This November, Lambchow marks eight years of ministry through writing, publishing, and emailing. In that first article, (In The Wilderness) I considered the plight of the crowd just before Jesus performed the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 with just a few pieces of bread and fish. That article began with a verse, “When it was already quite late, His disciples came to Him and said, “This place is desolate and it is already quite late.” (Mark 6:35, NASB95)
In a way, Lambchow began in a desolate place. Having completed a Church Ministry degree I struggled to know where God wanted me next. It was a spiritually dark and foggy time with a one-word answer from God – “write.” So I wrote. Lambchow began as an outlet, a self-created website to publish what was flowing from my heart and mind. I initially thought it was just an in-between place until God opened up the “big” door. What I know now is that God had other plans for it.
Again from that first article – Often we ask for wisdom and then seek to apply our own wisdom to our wilderness experience. Our “in the middle of nowhere” could be about anything; any opportunity, any relationship, any problem, and any consequence to our sin or the sin of others. We know that God has the answer, the direction, out of our desolate place. We ask for God’s wisdom but often do not hear very well. One point from the event that follows Mark 6:5 is that while there was a practical rightness to the disciple’s solution, Jesus had a miraculous solution in mind. I wonder, instead of asking for God’s wisdom if it would be wiser to ask for His miracle path, His perfect solution, to our wilderness problem.
Over the past eight years, Lambchow grew into a ministry. With the support of my wife Betty, Pastor Ben Hoerr and the Vineyard Church Peoria, and others, Lambchow has distributed via the Internet over 50,000 Bible studies, 6500 eBibles, and impacted countless lives for Christ. Lambchow’s email lists have over 5000 folks and we’ve responded to thousands of prayer requests. Lambchow is one guy (supported by a few folks) who is pray-fully writing in the early morning hours and publishing via an Internet blog. Those words are the few pieces of bread and fish that God continues to miraculously multiply. That was His solution to my wilderness problem.
The lesson I’d like to draw out today is this – Use what you have where you are and trust God for the rest. What you have may seem totally inadequate for the problem. Just a few scraps of bread and dried fish to feed a crowd of over five thousand. Our wisdom screams that it is not enough, and it’s not until it’s given to Christ. Once given we must trust Christ for whatever comes next. We must lay aside our own desires and expectations and simply let Jesus have His will and way with our inadequate offering.
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