Recently, I’ve been reading through the book of Luke. In Chapter 9 of Luke, Jesus starts to shift his ministry – or, at least, he tries to. He’s trying to move away from direct ministry – himself leading the show, teaching and performing miracles – and he tries to push his disciples to take more of a leadership role. This is a struggle. While he sends his disciples out on a ‘mission trip’ to teach and perform miracles in the surrounding towns, the passage doesn’t really say how successful the disciples are – just that they went out, and then returned.

Where they struggle shows up more concretely after they come back. Jesus empowered them to perform miracles, such as healing diseases and casting out demons. But when they get back to Jesus and they’re telling Him about what happened on their journeys, a crowd of people finds them. Jesus teaches the people for some time, and as evening comes the disciples tell Jesus it might be time to send them away, so they can find food and lodging in the surrounding towns.

Late in the afternoon the twelve disciples came to him and said, “Send the crowds away to the nearby villages and farms, so they can find food and lodging for the night. There is nothing to eat here in this remote place.”

But Jesus said, “You feed them.”
-Luke 9:12-13

The disciples’ reaction is interesting, condidering that they have just come back from journeys where they’ve presumably been healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching the Kingdom of God to the people:

“But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?” For there were about 5,000 men there.

-Luke 9:13-14 (NLT)

The disciples have the power to perform miracles, and Jesus clearly expects them to step up and show Him what they have learned.

This is a moment of Truth for the twelve.

And they fail.

Looking at the crowd, they likely were overwhelmed. There were around 5,000 men in this crowd of people, along with who knows how many women and children. This is a huge crowd; who knows if the surrounding towns could have even supported feeding all of these people!

Maybe they were intimidated by such a situation. The prospect of feeding that many people would have been intimidating, to say the least, and under these circumstances the disciples take a worldly approach, rather than factoring in the divine power Jesus had just handed over to them mere days ago.

How often do we see this in our own lives? Do we even know? Jesus commanded his disciples to go out and make more disciples, and we, as part of that chain of discipleship, are empowered through the Holy Spirit to, at the very least, reach out and teach others about the Kingdom of God. Do we do this effectively? Do we do it at all?

Or do we, like the disciples, allow circumstances to intimidate us into timidity?

Jesus called his disciples to boldness, not timidity.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)