Jesus is Resourceful

Alright, so let me catch you up in case you're here for the first time.

We started something back in February called following Jesus.

We are spending our year going through the book of Matthew, trying to learn as much as we can about Jesus Christ.

We're trying to follow in his footsteps and become more and more familiar with Jesus.

If you're someone who would say, I'm a Jesus follower, I am a Christian, Jesus is my king, he is my Lord, I worship Jesus, well, I've got great news.

You can never know him too well.

Like, if you believe that Jesus is God and He's the King of this universe, just imagine having eternity to get to know Him in heaven.

Like what that's going to be like.

Like having all of eternity to grow closer and closer to Jesus, to spend time with Jesus and not worry about that time running out because eternity doesn't run out.

I mean, I look forward to that more than anything, just to be in his presence.

But if you're someone who hasn't decided where you stand with Jesus yet, maybe you're here with a friend or a parent, and you're still figuring the whole Jesus thing out, you're like, I'm not sure if he's God, just consider this.

It's really good to know as much as you can about Jesus on the front end of making that decision because, well, Jesus undeniably is the most significant person that's ever walked this earth.

Even if you're not certain of his divinity, you can't deny the fact that Jesus is the most significant figure that has ever walked the earth.

No one has influenced history like Jesus.

I had a young guy I was talking to a few months back.

We were playing basketball at the gym, and we got to talking after a game, and I asked him what he wanted to do.

Like, what do you want to do with your life?

And he said, I want to be an influencer.

And I was like, You should study Jesus.

And he looked at me very funny, kind of like a young person would look at someone my age, going, I don't think you know what an influencer is, sir.

And I do know what an influencer is.

But he had this funny look, like, why Jesus?

And I said, Well, man, no one's ever had more influence on the world than Jesus.

And so if you want to be an influencer, if you want to be someone who influences other people, maybe start by studying the most influential person of all time.

And he just kind of made one of those faces that was like, huh, okay.

I took that as a win.

Like, even if you're not sure where you stand with Jesus, there is there's definitely no harm in becoming more and more familiar with who he is because no one has impacted the world like Jesus.

And so just be open to that.

Now, last week we started a little mini-series within our study of Matthew, and we're calling this Jesus Is.

Jesus Is.

We're looking at a series of stories, lots of different things happening, kind of right in the middle of the Gospel of Matthew.

This is about two years into the three-year ministry of Jesus, from when he got baptized and went public to when he goes to the cross and is crucified and resurrected.

He's about two-thirds of the way in in his story, but we're only about halfway through the book of Matthew.

And the stories that we're looking at over the course of the next few weeks, what we looked at last week, they just show us these amazing details about the personality of Jesus, about the way that he's wired.

You know, sometimes as a Jesus follower, it's really hard to focus both on the divinity of Jesus and his power and his might and also the humanity of Jesus.

It's easier to focus on one or the other, at least it is for me, and I think over the next few weeks, we're gonna see his power over and over again.

Like his power is just on display at all times.

We get a chance to see his humanity, to see his personality, and recognize that there are things about Jesus, there are things about the way he's wired that number one, we can we can be in awe of, number two, we can learn from and actually emulate, because if we're gonna be Jesus' followers, we should sort of look like Jesus.

And that's more than just what we believe, it's also how we behave.

And Jesus shows us some really amazing things in these stories, and it helps us see him more clearly and actually have a clearer target to try to follow in our own lives.

And so, on the front end, I'll tell you what today's about.

Today we're gonna look at the fact that Jesus is resourceful.

Jesus is resourceful.

I'm gonna go ahead and read in entirety the uh the story that we're in, and then we'll kind of unpack it as we go.

So I'm gonna start with Matthew chapter 14, verse 13.

Matthew 14:13

It says, as soon as Jesus heard the news, and if you were here last week, you know what that news is.

Uh, John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, his close friend, the prophet who set things up for Jesus, he's been killed.

He was beheaded by a man named Herod, and we went through all of that last week.

And when Jesus hears about this, it says that he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone.

And so over the course of the year, we've been looking at maps and kind of keeping track of where Jesus actually is.

He was living in a place called Capernaum, but when he heard the news about John the Baptist, he got in a boat with his followers and he went to this remote area outside of Beth Seda.

That's where he's at.

And he's there to mourn, he's there to be alone, but he doesn't get that chance.

Because it says that the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns.

And Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped out from the boat and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

So Jesus is there to mourn, he's there to be alone, he's always doing ministry, he's always with people, and he's just heard that one of his closest friends, a lifelong friend, has died.

He just wants some time to be with God, to be with his closest friends, to pray, to mourn, to grieve, and he's interrupted.

But he doesn't send the people away, he doesn't chastise them, he doesn't even say reasonably, hey, give me a few days, come back, come back in two days, and I'll help you out.

I just need some time.

Jesus has compassion on them and he stops what he's doing, even though it's very important and very personal, and he helps them.

And so we looked at the fact last week that Jesus is interruptible, that he's interruptible.

He's never too busy to help those that he came to serve, and that includes us.

And we should never worry about interrupting God.

We should never worry that our prayers or our needs, our struggles aren't important enough to God for us to go to him, because he's interruptible.

And we should be as well.

That's something we can learn from.

But as we keep on going, it says that that evening the disciples came to him and said, This is a remote place, and it's already getting late.

Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.

But Jesus said, That isn't necessary.

You feed them.

But we only have five loaves of bread and two fish, they answered.

Bring them here, he said.

And then he told the people to sit down on the grass.

Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, and he looked up toward heaven and blessed them.

Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples who distributed it to the people.

They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers.

About five thousand men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and the children.

And so we see in this story obviously the power of Jesus, but we see this resourcefulness that Jesus has.

And resourcefulness is a quality that, as people, we should desire greatly.

Now, if you're someone that never has problems and you don't anticipate ever having problems, you don't need to be very resourceful.

And so if that's you, if you're like, I don't ever have problems, and I don't think I ever will, then you can just check out, pull out your phone, don't listen to anything else, because none of this will apply to you.

But if you're one of those weird people with problems, then like this is super important.

Jesus demonstrates something, he models something for us here that we can learn from how to be resourceful and make the most out of every situation.

I have great admiration for people who are resourceful.

I want to show you a few, a few pictures, a few historical pictures.

We'll see how many of you are like history buffs.

Um let me let me start with the first one.

This will kind of prime our brains a little bit.

So uh just yell out if you know who this is, somebody, who is this person?

Orville Redenbacher.

He has nothing to do with what we're gonna talk about for the rest of the day, but his name is Orville, and so I was using him as a hint uh to set us up for the next people I'm gonna show you.

These people actually matter in the context of what we're talking about.

He may have been resourceful, a lot of popcorn has been eaten uh with his face on it, so I'm sure he he had some wisdom there.

I just don't know much about his life.

But uh, here's a picture of two gentlemen, one of whom is also named Orville.

Does anyone know who these people are?

The Wright brothers.

Orville and Wilbur.

What awesome names.

You know how like every 50 years old names make a comeback?

I'm I'm waiting for Orville and Wilbur.

Like, I have yet to meet a young child, like, say, oh, what's what's your son's name?

This is Wilbur.

I'm like, Wilbur?

Oh, okay.

It's gonna happen.

Maybe one of you guys can make that happen.

We've never had an Orvil or a Wilbur, to my knowledge, at his hands.

You could be a trailblazer.

All right, so like what are these guys famous for?

Like, we know what they're famous for, right?

I hope so.

Someone said Tariels.

Yeah.

They were North, they were from North Carolina.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jody.

Um, they probably weren't Duke fans.

I think we can agree with that.

All right.

Yeah, they and they invented a pioneered manned flight.

This is a picture of their airplane uh as it was the first ever to fly and have continuous manned flight.

Huge deal.

Like every time you get on an airplane, you have those guys to thank or curse.

Depends on how you look at things.

Okay, but what's interesting, well, before I go into the details, let me show you another picture.

Let me show you.

Someone yell out who this guy is.

Alright, next picture.

Anybody you guys don't know this guy?

Oh goodness.

So his name is Samuel Langley.

And here's why he matters in the context of this.

He's the guy who was supposed to have invented man flight.

So you have to understand is at the time of the Wright brothers, every major inventor of note was chasing after man flight.

That was the thing everyone was.

It was kind of like the space race in the 1960s.

And Samuel Langley was the head of the Smithsonian, and he was chosen by the United States government with all of their backing and tons of money, millions of dollars in our economy today.

He was the guy that the United States government picked as the most likely person to invent man flight.

And they threw all the weight of the government behind him.

They gave him all kinds of money.

He had major publications like New York Times and publications like that following him everywhere that he went for years, assigned to him so that they could be there when Samuel Langley discovered how to have man flight, when he broke through that barrier.

This was the uh the plane that Samuel Langley was designing.

Uh they tried it multiple times, uh, had tried to launch it off of a houseboat, it immediately went into the into the water.

Did it a second time, it immediately went into the water.

And about three or four days after the second time it went into the water, news broke that the Wright brothers, these nobodies from North Carolina, that they had done it.

And and Langley's career, his it just gone.

And so you can feel bad for Samuel Langley.

Um, but he's been dead for a while, so you know, don't feel too bad.

He's probably, you know, he's he's moved on, I would say.

But like, how interesting is that?

Because if you know the story of the Wright brothers, they they were not well-known people.

They were they owned a bicycle shop.

That's what they did.

Langley uh was given$50 plus thousand dollars by the United States government, which in our economy today would be close to$2 million to fund his project.

The Wright brothers invested$2,000 of their own dollars.

And they did what the United States government couldn't do.

Because, well, you mean if the government spends tons and tons of money, things don't get solved?

That's news.

Yeah, they're very efficient with their spending and and their resources.

But it is, yeah.

No, it is true, it is true.

And the reason why is because they're not resourceful.

They don't have to be.

Like when you think you have infinite resources, you don't have to be resourceful.

You can waste time, you can waste money, you can waste all kinds of things.

But the Wright brothers, they didn't have that luxury.

I mean, they had to make every penny count, and they did it.

They're resourceful.

We should admire resourcefulness, we should desire it in our lives because resourceful people can change the world.

Resourceful people can can find solutions when no one else can.

Resourceful people can find their way out of all kinds of messes, and resourceful people can help others do the same.

And no one has ever been more resourceful than Jesus.

I want us to appreciate that about him today.

It wasn't just his power.

Sometimes it's easy for us because he's God, and we go, well, yeah, he just used his power and zapped his way out of every situation.

It's not that simple.

It's also the way that Jesus saw the world, it's the way that he thinks.

So let's kind of let's go through the story a little bit and learn some things about resourcefulness.

We'll go back to Matthew chapter 14, verses 15 and 16.

Matthew 14:15

It says, That evening the disciples came to him and said, This is a remote place, it's getting late, send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.

And Jesus said, Not necessary.

You feed them.

So our first resourcefulness lesson right there is that when you're resourceful, you see solutions when other people see problems.

Like when you're resourceful, you recognize that there is a solution to every problem.

I have four children in my home, and about half of my time is just promising my children that they can solve whatever problem they think they can't.

And so I'm constantly having kids come up to me.

I talked about this last week and being interruptible, and every time I talk about something like that, it's like God goes, Oh, you think you're interruptible?

Well, let's test that this week.

And so, like my youngest Eli, this happened just a few days ago.

He was at the counter in our kitchen, he was eating breakfast, he had some milk, he's a milk kid, he loves milk, drinks so much milk.

And he runs into my bedroom and he's like, Dad, I spilled my milk.

And I'm like, okay.

He's like, he just has his hands up, like, I don't know what to do.

It's he goes, it's everywhere.

It's everywhere.

And I went, and sure enough, he was right.

It was it was in lots of places, just not inside of his cup.

And he's sort of freaking out, and I'm like, son, there's literally a saying, do not cry over spilled milk.

This is a solvable problem.

So I told him, go get me a towel, and he brought me a washcloth.

And I was like, no.

Um, it's alright.

It's in the towel family.

I'll I'll give you partial credit.

Go get me a big towel.

And he finally comes, gives me a towel.

We wipe it up, we're we do it together, and I'm just sitting there, he's got tears in his eyes, and I'm like, son, this is not a big deal.

It's not a big deal.

It's a solvable problem.

He spilled his milk twice that day.

Same day, repeat.

But it's amazing how often, as a dad, I spend time with my children just trying to reiterate to them that problems are solvable.

There's a certain way of thinking where we hyper-fixate on problems, where we see all the negatives, and we see very solvable issues as these like massive chasms where it would be impossible for us to find a way through it.

And Jesus doesn't think that way.

Now, here's 5,000.

Honestly, it's probably over 10,000 people when you count, like I said, it didn't even count the women and the children.

So you got over 10,000 people, and they're really hungry, and there's no food trucks, right?

So what are you gonna do?

And Jesus just says, hey, you guys, don't send them away.

Figure it out.

Feed them.

And while that is preposterous, you put yourselves in the shoes of the disciples, you're like, what a stupid thing to say.

Like, what are we supposed to do with that?

Figure it out.

You feed them.

But it shows us that Jesus didn't care that much about problems.

If we could train ourselves, if we could let the Holy Spirit train us to spend as little time as possible focusing on our problems and as quickly as possible move toward a solution, we find that that would serve us very, very well.

It definitely did in this situation.

Let's keep going.

Verse 17.

The disciples come back and they say, Well, we only have five loaves of bread and two fish.

Well, bring them here, he said.

And then he told the people to sit down on the grass.

Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, he looked up toward heaven, he blessed them, and breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to his disciples who distributed it to the people.

They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers.

About five thousand men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and the children.

Now, the other gospels, they give us a few more details.

It's one of the beauties of having the four gospel accounts of Jesus is we put them all together and we see all kinds of different details that give us the full story.

So, for example, in Mark chapter 6, it tells us this story as well, but it adds some details.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

Late in the afternoon, his disciples came to him and said, This is a remote place, it's already getting late, send the crowds away so they can go to the nearby farms and villages and buy something to eat.

But Jesus said, You feed them.

With what?

They asked.

We'd have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people.

How much bread do you have?

He asked.

Go and find out.

They came back and reported, we have five loaves of bread and two fish.

We get even more details from John's gospel.

In John's gospel, Jesus has a conversation with one of his specific disciples.

Turning to Philip, he asked, Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?

He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

Philip replied, Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them.

And by the way, a little detail.

This is how we know that they're in Beth Seda.

Philip was from Beth Seda.

And so Jesus is talking to Philip and asking him because that's his neck of the woods.

So we know that that's where Jesus is.

Just little details like that are cool.

Okay, then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up.

There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish, but what good is that with this huge crowd?

So we know that they're in this area.

Jesus is like, hey, figure it out.

Could we buy the bread?

No, there's no place, there's no place that has 10,000 loaves of bread just waiting, right?

It's not the way this works.

And Andrew goes, hey, I found this little kid, and he's got five barley loaves.

And by the way, those are about the size of dinner rolls.

Okay?

It's not like these giant French bread loaves.

And he's got two fish.

The main export from the Sea of Galilee were tiny salted fish like sardines.

So don't picture this kid with like a basket, and he's got these two huge fish, even though that wouldn't do anything anyway.

He's got a few sardines and a few dinner rolls.

And you know the disciples in this moment are like, We told you.

Like, we told you.

You said, go figure it out, and this is what we have.

This has been pointless.

But this lets us know something else about resourcefulness.

That resourcefulness isn't dependent on your resources.

Resourcefulness is not, it's not dependent on your resources.

Now I'm not naive.

There are times where you just don't have enough.

There's times where the answer is more money, or there's times where the answer is more time or more energy or more employees.

But but when we go there first, we miss out on all the things that God can do so often.

So that's where the disciples' minds go.

Hey, we just don't have enough.

You told us to go look, here it is, all we've got is this.

What good is this going to do?

What good is this?

It's useless.

They see everything through the lens of resources.

We don't have enough.

But Jesus still is like, yeah, yeah, we can work with that.

Bring me whatever you have.

Let's let's start by figuring out what we have to work with.

What if that was the way that we thought?

In every situation, in every problem, every circumstance where we we can't see a solution, we can't figure it out.

It seems insurmountable if we just stopped and said, hey, let's let's start by just taking stock of what we actually have to work with.

What's available, what's around us.

I've seen that play out in so many amazing ways.

I'll tell you guys a story.

I'm gonna brag on Andy Pringle, who's on our staff.

Andy's awesome.

He's our connections director and he leads our welcome team and our parking.

Andy's like a parking expert.

He ran parking, uh, a whole parking business for many years, did the Atlanta Braves and all kinds of people.

So as we grew as a church, Andy's skills were extremely useful and still are.

And so several months ago, this opportunity came up that I never got to talk about because we made a different decision.

Uh, but a piece of property opened up right behind our building.

And we were like, well, that's interesting.

I mean, it's it's next to his hands.

How often is there going to be property that opens up next to us?

Like, not really.

And we were growing incredibly fast at the time and still trying to figure out how parking could work.

And we were thinking, well, what if we bought that property and just made an extra parking lot?

And so we looked at it, we got really excited about it, you know, it just seemed like an obvious solution.

And so we had a company kind of survey for us what that would look like, what it would cost.

Turns out it would cost us a little over a million dollars to have extra parking.

And ever since we bought that jet last year, we just don't have that much money laying around.

So it's like, huh, you know, kind of regret buying the jet.

But we don't have a jet.

And we never will.

I promise you that.

Thank you.

So we we looked at we're like, well, I mean, I'm sure if we went to the church and if this is a God thing, if this is like, hey, God's saying, here's a chance, take it.

There's times where that is appropriate.

There's times where we we might need to do something like that and kind of come together and say, hey, um, we were looking at all the details, just going, maybe this is a chance that will pass us by.

We actually had them call us, say, Hey, we have an interested party, so if you guys don't make an offer, like it might go away.

We're feeling the heat.

And Andy came to us and and he said, Guys, I'm the parking guy.

I'm not parking.

Worried about parking.

So you shouldn't be worried about parking.

He said, please do not spend money on a parking lot.

He's like, we are surrounded by parking lots.

And it's funny at the time, uh, we've always had this sort of unspoken relationship with Lowe's where we've used their parking lot, but we haven't really talked to them about it.

And this is how it was for years.

Because it used to only really pop up at like Easter and Christmas.

And it was one of those situations where we've never heard from them that they mind, but also we don't want to go to them and say, hey, do you mind?

Because then they could be like, actually, we do mind.

And we're like, oh, well, now we can't use that.

So we've always had this sort of strange, like, we'll just sort of wait and see.

And Andy, in that moment, as we're making all these decisions, he goes, Let me go talk to Lowe's.

He's like, this is what I did.

For years, I would have to go procure parking for all kinds of businesses.

And this is this is what I did.

Can you just let me go?

And we're like, okay.

And I'm like, Lord be with Andy as he speaks to the management at Lowe's.

Because if they say no, we're like, ah, okay, we're gonna, we might just park there anyway, and be like, what are you gonna do?

Tow all the cars?

No way.

I mean, a few of us would get towed every Sunday, but it'd be worth it for the bigger picture, right?

Just a few of us, it's a sacrifice you gotta make.

And so Andy goes and he comes back and he says, hey, Lowe's loves us.

He's like, they love it.

It's perfect for them.

It's not at a time where it's too busy for them.

A bunch of our people go in there and grab something at Lowe's on their way home.

They're excited about our church.

Like they're super for it.

In fact, after Andy talked to him, they said, We're so glad you're talking to us.

Look, they they painted a yellow line across the back half of their parking lot.

And they're like, You guys can use all of it on this side.

It's it's half of their parking lot on Sunday mornings.

More spaces than we would have actually been able to spend a million dollars to have at the other property, and it's free.

And it's like, yeah.

And all of that is because Andy wasn't worried about resources.

His he wasn't in this mentality of like, we don't have enough.

I was thinking we don't have enough parking.

We don't have enough parking, because you know that that may not work out, and we just have to take this on ourselves, we've got to figure this out.

And Andy, being resourceful, said, Hey, I think we have more to work with than we might think.

That's the way resourcefulness works.

You don't you don't focus on your lack of resources, you don't focus on what you don't have.

You start by focusing on what you do have.

Andy was able to see what we did have, I wasn't, and I'm super grateful for that.

Jesus is like that.

The disciples are like, we don't have enough, and Jesus just says, Bring me what you have.

Now, at this point in the story, you might say, Yeah, but Jesus kind of cheated because technically they did not have nearly enough, and Jesus just did his Jesus thing and he multiplied it.

And so let's let's talk about this because correct.

That kind of brings us to our next resourcefulness idea, and that is that when you have God, you have enough.

You know, it's easy to look at Jesus and say, well, he he cheated because Jesus can just do what we can't do.

And there's some truth to that, right?

Jesus is definitely special.

But it from a theological perspective, if you want to like get into the weeds, there's some really interesting conversations to have.

There's one line of thinking that says that Jesus had all this miraculous power within himself.

And there are some scriptures that support that.

For example, uh, we looked at this story several weeks back.

Jesus is walking and there's this huge crowd, everyone's bumping into him, and he stops when this lady just touches his garment, hoping to be healed, and he stops because it says that he felt healing power go out of him.

So, like, Jesus is like, whoa, something like, something left me, what just happened?

And he stops and he asks the crowd, hey, who touched me?

And they have to, there's all this commotion, they find this lady, it's an incredible miracle.

Jesus shows her so much love and tenderness, it's amazing.

And so you can read stories like that and think, okay, Jesus just had this within himself.

But there's another line of thinking, very interesting.

In Philippians chapter 2, it tells us that when Jesus came to this earth, when he left heaven, came to earth to be God among us, that he laid down all of his divine privileges, that he became fully human.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

He wasn't pretending to be a human, he wasn't acting like a human, he was a human.

And so that line of thinking would say to you that, yes, Jesus did not have power within himself.

He laid that aside when he came to this earth.

And when Jesus did something miraculous, he was relying fully on the power of God the Father, the power of the Holy Spirit working through him.

It's just that Jesus, unlike us, has no sin, perfect faith, total understanding of how he has that relationship with God, a direct line that, you know, we struggle with.

He's different in that way for sure.

But he was relying on the same power that we have access to, some would say.

And I don't know exactly what the answer is.

I mean, who knows?

There's a mystery there.

But but we definitely see moments where Jesus prays to the Father before he does a miracle.

In fact, in this one, it says that he took the bread and he looked up toward heaven and blessed it.

And so there's there's at the very least, Jesus demonstrating a dependence on his relationship with the Father and the power of the Spirit to do things.

I say all that to say that it's easy for us to see Jesus do something that's impossible and go, yeah, but well, I could never do something like that.

Because I don't have access to that kind of power.

And the reality is maybe we do.

Like maybe we actually do.

You know, I've seen God answer prayers just because people went to him.

Same situation, right?

Jesus says, Bring me what you have.

And they brought a few loaves and some fish, and Jesus said, That's enough for me.

I can work with this.

When we go to God in prayer, it's not that different.

We bring him what we have, we say, here's what we need.

Here's the gap between what I have and what I need.

Can you help?

And look, I'll admit this, sometimes when you're going through something and you've prayed really hard and it hasn't happened, hearing that other people have prayers that are directly answered can almost be discouraging because you're like, why didn't that happen for me?

And look, there's a mystery.

There's a mystery sometimes in terms of why and how and when prayers get answered.

But what I will say is I have seen people go to God desperate.

In fact, I'll share a story that hit me this morning, and I won't use names for anonymity, but there was a gentleman that I've known for many years here at the church, awesome, awesome man, and uh got to be part of his wedding years ago, just love this guy.

And a couple weeks ago he came to me in the lobby and he said, Hey, um, I'm just having some stuff medically.

Can you can you please like pray for me?

And I said, Absolutely.

And I said, by the way, you should go to the prayer room and get prayer.

And he kind of looked at me like, I don't know.

And I recognize sometimes, like you may have been at his hands for a long time, and you know that we have this room, and it's not like a it's not a special room, it's not a magic room, okay?

It's not how it works.

It's just a place in our building that we have set aside for prayer.

And it's a place that's protected, and so it's quiet.

And if you need prayer, you can go pray in there.

And we have people after the service every Sunday that are waiting to pray.

And these are people that that like they pray, okay?

Like they pray.

And he looked at me, he's like, I don't know.

I'm kind of intimidated.

He's been here for years, and you can tell this, I don't know.

And I get that, walking through that door can it takes courage.

I get it.

And I said, I want you, just go, go do that.

And I looked at his wife like, you are going to make him go.

And she nodded her head and they went.

And so this morning he comes back and he tells me, like, hey, thank you for that, because I just have to tell you what happened.

And so he said that for years, this wasn't even the main thing he was getting prayer for.

It was kind of like an add-on.

For years he's had uh this ringing in his ears.

Is it tinnitus?

Is that is that what that's called?

Tinnitus, okay.

I was like not confident in the right term.

But he's had this ringing in his ears.

He said, for 20 years, non-stop.

It drives him crazy.

He's learned to cope with it, to deal with it.

Some of you guys may have the same situation.

And he said, like, three days after I got prayer, I'm driving in my car and it just pops.

And he's like, I I heard clearly for the first time it was gone.

And it's interesting because he said that since yeah, you can clap for that.

That's awesome.

Because that hadn't happened in 20 years, okay?

Now he actually said it's come back a little bit since then, and so he talked to the person who prayed for him, and she was like, keep praying.

Like, pray more.

And look, I've seen things like that happen.

And I recognize, by the way, there's a whole movement in American Christianity, especially, that's very, very focused on signs and wonders and miracles, and sometimes those things just get wacky and weird, and people are almost chasing after a miracle more than chasing after God, or sometimes those miracles are manufactured, and and there's all that stuff, put that all to the side.

Just because there are people who might manipulate or manufacture or fake it, doesn't mean that it's not real.

Like God does things, He's a supernatural God, and He does answer prayers.

And I can tell you story after story, that's just one that I heard this morning, story after story of things that even I've experienced, not even me taking someone else's word for it, of when God is faithful, He is.

And so remember, if you want to be resourceful, it's not about your resources.

It's about the resources of God.

And his resources are endless.

Jesus understood that.

And when you when you have God, you have enough.

Like as Christians, we should be very resourceful people because we are connected to a God who has all the resources in the world.

And there are solutions to our problems that we couldn't even imagine, but they're there.

One last thing in worship team, you guys can make your way out as we get ready to wrap up.

The final thing, and this connects to what we just read, is that resourcefulness is a cooperative thing.

I love the fact that in this story, Jesus didn't just manufacture bread and fish out of nowhere.

He required, I don't know if he required it, but he that's the way the story went.

Someone had to trust him.

Someone had to give what they had.

There was a cooperation.

That's the beauty of God.

Like I said this a few minutes ago, he can look at what you have and say, that's enough for me.

I've used this analogy before.

I've probably overused it over the years, but my mind goes to it over and over again, mainly because my wife subjected me to years of watching uh cooking competition shows.

She likes watching cooking competition shows more than she enjoys cooking.

All right?

She loves those.

You guys ever watch those, like Top Chef and all that, and Top Chef All-Stars, and Top Chef This, and Top Chef.

There's been like 47 seasons of Top Chef in the last 10 years.

I know, I've watched them all.

Um those shows are so interesting.

They'll often be on in the background at home and we're doing other things.

And it's amazing because like I'm like, is anyone here a good cook?

You'll admit it.

You can like, you it's okay, you can be proud of that.

Two?

I'm glad we have food.

I'm glad we have food trucks today.

I'm glad we're not like doing this ourselves, if that's the level.

Is anyone terrible?

You might be proud of that.

Like I, oh guys, I am.

If it's not pre-packaged, I can't do it.

If you gave me the most incredible ingredients in the world, I would mess it up royally.

Like, I just we have a grill at home, I don't even use it.

I've just, I've messed too many things up on it.

I don't want to go to the store, waste money on nice cuts of meat just to ruin it on my grill.

All right?

Some of you are like, grilling's not that hard, Justin.

Well, shut up.

It's hard for me.

Okay?

We all have our thing.

The only thing I've ever been good at is talking.

And it doesn't help.

You can't talk to meat and be like, cook.

Maybe if I had more faith.

All right, I'll work on that more.

Medium rare.

Like just doesn't work.

So, what's amazing about those shows is you're talking about master chefs.

Most of the competitions, most of the episodes are like, hey, here's a bunch of garbage.

Make something out of it.

And these people are able to take horrible ingredients or weird ingredients and they can make something amazing out of it.

That's how God is, but like to a level that we can't even imagine.

We often think that the only way that I can be useful to God, the only way I can get out of this situation, the only way my problem's gonna get solved is if I have really good things, really good ingredients to hand to God.

God does not need your best.

He doesn't.

He doesn't need the best.

He never really picked the best.

If you look at the Bible, it's not a story of like the MVPs getting chosen.

I mean, it was a bunch of fishermen, some tax collectors, like people like that.

And he's like, I this'll do.

This'll do.

I imagine God looking at me or looking at any of us and being like, yeah, I can work with that.

You know, not like, wow, you're incredible.

I've never seen someone so gifted and amazing.

Please let me use you.

No, usually he's like, oh, you're an interesting person.

Well, I can work with that.

But that's how he is.

Like this little boy, he just brings a few loaves, a few fish, and Jesus says, Yes, that's enough for me.

And it tells us that when it comes to God, when we're struggling, when we're in a situation, we're in trouble, he does not need us to have great ideas.

He does not need us to have all kinds of solutions, all kinds of things, he just needs us to bring him whatever we have.

And maybe what we have is hope and faith and resolve, or maybe what we have is brokenness and confusion and worry and fear.

But the point of the story is if you just bring to God what you've got and say, Here it is, I'm sorry.

He can look at you and say, Yeah, I can work with that.

If you'll trust me, I can work with that, I can use that.

That's how resourceful he is, and we can learn from that.

We can learn from that.

In closing, I'll say this Jesus is resourceful, and we're called to be like him.

We're meant to be like him, we're meant to be resourceful people.

The church, like we should be the most resourceful people the world has ever seen.

And I've actually seen that play out.

I mean, just talking about Canvas a few minutes ago, right?

The art group, a group of about 15 people that meets here, a group of 15 artists that get together on Wednesday nights to paint paintings of trees or whatever else they paint, have raised almost$300,000 in 10 years to help families in need.

Like that's being resourceful.

That's being like, hey God, we we heard about a person's need, we we paint.

Can you use that?

He's like, actually, I can.

If you would just bring to the Lord whatever you have and know that it's a cooperation between you and him, you bringing what you've got, and then he brings what he's got.

He happens to have a lot more.

You recognizing that it's not about resources, it's not about the lack of whatever in your life, that he doesn't see things that way.

That there's a solution to every problem, and no, no matter what you're going through, there is a solution.

There is something that God can do.

He can get you out of it, he can get you through it, he can get you over it, under it, around it, whatever.

But you have to trust that.

Jesus is resourceful.

And we can be resourceful too.

It's not about resources, it's about trust, it's about cooperating with God, letting Him work in you and work through you, and reminding you that there is a solution to every problem, even when it seems impossible.

And on that note, as we as we close and then uh we do the food truck thing, thank you.

That's great.

Um we've got, I think we've got some people getting baptized today.

Yeah, we do.

And I just realized that uh normally we do Lord's Supper, and that's when they get in the tank, so I will be resourceful right now and pray a slightly longer prayer than normal so that they can get in the water.

So, Lord, oh Lord, Heavenly Father, King of Kings, He God has a sense of humor.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you.

Thank you for being resourceful.

Thank you for being willing to work with whatever little we have to do your work in this world, to do your work in our lives.

Help us trust you.

Help us recognize that there are solutions to our problems, even when we can't see it.

Help us have the faith to bring whatever we've got to you and recognize that you can work with whatever small thing that we have.

You don't need greatness from us, you just need trust, you just need faith.

Help us cooperate with you, Lord, to solve the problems that are in our lives, to let you work through us and in us.

And we pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.