Often we feel like we don’t have enough or we’re not enough for Jesus to do something amazing with. But that’s not true. In this video, Tim Tebow uses the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 to illustrate how God can perform miracles with whatever we bring to the table.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
One of my favorite passages is John 6 and I want to read it to you. It’s the story about Jesus feeding the 5,000.
Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, said to Phillip, “Where are we to buy bread so that these may eat?” This He was saying to test him for He Himself knew what He was intending to do. Phillip answered Him, ‘”200 denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them for everyone to receive a little.” One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There is a lad here.”
I want to pause right there. Say it again.
“There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place so the men sat down; a number about 5,000.
Jesus then took the loaves and having given thanks He distributed to those who were seated. Likewise also of the fish as much as they wanted. When they were filled He said to His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from five barley loaves which were leftover by those who had eaten.
Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed they said, “This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world.”
Now I love this passage and you’ve probably heard it a bunch of times at church, but I want to break it down in a little bit different way.
I read part of that twice when he said, “There is a lad here.” I love that because we don’t even know this young kid’s name. The Bible just calls him a lad.
And there are a bunch of people. You can just imagine where this kid’s at, right? So there’s 5,000 men, the Bible says, but a lot of scholars believe that the Bible’s just talking about men and there are actually over 10,000 people there when you include the women and the children. So there’s just multitudes of people.
But there’s this one lad who is probably following all these people because he wants to see Jesus perform a miracle and his mom packed him a lunch box. And so he’s just following all these people like hoping to see Jesus do something awesome.
And then he hears Jesus’ disciples talking about food and they said, “Oh, well, this kid, this lad has some food. Five loaves and two fish.”
And you could just imagine when they walked over and asked for it. You could just imagine what this kid’s probably thinking. “Well, it’s not a lot. My mom packed me my lunch box. I don’t really feel like I have a lot to offer, but Jesus, if you want it, here you go. You can take it. It’s not a lot, but here you go.”
You can just imagine this kid looking up thinking, “Maybe He can feed two, five. I don’t know how many people, but hopefully He can help someone with what I have, with my talents. I don’t feel like it’s a lot, but maybe You can do something pretty cool with it.”
But what’s awesome is when we give what we have to God, He can perform miracles. What’s awesome about this story is it wasn’t just enough. It was more than enough.
And I think that if Jesus could perform this miracle with all this food, He would’ve known, “Okay, I can stop here. I know when to stop.” Right? If He knew, “I could just break all this bread and keep making this bread, I knew when to stop.” But I think He did that on purpose.
Because He’s showing us that in our lives He is always more than enough. He is not just enough to help you get through it. He’s always more than enough. For no matter what you’re going through, no matter what you’re dealing with, no matter what giants are in front of you, no matter what voices and negativity you have to hear, Jesus is always more than enough to help you get through it.
So when you understand that God loves you so much He designed a plan for you before you were ever born and it’s a plan for good works that gives you worth.
But then still you might feel like, “Ah sometimes, yeah, I know, but I don’t feel like I can accomplish that much.” Well, let’s go back to the story about feeding the 5,000.
It doesn’t necessarily matter what you feel like. Jesus can take what you are, what you have and perform miracles. Do you think it would have been different if the kid only had one loaf and one fish? Do you think Jesus couldn’t have fed all those people? No, He could’ve done the exact same.
You see, it’s not necessarily how much we bring to the table. It’s that we bring what we have to the table. It’s when we say, “Jesus, I don’t feel like it’s a lot, but You can take my little and You can do what You want with it.”