But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!”—Jesus in Matthew 14:16, NASBHere were the disciples, the future of the Church, and they doubted the adequacy of the Church (really of God working through the Church) to meet people's needs. Do we not often have this same way of thinking today?
"Mustard plant bangladesh" by Hopeoflight - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Rather than tell people to go meet their needs via the government or secular institutions (and we communicate this by not being proactive), God wants us to gather the resources and strengths of each member of the body of Christ and offer them to Him for His purposes. This results in the miraculous Kingdom of Heaven shining brightly in the darkness and people having their needs meet and their sicknesses healed. As we learned in Chapter 13, this seemingly insignificant kingdom transforms and overcomes the whole world!
