How Far Does Your Bread Go?

A young boy stands amidst thousands of hungry people . We don’t know anything about him except he has five loaves of bread and two fish. He gives what he has to Jesus.

I invite you to look up and see the masses of hungry faces who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel. Twenty percent of the world’s population is caught in the grip of Islam. Another fifteen percent are under the shadow of Hinduism.

Now let’s look in our hands. God has blessed each of us with a basket containing talents, resources and time. We can become so overwhelmed with the needs that we keep our baskets to ourselves. Or we can let Jesus take our lives and use them to bring the Bread of Heaven to a lost world.

Too many of us keep our baskets to ourselves. Our fish is rotting. Our bread has gone stale. We potentially stand to die with our baskets full of rotten gifts. The greatest tragedy in the church today is the millions of Christians who hold tightly onto their baskets while a huge portion of the world’s population dies of spiritual famine.

A Norwegian evangelist once retold the “loaves and fishes” story like this:

Imagine Jesus fills the disciple’s baskets. They start with the first row where everyone gets their share. Then they move on to the second row and the third row. By then the baskets are empty, so the disciples return to Jesus who fills them with more fish and bread.

The disciples go back to serving the people, but instead of going to the fourth row, they start with the first row again. They serve rows one, two and three. Their baskets are emptied once more, so they return to Jesus who fills the baskets again.

All day long, only the first three rows are served. What do you think the people in the back rows would have said? “Hey! What’s going on here? How come those in the front rows are being served again and again while we haven’t had any?”

This altered version illustrates how most churches serve the front rows again and again. All the while, up to two billion souls wait in the back rows for a single piece of bread. Eighty-seven percent of all mission work and finances go to peoples who have heard the gospel many times. God is looking for courageous men, women and children who will make the back rows their priority.

Don’t spend the rest of your life serving the front row. Millions are hungry in Senegal, Libya, Tajikistan, Oman, Bangladesh, Turkey, Japan and the list goes on. God may well have brought some in your very workplace and neighbourhood. Let’s join together and serve them the Bread of Life too.

Tim Paton has been serving among the street kids of Cambodia for over 10 years. When not based at WEC’s Bridge of Hope, he travels and speaks as a mission mobiliser.