When I Remember
Text: Mark 8:14-21
Introduction
Words of the song ‘When I remember what He’s done for me, I’ll never go back anymore…’
Uncertainty can drive you to fear, worry and doubt. But it’s also an invitation to hope. When we are faced with something we can’t handle on your own, Don’t Forget to Remember the one who worked miracles in the past and that He can do it again.
Every year has its challenges. Every year has its defining moments. Every year has its problems but not every year has such a shift in the atmosphere, such a paradigm shift where we are left with more questions than we have answers, more complexity than we have clarity.
We did not envisage a year like 2020 but we did pray for a year just like the one we have had. Because just like January last year, you prayed something like this: ‘I want you to change my life this year.’ …Do you remember?
We’re the ones that said, ‘Lord, whatever it takes for me to go deeper this year, I will go deeper. You’re the one that said,‘Lord, I want more of you.’
In 2021, He wants to know if you’re desperate enough to have change in your life, that you’ll seek Him out. That you’ll chase after Him. That you’ll say, “God, I don’t care what it takes, for me to get more of you this year, I’m going to knock until the door is open.”
Isn’t it interesting that there is often a disconnect between what we want God to do in our lives and what it’s going take for that to happen? We want to be changed but we don’t want to be challenged? We say, ‘God, I want to go deeper but I don’t want to be disrupted’,
Jesus is on a boat with his disciples. He’s fed 4,000 people. He’s on the boat with his disciples and the disciples come on the boat and say, “Lord, we forgot to bring bread.” They hadn’t learned that when Christ is all we’ve got, He is all we need.
So Jesus looks at them and says 15 “Be careful of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”
He said, “When we fed 5,000, how many loafs did you have?” Five. “How many did you have left over?” 12 baskets full, okay.
The disciples had completely forgotten that Jesus had fed 5 000 then 4 000 people.
Why is that important? because it should speak to us today because it lets us know that God did that miraculous work once and then he turned around a few months later and he did it again.
That if God healed you once, he can heal you again? That if God opened up a door once, He can open up a door again? He can do it again. Do not let this pandemic make you nervous and question the power of our God because if He did it once, He can do it again.
Some of us need to rehearse the history of all the things that God has brought us from and all the things that He’s done. Because it is our history with God that should give us strength and faith for what we are facing right now because if He did it once and He can do it again.
We need to pay attention to this miracle of the multitudes, not just because He did it twice but because it is in every single gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of them talk about the feeding of the multitude. This is the only other thing that is mentioned in all four besides the resurrection. That means it’s important.
Don’t forget to remember that we are called to people. That means we are called to problems. You cannot separate problems from people they go hand in glove. We are called to people. And that means we’re called to problems. In both accounts, compassion was the catalyst for the miracle.
In the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus was moved with compassion because He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. In the feeding of the 4,000, He says to His disciples, “I have compassion on these people.” It’s one of the only times in the Bible that Jesus verbally says, “I have compassion.”
If you have compassion, you must take action? God is calling you to do something.
In fact, compassion is when care and action collide. That’s when you see compassion and in both miracles, compassion was the catalyst for the miracle. How many of you know we have got to be a people that have compassion, that have care but we also take action?