Shammah Temple Fellowship: Sermon of Sunday April 13, 2025
By Pastor Egide Nibitanga
Theme: How should Believers behave before the visibly impossible situations?
Reference scriptures: John 6:1-15
People’s behaviors may differ before same situations due to their backgrounds, their capabilities, and their skills. Some of us overreact, others simply try to ignore the problems and others face them with positivity and poise. Believers are expected to deal with such situations in a certain way, let’s explore more.
- Do not trust in their wisdom and capacity once problems arise
Because of His actions, teachings, and miracles, whenever Jesus when around, crowds of people would follow Him. He didn’t need to advertise for His work, people voluntarily followed Him. Jesus looked at the people in attendance and found that some of those were weak and hungry.
Jesus asked Philip where he could buy bread for the hungry crowd. He saw it was impossible for him to handle… too many people in attendance, disciples even wanted Jesus to send the crowd away, despite their situation. Jesus wanted them to use their strengths and strategic actions up before He intervened and act.
What can help us avoid counting on our own strengths?
- Prayer: When we pray, we welcome God to handle our thinking and influence how we do things and what we only do is to trust our situation with God Himself.
- Studying the scriptures: This action feeds our spirit and gives us access to the wisdom from God. God’s wisdom leads our own and then we get to take decisions that align with God’s plan in our life.
- Remembering what God did in our lives: Whenever we get a chance to reflect on what God accomplished in our lives, a lot of confidence comes our way and we get ready to deal with whatever coming our way. If God has been faithful to us in the past, He certainly is even now and in the future.
- Give Jesus what we have and wait patiently
Andrew, one of the disciples, told Jesus that in the crowd, there was a young man who had 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Jesus immediately told disciples to usher people, give them a seat and, wash their hands, and wait on what He was going to do.
This was a very tricky exercise, just two fish and five loaves? For that big crowd?
Why should we wait on God?
- Because God acts on His own timing: The world we live in teaches us to avoid patience and to press on until what we desire comes. This is very wrong. God works on His own due time, He’s never late, and we do not have to understand all the details of how and when He acts.
In short, as Believers, we are called to pay attention when we go through situations that seem like impossible for us to handle. It is in this specific moment that we are supposed to hold onto our God over our own wisdom and personal capabilities, and wait patiently.
