The feeding of the multitude – 5,000 men might mean as many of 10,000 people – points directly to God’s expectations for kingdom leadership to become a release point of representation. God is involved but has a strategy to be involved through His leaders, to establish, expand, and exhibit His kingdom on earth through people.
Jesus receives what the kingdom leaders have and then multiplies it back to the people through their distribution of the miracle.
Consider what may not be available to the starving masses because kingdom leaders keep it when they should surrender it for His multiplication miracle. Consider how the limitations of the place – a desert – and the limitations of the people – they ran out of food – meets the limitations of the leaders – they have only five loaves and two fish – that meets the multiplication of the Master – looking toward heaven, He blessed it.
[Blessing means “expansion.” Cursing means “limitation.”]
The presence of limitation should always be an indication of kingdom leadership opportunity, not a sign of the inevitability of evil. Kingdom leaders welcome the presence of limitation because their obedience walks them into that condition – on purpose!
Remember, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness for fasting. Limitation became His positional environment and personal experience. On purpose! There He received the revelation of the enemies strategy to distract and defeat His life’s work. He overcame.
The point of the environment and experience was for Him to learn obedience by the things His passion presented Him: the things He suffered. The word translated “suffer” carries the concept of “experiences the limitations passion produces.” He suffered because He was pursuing His purpose with passion.
Interestingly, satan offers Him the “stones into bread” scenario as one of these tests. Jesus doesn’t fall for it. Later, when faced with the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000, Jesus applies the lessons of obedience learned in His own desert and fasting.
Instead of turning stones into bread, He reveals the strategy of kingdom leadership: give Me the little you have and I’ll look to heaven, bless it (in order to expand it), and give you what you can distribute to those hearing the kingdom Message.
Jesus sees kingdom as a representation of heaven, kingdom leaders as representatives of heavenly leadership, and the expansion of what they surrender as the means of expanding both parties. “They ate all they desired.” Each kingdom leader walked away with a hamper of fish sandwiches.The tendency to bunker in, hang on tight, and pull in closer during the testing times of limitation becomes the breeding ground for unbelief.
Limitations occur in our environment when we are placed or positioned in places where provisions are meager. We all experience these places, and we may all expect to be positioned in the places of limitation.
In the case of the multiplication of food, the purpose of the positioning only became apparent when Jesus challenged the limitation with kingdom abundance. That is, we can expect to be positioned in places of limitation to become the catalysts of abundance! When we give God the limitations of our own lives, in the place and position of limitation around us, He multiplies a miracle that brings abundance to the place, the people, and to us!
Yet, our tendency in the place of limitation will tend toward salvaging the little that is left, responding from a human point of view, becoming part of the limitation, buying into the inevitability of a downward spiral that will only increase limitation.
God will position us at the door marked “impossible” because it is the doorway to kingdom establishing and expansion.
Without a confrontation of limitation, heavenly abundance cannot be released. Without this positioning, abundance remains limited to what man can produce with machinery, management, manipulation, and manufacture. Kingdom abundance always appears like a wellspring in the desert, and the place of limitation is our best hope of abundance.
A Rock followed Israel in the desert. The dew was the food angel’s eat. The Overshadowing kept them healthy, clothed, and protected. God teaches us to depend upon Him more in the place and positions of limitation.
Stop cursing the limitation and give God your meager supply!
