Total inadequacy is not one of the five points of Calvinism but it is how we feel very often. As the people of God we are faced with vast needs all around us. One passage of Scripture is a particular help in this regard - the feeding of the 5000. This miracle can claim unique significance – it is recorded in all four Gospels. John places it before Jesus’ proclamation of himself as the bread of life. The story highlights both our total inadequacy and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

1. A huge need

The disciples at the end of a busy day would happily have sent the crowds away, but that was not the answer. There they were, large as life, and Jesus is not going to send them away. We cannot just hope that the challenges we face will suddenly disappear. Today the sheer scale of godlessness is only too obvious. Tens of thousands of men, women and children in each of our towns and cities are without hope and without God in the world. A vast pall of unbelief permeates our institutions, education system, government, media. And then we see individuals so steeped in sinful thinking and lifestyle that it is virtually impossible to find common ground with them.

There is so much work to do even to get a hearing for our message. We may well find people come with great practical, social and material needs. I am sure I am not alone in dealing with folk who cannot read, and are ill-nourished. Many of them are chronically ill. Life is about survival. For them the gospel is irrelevant and church is a hobby for respectable people who have life easy.

2. No answer from men

Philip’s response when confronted by the challenge of feeding the starving multitude is a counsel of despair: Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little (John 6:7). Andrew is marginally more helpful: There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many? (v9). A merely human outlook leads to despair. We could shrug our collective shoulders at the devastating inroads of unbelief, the blindness, the hardness of heart, the apostasy of so much of the institutional church and feel it is utterly beyond us. What difference can we make? Our resources are so small and we have little strength. Don’t look to yourself, or any human source, but to Christ. He knows what to do.

3. Making a start

Then Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down’ (John 6:10). He establishes order. This will not be a situation akin to the mayhem that ensues today when a truckload of food arrives in a starving community and there is argument and anarchy. The masses sit down on the green grass in orderly groups of hundreds and fifties. Now a start must be made. Jesus took the little the disciples could offer – the five loaves and two fish brought by a young boy – and having given thanks to God begins to distribute them.

The first atomic bomb used in war was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. Dr Fumio Shigeto was waiting for a bus about a mile from the centre of the blast. He was sheltered from the worst of its deadly force by the corner of a concrete building.

Stunned and disorientated by an explosive force hitherto unknown in human history, the doctor had no idea what had happened. His bewilderment quickly turned into a sense of being overwhelmed. He was one doctor with a small black bag which was still in his hand. Yet all around him he could hear the screams of desperately injured men and women. To make any impact he needed an army of doctors and nurses, tons of supplies and all the beds in the city’s hospitals. What could he do with so little at his disposal and thousands dying all around him? The stunned doctor knelt down, opened his medical bag and began treating the person lying at his feet.

It is so easy to be paralysed by the sheer scale of the physical, moral and spiritual need around us – we may end up doing nothing because we feel we can’t do enough. Right under our noses there are needs we can help to meet. We have to begin where we are and with what God has given us.

4. Little into much

In the hands of Jesus that which Philip, Andrew and the others had thought useless was marvellously multiplied and the people were fed. The disciples kept coming back for more supplies and Jesus kept providing! You may feel that you have little to offer. You may feel that what you can do will make little impact. But God does not call us to change the world. He calls us to be faithful in small things. And we may well be surprised at the result.

In 1991 in north Vietnam the police raided the home of the pastor of an underground church. They ransacked the house, searching for Bibles. While the police questioned the pastor and his wife, their 10-year old daughter, Linh Dao, courageously hid some Bibles in her school rucksack. Her father was arrested and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour. Eventually Linh and her mother and sister were able to visit the prison. Linh ran to her father in the open compound and hugged him tightly. The guards left her alone, reasoning ‘What harm can a little girl do?’ But on that visit Linh smuggled a pen to her father. He used it to write Scripture verses and mini-sermons on cigarette paper. These travelled from cell to cell and were instrumental in bringing many prisoners to Christ.

We believe in the total inadequacy of what we have and are, but we also believe that in Christ there is complete sufficiency. The needs are vast, but the combined potential of little acts of faithfulness taken and used by the Lord is vaster still. Our sufficiency is from God (2 Corinthians 3:5).