Unprepared

In 6 days, I will be boarding a plane to begin a trip I have been preparing for for several months yet feel entirely unprepared for. In all honesty, I've spent a lot of time "figuring things out" but haven't really figured a single thing out. With this on my mind, as I was spending time with Jesus today, He led me to Matthew 15. The last part of the chapter (vs 29 - 39) is the account of Jesus feeding over 4,000 people with only a few loaves of bread and some fish.

To sum it up, basically Jesus walks up a hill by the Sea of Galilee and just sits down. A bunch of people come to Him, He heals them, and they praise Him. Then Jesus notices that its been a long time and the people have a long walk home. He tells His disciples that the people need to eat, and the disciples start freaking out about where they're going to get all that food. Jesus just asks for the little they already have, and they give it to Him. Jesus then tells the people to sit. He gives the food back to the disciples, and they start to pass it out to the people. After everyone's eaten, the disciples go back and pick up leftovers. Then, Jesus sends everyone home and goes somewhere else.

I've read this story a million times and understand the significance of the outcome, but for the first time, I paid specific attention to who did what. Jesus, the people, and the disciples all had very distinct roles:
Jesus showed up, healed people, revealed a need of the people to the disciples, gave instructions to the people & the disciples, provided more than enough, and declared a clear finish to the event.
The disciples went with Jesus, gave what they already had to Jesus, received from Jesus, gave to the people, and collected leftover from the people.
The people simply came to Jesus, praised Jesus, and obeyed Jesus.

As I was reading this and noticing these roles, Jesus spoke to me about our roles as His followers. In some situations, we function like the disciples did in this passage. At other times, we are like the people, but we are never to take the role of Jesus. Practically, this means that it is never our responsibility to be present in the exact right spot, heal people, figure out what people's needs are, take control of a situation by instructing others, provide for a need, or declare something finished. Instead, we can trust Jesus to do these things and know that our responsibility is to be with Jesus, praise Jesus, and obey Jesus whether this means giving Him the little we have so He can use it to meet others' needs or simply sitting and waiting for Him to meet our needs.

So in all the chaos and bustle of preparing to leave for another country, my goal this week is to focus on only three things: being with Jesus, praising Jesus, and obeying Jesus. If it's not one of those things, I'm better off leaving it in His hands because He knows what's coming and can prepare me much better than I can prepare myself.