lives. But the question ever remains – how will we choose to respond to Satan's insinuations?

My wife now not only has had Fibromyalgia for over a year which required her cutting back to part-time work, but for the past several weeks has been totally debilitated by the presence of extreme back pain which completely eliminates her ability to work altogether. She cannot even stand very long or walk without excruciating pain and needs full-time attention. An MRI revealed that she has three bulging discs and one of them has ruptured causing extreme pain all the way down one leg.

This loss of her job has obviously created even more pressure on our financial situation. My construction work has been sporadic at best over the last year and if it were not for the new business that God brought to us which is still just getting started, we would have no apparent source of income whatsoever. In addition, our expenses seem to be increasing with all the hot weather, the medical bills etc. and this has added to the enormous amount of debt we were already struggling under from years past.

Again, the question presses itself in the face of all of these events in our lives – how will we respond to these multiplied suggestions of Satan that God is not what we are coming to believe that He is.

The reason I keep coming back to this question is because I have a quotation posted on my wall that keeps reminding me that things are not as they usually appear in this world of deception and fear. Here is the original quote.

When trial comes to prove us,

when we cannot see an increase

of prosperity and comfort before us,

but a probable lessening of these things,

when there is a pressure

necessitating sacrifice on the part of all,

how shall we receive Satan’s insinuations

that we are going to have a hard time,

that everything is going to pieces,

that there is sore trouble ahead of us? . . .

We ought to gather up

the fragments of heaven’s blessings

and tokens for good,

saying, Lord, I believe in Thee,

in Thy servants, and in Thy work.

I will trust in Thee.

{CTr 107}

So how am I going to respond to Satan's insinuations in all the things that are taking place in my life right now? One thing is to pay attention to where God has me meditating right now in His Word. I find myself currently immersed in the story in John 6 where Jesus challenged Philip to consider the situation they found themselves facing, not completely dissimilar to what we are facing.

The beginning of the chapter sets up the scene with thousands of people flocking into a wilderness retreat because of their enthusiastic desire to experience more from this sensational new teacher they recently discovered. Jesus had tried to retire in order to spend some quiet time with His disciples alone, but the crowds quickly dispelled much hope of that taking place. But instead of resenting the intrusion, Jesus ministers to them as revealed in the other gospels, by sharing incredible principles of the kingdom never before seen so clearly since the beginning of the history.

But a problem develops during this time. All of these people are far from any normal source of nourishment and most of them had not planned ahead and brought food for themselves. Likely they had not thought that they would be gone from home for so long and had no idea that they would be riveted all day with listening to such a compelling teacher. But as the large gathering lingered hour after hour the physical processes that produce hunger still took place and after awhile the discomfort began to overcome the intrigue and Jesus and His disciples were facing a real crisis.

It is too easy for us, knowing the end of the story as we do, to miss the situation as the disciples viewed it from their perspective. It is hard to put completely out of our mind the reality that Jesus planned to feed this crowd through a miraculous display of care for them. None of this crossed the mind of any of the disciples and all that they could bring into their consciousness was the current evidence threatening to create a disaster and a great deal of discontent by thousands of people becoming very agitated and unpredictable as their hunger drove them to ever more desperate measures.

Even though no one had invited any of these people into this remote region to start with, the disciples now began to feel nervous, like somehow the blame might end up on them or even more so on Jesus for bringing about such a catastrophic problem. People when hungry can become very unpredictable and even violent and they do not make very good listeners at that point. Given that the disciples were far outnumbered and that they too did not have anything to eat themselves, the problem they were facing was very real and seemingly quite impossible to solve. If hopeless was a word that was coming up in their thinking it was beginning to press itself to the front of their minds at this point.

But I have noticed that this is a pattern that Jesus seemed to produce repeatedly in the lives of His disciples. Over and over they found themselves facing difficult or impossible situations where they were required to challenge their assumptions about reality. Over and over Jesus would allow circumstances to develop that would expose their fears, their inabilities, their inadequacies and the level of faith they were willing to exercise. Typically their response exposed very little faith but more often a lot of doubt and fear. But the same is still true today among many of us who claim to be His disciples.

At this point in the story it seems that Jesus asks a question that only seems to aggravate the situation. Instead of offering a glimmer of hope that He might be thinking of a solution to the enormous problem they were facing, He asks Philip a question that seems to reinforce the impossibility of the problem. “Where are we going to buy bread to feed all of these people?”

As I have noticed before in this question, there is a subtle clue in there that was missed originally by Philip in his response to Jesus' question. Like we so often do, Philip immediately dropped into the normal mode of thinking about the financial perspective of the problems they were facing. This focus on finances is so typical for most of us that we miss the fact that Jesus did not really ask Philip about finances in the first place. But there is good reason for this mistake that is important for me to pay attention to just as much as it was for His disciples back then.

The world's system of belief about reality is based solidly on three principles involving the spirit of Mammon, the false god of worldly value that governs currency and finances. The history of economy and finances is a most fascinating one when we see it through the eyes of heaven but is seldom studied from that perspective. Economy is actually one of the three foundation legs of the false system of governance and relationship that this whole world is based upon. Kingship, economy and law have been exposed as the three foundations of the counterfeit system of this world set up by the fallen angel who originated the first resistance against heaven's system of government. That is a whole different but very fascinating set of issues that I learned about several years ago. But economy is a very important part of this counterfeit way of perceiving reality and it distorts nearly everything we think about.

So it is no surprise that Philip responded as he did and very likely most of us would have done similarly. How many times do I immediately begin to worry about how I am going to keep going when circumstances disturb my financial security? Notice that this might be seen all through the way I listed our current problems at the beginning of this piece. I am constantly pressured to view life from a financial perspective and nearly everything around us is designed to keep our focus along this vein.

But what does the Bible author mention in this most interesting narrative? He says here that Jesus asked this question to test Philip, for He already knew what He intended to do.

That is a most profound statement that must be applied to my own perspective every time I find myself facing seemingly impossible circumstances. I have an incredible advantage over the disciples of knowing the end of the story as written here in the Bible, yet how much does that motivate me to respond differently than how Philip responded? Doesn't the first reaction to similar circumstances involve a penchant to focus on the financial stress that such problems can produce? Philip's response seems to be nothing out of the ordinary and we should be very careful in our criticism since we likely would have said something very similar. In fact, we do say things quite similar frequently as we face our own challenges not unlike what the disciples faced on that mountainside.

But let me add a little more to what I have already started to list above. Not only has our sources for financial support been dwindling but the need for physical assistance has dramatically increased as well. My wife now requires time-consuming amounts of attention to care for her needs all day and sometimes at night as she is unable to do many of even the small things most people take for granted. We have been blessed to have my sister and her husband staying with us for a couple weeks while I have been traveling out of state during that time, but now they need to return home and I am faced with even greater difficulties as a result. How am I to care for her and try to build up a growing business all at the same time? My resources definitely are far outstripped by my difficulties.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11 NRSV)

This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do. (John 6:6)

Now here is something compelling from this story. Notice that Jesus never did resolve the problem of finances that His disciples thought they were facing. Jesus did not address that problem using the approach that seemed most obvious to everyone else. Philip, like most of us do, had zeroed in on a solution based on the normal way we always think problems have to be resolved – by throwing more money at them. That is the world's fundamental way of approaching problems, by figuring out how much money it is going to take to fix them. Money becomes the focal medium through which everything is evaluated and as such it becomes the filter that colors everything and keeps us under the deceiving influence of a counterfeit spirit. As a result we also remain largely blinded and deceived and unable to perceive reality the way it really functions from God's perspective.

So why did Jesus pose this question to Philip in the first place? And why does He allow circumstances to bring up similar questions for me time after time in my own life? I am beginning to see that very possibly, just like Philip, maybe I am not paying close enough attention to the nature of the question as God poses it and instead am slipping into my own assumptions about what is going on. Philip thought Jesus was asking about money, but Jesus' question was not focused on money but on where to look for a solution.

What would have been the right answer to Jesus' question? That has intrigued me for some time and for good reason, for if I can begin to see what Jesus was really after here I suspect that it can have powerful implications for similar situations that I currently face in my own life. If Jesus didn't get the best response from Philip that He had hoped for, can He get a better response from me, one who now has the rest of the story that gives me much more perspective than Philip had?

I also believe that one reason Jesus posed the question that He did was to draw in His disciples to be more keenly aware of their need. But this was not to produce doubt or discouragement but to engage them fully at both the mental and emotional level so that when He provided a solution it could be appreciated to the maximum degree. If we don't know the extent of our impossibilities neither can we truly appreciate the degree to which we should praise and honor God when He provides a miraculous provision.

In contrast, I am intrigued at how Jesus related to the suggestion from Andrew even though on the surface it seemed to have little to offer to the situation. What I see in Andrew's words is a shift of focus, a turning away from the typical economy-based solution to a hope-oriented suggestion based on what is already at hand. Even though the resources Andrew mentions were impossibly inadequate for the problem, Andrew chose to focus on what they did have instead of what they did not have. It also was not dependent on money but on real kinds of provisions closer to what God provides to directly address our needs.

What Andrew did was to act as the connecting link between the meager and inadequate resources of man and the One who has no physical or financial limitations. The only limitation on God is the lack of our willingness to trust His heart and bring to Him what we do have and place it under His authority. Jesus plans involved acting outside of their normal expectations and He didn't require them to know ahead of time how He was going to solve the problem. Believing in Jesus does not mean we have to believe in how He might solve our problems but believing in the heart of the One who has promised to provide for all of our needs. It is a matter of learning to trust His heart more than just trusting His hands. As one preacher put it so well, God asks us to seek His face, not seek His hands.

What I see in this story and what I want to learn in my own situation is that the true answer to the question Jesus posed to Philip was sitting right in front of him. Jesus asked where they would find enough to feed all these people. That 'where' was Jesus Himself. Jesus soon demonstrated that He Himself was the only vital resource that they needed to solve their impossible situations. And nothing has changed today. Jesus is still the 'where' that I need to seek to resolve any and every problem that I will ever face.

When I focus on seeking or worrying about finding a financial solution to my problems, I am turning away from the only reliable source of provision that has been promised to me. Jesus came to reveal that God is my provider and takes full responsibility for caring for His children. But when His children refuse to trust His heart by focusing on the anti-christ spirit of Mammon and focus on financial solutions instead of relying totally on God, it can actually block Him from revealing the unlimited and abundant provisions He has waiting for us. It was only after Andrew expressed his little glimmer of faith that Jesus was able to seize the moment and reveal the heart of the Father in a provision so extravagant that it took everyone by surprise.

I am learning something more about faith and belief here. Jesus did not expect His disciples to have faith that He could multiply the bread and fishes at this point in their experience. That is a left-brain kind of faith that often frustrates us greatly. We often try to figure out ourselves how God should solve our problems and then attempt to work up intense intellectual or emotional 'belief' that God is going to do what we demand of Him. When things don't work out the way we planned or asked for, we become impatient with God and our distrust of His heart begins to surface into the open.

But this may be exactly why God allows us to suffer many times in order to expose the deeper hidden unbelief that is preventing Him from doing what He longs to do in our lives. He wants us to see the deception in our own heart and the distrust that lies hidden deep inside under the veneer of religion, the unbelief that prevents Him from accessing the deeper levels of our heart where He wants to reside. Until we allow these deeper levels of mistrust to surface and confess them honestly to Him, we will be trapped in lies about God that prevent Him from exercising all that He wants to do for us as our Lord and our God.

What Jesus wanted from His disciples was a glimmer of belief in the trustworthiness of God, that Jesus was able and eager to provide for them no matter how impossible circumstances might suggest. The real issue in all of our lives is how worthy we believe God to be of our trust, not how much 'faith' we can generate to leverage Him to do what we want. And it is real faith of this nature, faith that focuses on the heart of God instead of our notions of how He should fix our problems – this kind of faith will allow God the latitude to address our situations in any way He chooses instead of our predetermined ideas of what He should do.

So I choose to resist Satan's insinuations that things are falling apart and God is not going to take care of us. I choose to focus on the goodness of God, on the faithfulness of His heart, on the limitless nature of His resources and on the unrestrainable compassion that emanates from His heart. I believe that as I choose to gather up the fragments of heaven's blessings and tokens for good, just as Jesus instructed His followers to gather up the fragments left over from what the multitude had feasted on till they could eat no more, that my own faith will be strengthened and my own life will result in a testimony that will bring honor to God's reputation and bless all who see more clearly what He is really like.