Faithful on Fridays Blog

People Who Need Us

Have you ever felt like you’re continually serving people? Maybe your family, your job, or your church and now you’re just spent? You feel like you can’t do one more thing! You’re just exhausted. Well, imagine this with me, Jesus’ disciples sometimes felt the same way.

Mark 6:30-44 tells a story of the disciples returning from a ministry tour and they were also ready for some downtime. Jesus reassured them that they would go and rest so they proceeded to get in a boat. Hopefully to get away from the ‘needy’ people. I have come to learn that everyone has needy people in their lives. We can get pretty frustrated and exhausted from their constant demands, however, Jesus looked with compassion on his tribe. He considered them like sheep without a shepherd.

Do you know what delayed the well-deserved rest that the disciples had earned? Jesus’ love for those needy people. He began to teach again, having them sit and listen. He undoubtedly reassured them of His Father’s love and continued to explain how to live a victorious life in the Kingdom of God. Don’t forget, on the sidelines were twelve disciples who were already fatigued; they wanted this day to be over! Can you identify?

What keeps you going? What keeps you serving? What keeps you pressing in? Hopefully it’s your love for the people in your life and your desire to please God. At the end of that day the disciples found a way out. “The people are hungry, Jesus, can you send them away to get food?” That wasn’t the Savior’s plan though. “You feed them.” Really Jesus? Do you know what we’ve been doing the last few days? Ministry! Your ministry! Now we should feed them? They should feed us!

So they did, 5,000 men and their families, possibly 20,000 people. OK, that beats my 13 for dinner or my 24 for brunch. Good story, but what happened at the end? Get this, there were twelve baskets of leftovers to divide up for each disciple. Everyone was fed to their heart’s content. Clearly, Jesus provided more than enough for all.

He’s like that you know. When you’re feeling depleted He has more than enough of what you need to satisfy you to your heart’s content. Let’s not forget that this week as we go about serving the people who need us.