Daily Devotion March 3

March 3: Luke 9: 12-17

KJV Key Verse: Luke 9:16
Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.

Devotion:
Depending on God can be as easy as it can be hard. When our focus is set on the world around us we will find it hard to figure out how God could ever help us because all we can see if the hopelessness of the world around us. But if we are able to focus on God for a spell we will see how He alone can and does help us. It may not be in ways that we expect but in ways which will give Him the glory and not us.

The disciples could see a whole multitude of people and figured on about five thousand men; that is a big crowd to try and feed whether you take that as the figure of everyone or just the men-folk from the families that were present. So don’t get bogged down in trying to over think the situation by looking at the worldly view – it just does not make sense! God wants us to see that this was a situation where man could not do anything, even if he had a millionaire amongst the crowd, he still could not reasonably do anything to help feed that many people.

When we find ourselves in a bit of a hopeless situation, it is not normally in a safe place where we can call out to friends or depend on others; the definition of hopelessness does not include being in a safe place! The only way forward is with Christ and through ways which defy normal logic in some way. If there was a way we could help ourselves we would have tried that already…

Jesus did not panic but took control with the small amount of food that was available to them. He took the food and He lifted it up to God the Father for His blessing. He then broke it and continued dividing it up until all the people had enough to eat thereby giving God the Father all the glory – pointing the way directly to heaven. Now the people around Jesus would have seen Him giving the food out and would consider Him to be the miracle worker; but Jesus makes sure that what is written down for us to study is pointing straight back to God.

Points to Ponder:
Do you like getting applause?

Do you point back to God?