So I’m currently managing the Facebook page for 3D Church. I posted a status tonight about Jesus’ miracle with the loaves and the fish.
(P.S. Here’s a picture of me and a fish when I was in Galilee this past summer:)
Anyways.
If you don’t know, here’s the scoop about this event (John 6:1-14), and here’s the status I wrote about it.
Honestly, though, I felt a little weird posting this.
You see, in my status, I applied the universal characteristics of God (who wants our faith, who can do miracles, who doesn’t waste anything, etc.) to every situation. As in, no matter how hungry your proverbial crowds are at the moment, or how many miracles in your life HAVEN’T happened yet, God wants you to bring him your proverbial fish and loaves so He can do big things in your life.
The problem with this is, I’m wondering if people will see this and think, “Holy crap. All I need for this one thing to happen is just believe it will, and it will.”
Because that’s not true. People might find themselves disappointed, and think it’s because God didn’t pull through.
But that’s not true, either.
I think the idea of trusting God is one where we have to be careful. Not because who we’re trusting is shaky. But often what we trust Him for is shaky.
Exhibit A.
One time, I believed God was gonna get me a job. I had all the faith in the world, and every good intention. Aaand I didn’t get the job.
One time, I believed a light was gonna turn green, and asked God to make it turn green before I got there, because I was in a hurry and wanted it to turn green so I could get to work on time. It turned red.
Hence: Just because you ask God for something, doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Whether it’s a big thing or a small thing.
So how do we know what to ask God for?
Jesus says in John 14:3 – “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
When we ask, we ask in Jesus’ name. That doesn’t just mean tacking on the phrase “in Jesus’ name” at the end of your prayer.
It means, you want Jesus’ name all over what is happening.
In other words, you want Jesus’s name to be exalted. And that is your ultimate and only unshakable goal.
If that’s what you’re after, ask for whatever, and God will make sure that outcome happens.
Ask for God’s will. …So what is God’s will?
God’s will is for God to be known. Evidence: Check out all the times God intentionally uses all these different outcomes — good and bad — to lead simply to people knowing who He is.
It is always God’s will for more people to know him personally, intimately, and accurately. This is always the outcome he wants.
When you also hop onto this desire, then anything you ask will — without a doubt — lead to this outcome.
If I ask for a job, and I don’t get it, I can rest assured my NOT getting the job
is going to work out
so more people
can know God better.
I don’t just say, “Oh, it worked out for the better” so I can feel gushy about what is, in all reality, a career failure.
It’s because, God. Really. Ordained. That I didn’t get this job. And it is, in all reality, BETTER that way.
And somehow I’m gonna meet people who are gonna benefit from my loves and fish along the way.
It’s not guaranteed they’ll benefit. Because the truth is, God’s will is not always done. (The boy in John 6 could have held onto his loaves and fish, and people would have missed out. Totally possible.) I still have to offer my loaves and fish. I can still choose not to let Him use them.
But if and when I do, lives are sure as heck gonna change. And guess what? Even if I don’t, God will make himself known! (Evidence: Esther 4:14 and surrounding context.)
If I refuse to give my loaves and fish, I will find that I should have given my fish in the first place. I will have missed out, most definitely. BUT. I will have another opportunity to give him my fish, for as many new days and hours and minutes he allows me to live.
By the way. The job I did get instead was in marketing. (Which I thought made no sense at the time.) And I have to tell this story. Exhibit B.
One time, I was sending out thousands of email pitches to news outlets. I was about to give up when my boss said, “keep going.” It was a Friday and most people were done caring. But it was within that time frame AFTER he said “keep going,” and I kept going, that I got an email back from the Huffington Post!!!! saying they wanted my article.
One last illustration. Exhibit C.
In math, you have formulas. They always work. You have a set of variables, plug them in, and you get an answer.
Let’s say your formula is calculating standard time from military time. If it’s in the morning, it’s just the time, without the colon, and with hours (aka 9:00 a.m. –> 900 hours). If it’s in the afternoon, it’s the same, but you add 12 to get military from standard, and vice versa (aka 1800 hours –> 6:00 p.m.). No matter what time it is, you can ALWAYS find the right answer if you use this formula. There’s no risk involved. 1800 hours is always 6:00 p.m. Anything in the afternoon EVER is always military time minus twelve.
Then, suddenly, you’re onto question two in your homework. You get new variables! Oh no! How do I change 4 p.m. to military time? Impossible!
Well who cares, because you can still plug them in, and you’ll still get an answer. After you understand the formula correctly, and where the numbers go, and what exactly you’re trying to calculate, then NO MATTER WHAT numbers you plug in, the formula will give you the right answer. You can count on this formula to work every single time. Whether you’re changing military time to 12-hour time, or calculating a tip, or tracing an object’s acceleration due to gravity. Bam.
Bring your unchanging Constant, unchanging Formula, and whatever the heck variables you’re dealing with, put them in the right place, and you’re guaranteed the math will do its thing.
In the same way, if you have a God who is unchanging, and acts according to certain principles, then no matter your circumstances, you can EXPECT that He will act in a similar way. (Not that God is a formula, but, if His personality is as consistent as the laws of mathematics, which He invented!)
If God honors faith, then it doesn’t matter whether something supernatural happens, or whether your faith gets you an article on HuffPo. Or maybe your faith gets other people to the promised land and you never ever see it.
He will still honor your faith.
You count bet on it.
You can bet your money on it.
You can bet your job on it.
You can bet your time on it.
You can bet your firstborn child on it.
Because God did it with His. 😉
Here’s the moral of the story.
You’re not always gonna see how God honors your faith. But you can bet your firstborn child He WILL.
You might not have a full-blown miracle right before your eyes in the same day, like Peter and Andrew.
You might be Abraham, who was promised his descendants would be a blessing to the whole world. Well, he’s dead. He probably only saw like a hundred of his grandkids (he lived a long time, okay?). But do you realize how many Jewish people there are in the world today, throughout history, even, and how many amazing things they have done for our world? They are too many to count. And they are a blessing.
It happened anyway, even though he didn’t see it.
Plug your numbers in too: you might not see it, but God is going to be glorified by whatever kind of dead fish you willingly place in His hands.
Maybe you’ve trusted God for something specific and didn’t get it. This is disheartening and confusing, unless you take the time to know God and understand His heart and His intentions, and choose to believe they haven’t changed.
If this has happened, and you’re 90 years old and still haven’t had your first descendant. Please. Take my boss’s advice. “Keep going.”
Either God will change your desires and give you even greater ones, or, when your will aligns with His will to see all things redeemed, He will give you what you desire.
By promising “Ask in my name and you will receive,” Jesus is not giving you a free ticket to absolutely whatever. Jesus in not giving you an empty promise, either. He’s saying that, no matter what you see right now, when you seek His glory above all things, He’s gonna move mountains to make Himself known through you. And your life and your loaves and your fish will be more significant than you currently think or could even hope for.
And to me,
always seeing the God of love and miracles and total understanding of all timespace —
always seeing Him get what He wants,
through and beyond my life…
is a FAR better deal
than me, in my limited imagination,
always getting merely what I think I want
at this particular point in time.
Bet on it.
