The Way to Fulfillment: Trusting God When Life Feels Overwhelming (Mark E. Moore) 

The text below is a modified transcript of the sermon audio by Mark E. Moore.

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Well, this might fall in the category of TMI, but we were married for four months, four months, and my wife got pregnant. I know I asked her the same question you’re asking right now. Why did you do that? The truth be told, she was way more prepared to have a baby than I was. Like, she has these amazing, natural maternal instincts.

Me, uh, not so much. I was still a college student when that happened. Like I didn’t even have a real job. And now I’ve got a, a kid coming along the way.

I remember taking a lot of long walks with God and kind of arguing with God. Why did you let this happen? I was like, well, you know, you were there, but the problem for me was not just that I didn’t have a job. The problem was I didn’t have a model of a healthy family.

So I wasn’t really sure that I could even be a husband. And now I’ve got to be a dad. It was one of those moments where I was just overwhelmed. I looked at what I had in my hands, my experiences, my finances, and I looked at what was ahead of me and I thought there’s no way that this can cover that.

You ever been there? I mean, we all have, we all come to these points in life where what’s in your hand isn’t gonna foot the bill for what’s ahead of you. For some, it could be a marriage.

You get married and you, you love him, you love her, but you suddenly realize that they brought some family dynamics, some baggage into the marriage that took you by surprise and you’re going, I don’t know that I have the ability to manage that. Or some of you, you’re entrepreneurs, you start a new business, good for you, and all of a sudden you realize the competition is bigger than I thought. The complexities are deeper than I thought. And I don’t know that with my experience and my resources, I can manage that. It happens to us in a number of ways with kids who are addicted, with parents who are aging, with spiritual trauma that we’re going through.

And I wanna tell you a story that comes from the Bible about when you feel overwhelmed when what is in your hand is insufficient for what you’re facing. The story comes out of the Gospel of John. So if you have a Bible, you can just look in the index and find John. We’ll be in chapter six the whole time.

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What you should know is that John is Jesus’ best friend and he writes this biography about 50 or 60 years after Jesus died and rose again. So this is, he’s been thinking about this for a long time and he records a miracle in chapter six. That is the only miracle that John writes that all the others wrote too. But this is the only miracle in all four Gospels.

It was that important, cat out of the bag. It was the feeding of the 5,000. Now, before we read that story together, I want to make a confession. I was thinking through this message.

How many times have I really been overwhelmed in life?

Now, I shared one with you when my wife was pregnant; I didn’t feel like I could do it. I started going through my life. It’s actually been rare that I have felt overwhelmed.

Not because I’m awesome, but because when I see something in front of me that’s bigger than what I have in my hands, I chicken out. I take a different path. Now, that’s okay if you’re talking about business. So that’s okay.

But if you’re talking about some personal thing in your life, but when you’re talking about your spiritual life and you go, here’s the challenge. Here’s a path that I think God wants me to walk down. But I don’t know that I can do it with what’s in my hand, that is a problem. And this story is going to address when you feel overwhelmed, whether you feel overwhelmed because something has come at you or whether you feel overwhelmed because there’s an opportunity in front of you, a path that God wants you to walk down.

Here’s the story beginning that I want you to see if you can kind of visualize this because it took place on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it was on a mountainside right outside the lake. Here’s the way it says in verse three: Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover festival was near. Now, why would John tell you that?

Well, because John was a Jew, and the festival was important to him, and it should be important to the story too. Here’s why: Passover was kind of like our Fourth of July. It was a time when they remembered and even reenacted the exodus from Egypt. They slaughter a lamb and have that as a family meal, and they get in the house all together with a family and celebrate this meal in memory of and reenactment of their day of liberation. So all these pilgrims would, if you could, you’re supposed to go to Jerusalem physically to have the meal to make the sacrifice.

And so all of these people were passing through the area where Jesus was. It was actually a major highway of commerce where Jesus was. So thousands of people are making their way to Jerusalem. Ten, the large crowd.

And at this meal, they would honor and remember for over 1,000 years what God had done for them. The problem was, at this particular time in history, the Romans had conquered the Jews, and they hated that, especially at Passover when their patriotism was piqued because they loved their country and they loved their God, but they were being overwhelmed. They looked at what was in their hands as a nation. They didn’t have the military power; they didn’t have the economic power to free themselves. So every Passover, they’re looking for what the Jews called a Messiah, someone who would come in and save the day, throw off the yoke of the Romans, and help the people be free. And that’s why there are so many people here, and they’re so interested in what Jesus is doing.

In verse five, Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him. He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. How about that?

Jesus gives a test, and for you math nerds out there, it was a math test. Why Philip? Why did he test Philip? Because Philip, fun fact, was the very first disciple that ever followed Jesus, clear back in John one. Philip follows him. You know what Philip does?

First thing he does. In fact, this is the only thing that Philip does. He went and got someone else and brought them to Jesus. That’s all Philip does.

We meet him three times, and each time he’s bringing somebody to Jesus, and with each time he’s got a buddy with him, his name is Andrew. And so Philip and Andrew, three times, we meet them all three times. They’re bringing someone to Jesus, and Jesus is testing him to see. I know that you bring individuals to me.

Can you bring a crowd to me?

Do you believe that I am enough to build the crowd? In verse seven, he says, if Philip answered him, it would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite. He was right.

I mean, this is a massive crowd, and the apostles, that is, Jesus chose 12 men that are kind of like his, his, his court or his cabinet members. There are 12 of them, and Philip was one of them, Andrew was another, and they, they have these funds. You know who the, you know, who the keeper of the funds was? It’s actually Judas Iscariot. How about that? And, and so he kind of knew how much money they had, they did not have enough money to write the check for this bill.

In fact, a half a year’s wages, they didn’t have that, but a half a year’s wages wouldn’t even give one person an appetizer, let alone the main course. So in verse eight, he says another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy,” he said, “with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go?”

Among so many? The little kid came with his lunch box. I don’t know if it had an action hero on it. It was a little Jewish boy.

Maybe it had her, you know, Samson on it or something like that. And he, he has this lunch and it is just, it’s just a little lunch. Five little loaves. I, I don’t think like Wonder Bread.

It’s not Wonder Bread. Well, actually it was Wonder Bread but in a different way, they’re just little like they have dinner rolls and they’re made from barley. Poor people ate barley loaves, not wheat. That was for the rich.

So this kid is from a lower-income family and she, she got a little lunch. She’s got two sardines in it. The Greek word is actually a little fish. So it’s like a sardine.

So five little barley loaves, two fish. Perfect for one little boy. Not a crowd. The size of this one.

Philip has already done the math on the finances. We don’t have the money to pay for this. And Andrew does the math with the, with the loaves of fish. And so this is, this isn’t enough.

And the math problem and by the way, they failed the test, the math problem, they failed, looked like this. Five plus 25 loaves, two fish divided by 5,000. And that’s not 5,000 individuals. That’s 5,000 families.

When they counted the men, they were counting the heads of the household. So five loaves plus two fish, little sardines divided by 5,000 equals not enough. It goes like this. What’s in my hand is not enough for what’s in front of me?

It’s just not enough.

So I look at this formula and I think, you know, that’s exactly how I have managed my life. Now, I’m not saying I’ve never taken risks, but I am risk-averse. If what is in my control, what is in my ability can’t take care of what’s in front of me.

Again, if we’re talking about finances, that’s probably a good rule. If we’re even talking about risk in business, that’s probably a good rule. But when you’re talking about your faith and God is calling you out to do something for him, just because the challenge is big doesn’t mean you should not be bold because the problem with their equation is that they were missing something in the equation. For you math nerds again, there was an integral integer that was missing. You know what it was? Christ.

They only looked at what they had in their hands. They didn’t consider who had their back. And Jesus is going to insert himself into the equation. Verse 10.

And Jesus said, have the people sit down that there was plenty of grass in that place and, and they sat down about 5000 men were there again, heads of households. I, I’ve walked that ground if they could sit on the side of the hill and they could hear Jesus preach. It’s, it’s kind of an idyllic location for a sermon, but they weren’t just coming for a sermon. They, they were excited about anyone who could come and free them from the Romans.

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They were excited by anyone who could feed their families who were poverty stricken. They were excited about anyone who could heal them. So Jesus, he’s dog tired like a sidebar. Jesus has just learned that his cousin John, the Baptist has been murdered.

If you’ve seen the, the series of the Chosen, I love how it’s depicted. I think it’s pretty accurate that John the Baptist and Jesus had this close relationship. So he’s hurting himself. And yet it says that Jesus saw these crowds like sheep without a shepherd and he taught them many things.

So he’s been all day teaching and all day healing. And now he’s gonna spend the afternoon and evening feeding. Verse 11, Jesus distributed to those uh or Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

Now you’ve gotta kinda hear with Jewish ears.

So put your yarmulke on and when it says that Jesus lifted up the bread he gave thanks for the bread. They call that Lehi. Aha.

So the bread of the earth, he lifts up the bread and he gives thanks for it. That’s exactly what the father of the family does around all the dinner tables. It was the dad’s job to pray and give thanks to God for the food. What is different is this is not a family, this is 5000 families.

Jesus is not merely the father of a home; he’s the father of an army, he’s the father of a nation, and they begin to get it, especially when he distributes them. And here’s an amazing fact: you have this resource, and you have something in your head. The little boy had it in his hand. The miracle doesn’t happen by what you have in your hand.

The miracle happens by what you hand over, and Jesus, by testing Philip, is inviting him into the miracle. He is inviting you into the miracle as well. If you will just hand over what you have, I can do—I can’t do a miracle with what’s in your hand, but if you hand it over, then I can do something extraordinary with it. And so it’s for me; I’ll let you look in your own mirror.

But for me, this is so convicting because I wonder how many miracles I could have been a part of, how many adventures I could have been a part of if I just had considered who had my back and not what I had in my hand. Verse twelve, when they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted. My mother would love that.

So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Twelve baskets. Hm. Why again, you Bible nerds are gonna love this. Twelve is the number of tribes of Israel; that was the nation of Israel, and Jesus didn’t just make enough for the crowd that was there. He made enough for the entire nation just through the leftovers.

It’s a beautiful story. It’s a beautiful miracle.

But the formula that it shows us is the formula that I have used: five plus two, divided by five thousand, is not enough. But when you put Christ in the equation, it goes from not enough to more than enough.

I’ve got to ask you, do you believe that? Because I think on all of our campuses, the Holy Spirit is working right now in the hearts of men, women, and young people. God’s been saying if you will step out in faith, if you will hand over what’s in your hand, I can make a miracle out of it, and your not enough will be more than enough. There will be leftovers.

I think about a couple who is struggling in your marriage, and you see the challenges that are before you. You see that what is in your hands—your own abilities, your skills, your resources—it’s just not enough, but you let Jesus into your marriage, and it will be more than enough that you can actually bless other marriages. You see your own child, and whether it’s an addiction they’re struggling with or some learning disability that they’re struggling with, or maybe it’s relationships they’re struggling with, and you think, as a parent, I look at what I have. It’s just not enough. I don’t have enough money for all the counseling that might take.

I don’t have enough wisdom for all the coaching that will take in my own home. But if you hand over what’s in your hand, your not enough will be more than enough. Some of you have a passion on your heart for some social injustice, and God has been encouraging you to do something with that. But you don’t have the education, or you don’t have the resources, or you don’t have the skill sets to pull something like that.

But if you’re really called by God, he can invite you; he’s testing you to get into the miracle and invite you to hand over what you have so that your not enough will become more than enough with that. That is exactly what they’re looking at here, except they look at Jesus and they’re enamored with him. You would be too. Look at verse fourteen: after the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the prophet who has come into the world,’ and that was part of the problem.

He’s a prophet. Verse fifteen: Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to the mountain by himself. We want to unpack what’s going on here. The people love Jesus. Why?

Well, because he fed them, duh. Yeah. And like them, so many of us come to Jesus for what we can get out of him, not for what he can make of us. There’s no miracle in that. I’ve been guilty of it too.

You come to church, you read your Bible, you pray your tithe, you do the thing and then you look at your life and you go, God, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m doing the thing. I’m doing what you asked me to do, but you’re not moving like I expect you to move. Why? Because we come to him for what we can get out of him, not what he can make out of us.

And so Jesus sends them away. I mean, it’s stunning that he wanted to be king of the Jews, right? But if he lets them make him king and they’re gonna do it by force, they’re gonna take him on the entourage down to Jerusalem, they’re gonna march on Jerusalem, put him in the temple. He is going to be king by force.

And if you all, if Jesus allowed them to make him king by force, he would be their king, not his king, not king on his terms. He doesn’t just want to be the king of Israel. He wants to be the king of the world and the savior of your soul, not the filler of your belly. And I think we’ve all had that experience.

We want more of God, but when we focus on what we can get from him rather than what he can make of us, he just kind of goes away and worse is he sends his apostles away.

They had to have been just thunderstruck. Jesus, what are you doing?

Like this is the moment we’ve been waiting for, we’ve been waiting for people to recognize you as king and, and that, oh they are and you’re sending them away and he goes, yeah, I’m sending you away too. Go down to the boat, get in the boat, go across the lake. What? And he just takes off into the mountains.

He starts to pray. I want you to, in your mind’s eye, visualize Jesus sitting on a mountain over this lake. The lake is nine miles north to south. You can see it from that mountain, the whole thing, six miles east to west.

And so Jesus spends hours in prayer and you know what the apostles are doing. They’re rowing against the wind in a storm. They are stuck. It says down in verse 16, when evening came, his disciples went down to the lake where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for cour num by now, it was dark and Jesus had not yet joined them.

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A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat walking on the water and they were frightened. But he said to them it is, I do not be afraid what a moment he’s walking on the water. They never expected that you, you wouldn’t have either. And so as they’re like straining at the oar, so you gotta just feel it.

Your muscles are in agony, just burning and you’re no closer to shore than you’ve been. Now, those veterans in the boat, Peter Andrew James and John, they made their living in a boat. They knew exactly the danger they’re in. How could it get worse?

It’s storming. Jesus sent us away. We’re in the middle of the lake. We’re gonna drown.

Oh, it gets worse. A ghost shows up. They’re going, this has gotta be a guy like who else is it gonna be in the middle of the lake? I mean, they were in the middle, 3 to 4 miles in the middle of the lake and then Jesus says, don’t be afraid.

It is. I now I need to say that in Hebrew. So so get your yarmulke on again. Yahweh. It is Hebrew.

Yahweh Jesus is claiming to be God.

And if you put this miracle of the feeding of the 5000 and the walking on water right next to each other for you Bible nerds. And I, I love you Bible nerds like I am one.

So here we go. These two miracles side by side mirror the first two verses of the Bible. Genesis one says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and Jesus created right there on the mountainside and the food to feed 5,000 families. But Genesis 12 says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the chaotic waters, and there he is, Jesus, walking on the waves of a storm, right to the disciples. If you think about what Jesus is doing, he is showing them who he is.

Because if you let that kind of Jesus into your living circumstance. The little in your hand is more than enough because the one who’s got your back, do you believe that? Now, this is where the story ends uh in John and he kind of moves on and uh talks about the sermon he preached the next day. But there was something else that happened that night and there’s only one gospel writer that records it, John and Luke and Mark, they just, they just go on but Matthew kind of puts a PS on the end of the story.

And I want you, I want to read that for you because for me, this is the most important event that happened that night for me to take a next step and take what’s in my hand and hand it over so that my not enough can become his more than enough. Uh You might have heard this story. Peter said, Lord, if it’s, you tell me to come to you on the water, come. He said then Peter got down out of the boat and walked on the water and came towards Jesus.

I was so moved by that even as a kid, I was moved by that. So I tried it. You wanna, you wanna hear about it? Yeah, it was ridiculous.

I was like in middle school 12, 13, I don’t remember but I’m standing on the edge of a pool and I thought how cool would it be? If I had enough faith to walk on water and I know I was like 12, I, how do you get faith? If you’re 12 or if you’re an adult? How do you get faith?

So I thought if I just kind of clenched my fists and gritted my teeth and just believed, like I believed, I would work it up in my own mind. And I believe, I believe so. I said there, oh, I don’t know if it was quoting scripture or praying or what I was doing. But I finally felt like, ok, I did it.

I got to the level I, I believe that I’ll walk out of water and I took that first step and got rebaptized. So I don’t, I don’t throw a lot of shade at Peter. He made it farther than I did. He steps out of the boat and it says when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out.

Lord, save me immediately, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. You have little faith. He said, why did you doubt? And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

Two things I want you to see. Well, three things actually. When you step out of the boat, are you going to fail? Likely.

But Jesus is still gonna reach down and grab your hand. He still is the God on the waters. The, the other thing that, that I notice in this passage is that we all want Jesus in the boat. Jesus get in the boat, get my life to come.

Do life with me, Jesus…

but he doesn’t get in the boat with you until you get out of the boat and until you’re ready to respond in faith to his call, it’s not likely that you’re gonna have that experience of closeness with him that you really desire. The other thing that, that, that I notice is why do you doubt he asked the question is the same question that I think Jesus would ask me that Jesus would ask you. Why did you doubt? When has he let you down in your marriage?

When does he let you down with your kids? When does he let you down with you? When is he, when is Jesus not been there for you? Now, he might not give you everything you want.

He may let you strain at the oars in the middle of the lake, but he’s coming on the waters for you. And I just, I think about what kind of church we could be. If all of us took one step out of the boat, even if you sink, he’ll catch you. Would you hand over what’s in your hand so that he could make more than enough out of not enough.

And there’s a thousands of ways that’s going to happen. In fact, I was praying with a couple of our elders before the message and one of them reminded me this is what C CV has always done. The property of the Peoria campus was purchased in one day a million dollar offering. It was a miracle, what God has done to reproduce every one of our campuses.

All 15 has their own back story of the miracle of God. And so for some of you, this is, this is your biography. This is not a sermon for you to hear and respond like this is what you’ve always done. There have been some extraordinary givers and extraordinary servers and throughout all of our campuses, there are people in ministry doing things around the the city and around the world frankly, that are extraordinary sacrifice and risk stepping out on the water.

And I just don’t want you to get left behind when Jesus calls you out on the water. One of the things that we’re doing this year is leveraging our medical community to go on medical mission trips. So if you are a, a nurse or a doctor, uh if you are in health care of a dentist or, or ophthalmologist, whatever you do in the health care, we can use to serve the poorest of the poor in the world. And maybe you could step out of the boat.

Just talk to your campus pastor or associate pastor about it. There are ways to get involved for some of you. You feel like God is actually calling you into the ministry, that you would make your living by serving at the church. If God’s calling you to do that, get out of the boat.

But for the vast majority of us, God is not asking us to give up our occupation, but to give over our occupation, to use our expertise as a lawyer for justice, maybe human trafficking or some other injustice, to use your ability in schools to help the foster care system thrive with Christians who would take kids. You know what we’ve done around the city, but we can’t do it without you. CCV is where we are not because we’re so good, but because God is faithful when we hand over, and there’s been a legacy of people handing over to God and seeing miracles happen. Jesus invited Philip into the miracle by testing him.

Peter invited himself into the miracle by testing Jesus, and he failed, but he still holds the silver medal for water walking. I’m just wondering who’s next? Who’s gonna stand up and say, I’m gonna give my life to Jesus? That might be for you. Your next step is to get baptized to publicly confess your faith in Jesus.

If you’re ready to do that this weekend on all our campuses, we are ready for you. I don’t know what the Holy Spirit’s calling you to do, but I know he’s calling all of us to get out of the boat. And when we get out of the boat, he steps in. Holy Father, oh, how good you are.

There is no reason that we should ever doubt you. You have been faithful and good and kind. And so today it starts with me. I pledge to you.

I’m gonna get out of the boat. I’m gonna risk big and trust you to get the glory when I fail and you rescue me. Do in us more than we could ever ask or imagine. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Let’s go make Jesus famous.

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