Mark 6:35-37

Passage

As Jesus was teaching the hour grew late.  His disciples came to Jesus and reminded Him that they had come to a desolate place.  They also reminded Him that the people were hungry.  They urged Jesus to send the crowd away so that they could buy food to eat.  Jesus told the disciples to give the people something to eat.  The disciples reply that they don’t have the kind of resources to even buy bread for all of the people.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought:

The disciples come to Jesus with some obvious problems.  It is getting late.  People are hungry.  There isn’t any place around to get any kind of food.  These are all very real problems.  However, they are also very worldly problems.  It is sometimes easy to miss the spiritual moments in life when we are focused on the worldly problems occurring all around us.

Why do we focus on the worldly problems?  When is it absolutely okay to focus on the worldly problems?  When can focusing on the worldly problems cause us to miss the spiritual moments going on around us?

Second Thought:

The disciples urge Jesus to send away the crowd.  Jesus is in the middle of teaching a very captive audience, and the disciples tell Him to send the people away.  From the perspective of the world, this request absolutely makes sense.  The people are probably tired and hungry and there is no place to find respite where they currently are.  However, from a spiritual sense, the request makes no sense.  There are moments in other people’s lives where they are sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit.  We need to learn to take advantage of those moments regardless of the worldly circumstances going on.

Have you ever interrupted someone else’s spiritual moment because of your focus on worldly concerns?  How does that make you feel?  What can we do to try and be more spiritually aware so that we don’t let the worldly concerns interrupt what God is doing in our life?

Third Thought:

The disciples just aren’t seeing through the eyes of Jesus.  This isn’t a slam on them; the reality is that Jesus is still in the process of making them disciples.  They are still learning.  This is part of the learning process.  Jesus isn’t angry with them; He is merely exposing the areas where they need to grow.  Jesus tells them to feed the crowd and they just don’t see how.  They are in need of learning a greater lesson themselves.

Have you ever been in a position where you just didn’t see what other spiritual people could understand?  Why is it easy in those times to get angry, defensive, jealous, or even embarrassed?  What really should be our response when we see that we have a place for growth to happen?

Passage for Tomorrow: Mark 6:38-40