Now I want to talk about two other questions which are asked, and both of them are asked when the
Lord knows exactly all about it, and yet, He goes and asks it. As we found yesterday, there is a reason
why He should do that. Not for His benefit; it is not to satisfy His ignorance, but it is to do a miracle in
every one of us.
This next question has to do with “provision.” We have had “position” and “condition,” now the third
one is our “provision.”
“When Jesus then lifted up His eyes, and saw a great company come unto Him, He saith unto Philip,
whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” John 6:5
Whence shall we buy bread? He is so good to tell us.
“And this He said to prove him for He himself knew what He would do.”
Isn’t it exactly what I have been telling you for the last two questions? He knows. This He did for his
sake, not for Jesus’. This He did to prove him, knowing himself what he would do.
Then, why not let him do it? No, you cannot, you have to fuss around, getting a hold of God and
praying and tearing up – don’t get into that confusion. By the Spirit, penetrate in past that thing and
come into the possession.
He is going to ask this question and now, listen to his answer. It is so very typical.
Here, the Lord of Heaven, all supply for all eternity, is saying, “Philip, what will you do?”
“Philip answered Him, two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of
them may take a little.” John 6:7
Immediately, Philip reverts to his natural, limited resources in the presence of the “Whole Loaf” of the
Bread of Heaven. Here is the Loaf of Heaven, all supply for eternity is saying, “Now, what will you
do?” He is not able to see the eternal supply, he cannot even see Jesus even in His miracle power,
because he is centered in his own limited interpretation of the problem and is “counting” instead of
saying to the Lord, “Oh, Jesus, we have seen You work before. This is quite impossible to us. Will you
be the host and feed them?”
Philip cannot do this; he is not yet advanced enough. He has to twiddle around with his flesh – with his
natural processes. The other disciples also tried to help Philip out of this difficulty.
“One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, saith unto Him, There is a lad here, who hath five
barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” John 6:9
They all failed because they are self-conscious of their limitation.
Notice that there are seven items, five loaves and two fishes. Five and two make seven, which speaks
of completion. We are not to fall back upon counting our limitations. I have “this and this,” but I
cannot make it come out to meet the need. We never will. We have counted our limitations, yet we did
not count in “The Loaf of Bread” who is standing at our side.
Jesus was not concerned about their limitations, but He was very concerned that they recognize Him.
The next time we are tempted to count our limitations, count them in His presence, then look up and
say, “Thank you Lord, I am counting you in on this.”
We tend to fall back on our seeming limitations because it brings a certain reaction. There is within
each one of us a sense of justification in feeling the power of distress. Some of us are only happy when
we strike this note, so self-pity can come in. Feeling sorry for ourselves will utterly defeat us.
Matthew adds a further touch to this.
“And when it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, this is a desert place and the time is now
past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals. But
Jesus said unto them, they need not depart; give ye them to eat.” Matthew 14:15-16
Jesus did not say, “Let Me feed them.” Rather, He said, “YOU give them to eat.”
Why is it, when instantly the need is revealed? When faced with responsibility, the disciple will seek a
way of escape by projecting the need to another. They said, “Send these hungry people to the villages
that they may buy bread.”
What are these villages? All too often, we have sent the hunger of our heart to strange places for its
satisfaction. These are distant ministries where we think we might find the answer for the need at
hand. The hunger is within us, and we must do the giving, and stop sending it to the villages as an
escape mechanism.
Why were those discouraged disciples so quick to leave Jerusalem and make their way to Emmaus?
Because Emmaus is an escape mechanism. They felt an atmosphere of defeat and failure in Jerusalem,
where their glorious idea of a Kingdom had seemingly exploded. The Messiah they followed was dead.
The handful of disciples was completely reduced, with all hope, on a natural basis, swept out from
under them. All the things they had desired were wrecked.
He may do this to one of us sometime, but do not despair. Anyone can receive a blessing and stand, but
few can take a defeat and live, because they do not know how. This is why the Lord is not able to trust
some of us with sufferings, trials, and disciplines. He cannot, because we have not been “tempered” for
it. He can trust the multitude with the blessing, but there are so few to whom He can say, “Will you
watch with me one hour?”
Think of the “villages” to which you have sent your heart, your mind, your spirit. Each one of us is
guilty of this. We try to project “our present hunger” into another field, lest it would cost us something
to have it fed properly. We would rather have a substitute. So we say, “I will send them over there,”
but Jesus had said, “Give ye them to eat.”
These disciples saw only their limitations and said, “We have here but five loaves and two fishes.” This
confession opened the door for all that follows. Jesus responded, “Bring them hither to me.” This
required an absolute surrender of that which they had, and placed in the hands of the Lord.
He is saying, “Would you dare to surrender all that you have to me? Will you place it into my hands?”
This is a stripping that few will take. Five loaves, two fishes, the completion of all that we have, but
placed in His hands will become enough to satisfy every hunger and urge we could ever know.
One of the signs in maturity is that you have power in God to become detached. If there is still any
clinging, you are only going to wreck the thing. It will only be partial. He says, “Bring them to me.”
Well, here is one little fish – it doesn’t look very good, I think I ---- bring them to me. Well, this little
loaf looks kind of scorched – bring them to me. Please stop arguing with God.
If he says bring them, then, bring them. He says, I knew you before you were born, I know all of that,
but please bring them to me. That is all He wants.
I never knew what that meant, because it happen to me that I could not relate it. You see, I was not
born in Pentecost. I never had seen it or heard it. I never had seen a person baptized in the spirit. The
Lord has ways of isolating you when He is after you. Before He could fill me with His Spirit, before He
could fill me with His marvelous spirit of life, He put me through a most grueling, terrifying
consecration. He was preparing the soil. He has to have something to baptize. He shut me up until
about three or four o’clock in the morning on the floor. I had not ever seen anyone get on their knees
and lay down and pray. Methodists don’t do that way. When the spirit moves on you, it doesn’t matter
about the posture of your body. You can be flat on your back, or on your stomach, or almost
anywhere when prayer goes on in you. Here was this awful groaning for God. I was saved, but God
wanted to do something in me before He could really fill me with His spirit. You know what it was? It
was just this. I never related it before in my life. I had experiences, but I didn’t know it had any
relation to anything in here.
All through that evening, until two or three o’clock in the morning, down on my face before the Lord, I
was conscience of the Lord, but I never knew He could talk to people, because I never had been taught
that. I didn’t know about that, but I knew if there was ever anything real in my life, here was the
presence of God dealing with my immortal spirit.
When He began to deal with me, it was not concerning sins and failures and all of that, that had been
taken care of. I was a Christian already. He was beginning with all of the legitimate issues in living. All
of the right things, all of the correct things, all of the good things to which I might become attached in
some way. Family. During that period of those three, four or five hours that I was on the floor before
God, I buried every one of my relatives. I wept all my tears for them right then. My heart was broken
for them right then. I never had any of that anguish when I let loved ones go, because that has all been
taken care of. My sister was the first one to go in the family, and I was way off in college away from
home. I felt God so wonderful. When they said, would you like to see Mable, I said, yes. And the first
thing I did was to stand and sing. Wasn’t that strange? I just couldn’t help it, I just sang to the Lord.
There was such a sense of victory and triumph. The undertaker came and took me by the shoulder.
He thought that I was demented and took me out of the room. Brother, if you only knew what I know
now, you would not even touch me. Well, he did that; all these legitimate things.
I like schooling. I was born from folks that like schooling. My father was a teacher, my grandfather,
we all liked intellectual things. He said, no, that is not it. You are to surrender that. I surrendered that
night things in scholarship that today Pentecost is all yelling to get. I can’t understand it. Maybe our
patterns are different, but when God dealt with me to separate me unto Himself, to fill me with His
Spirit, He swept all that thing completely out of my life. Now I have that, I don’t belittle it. I like my
degrees, but you have never seen me use a degree have you? You never will. God does not want any of
that in my life. Not at all. Not long ago, I came across a little box of some of my college credits, and
here were all my credentials. I could have two degrees easily now. No, He says, you don’t need them
now. I am going to do something in you where that will never figure at all. I don’t want you mixed up
with it at all.
When I find our people going into that sort of thing, I don’t understand it. I am not depreciating
education. I think it is splendid if you can have it and keep it where it belongs. If it is going to become
a substitute in any way of a build up where God is dropped out, then I say, don’t do that. I am afraid of
the results of it.
He took my social life. Now you would like to get into my romances wouldn’t you? Well never mind
dear. I don’t parade those in public. I am very human and very normal and very natural. I have my
friends too. I would have liked to had a home, in the natural. He says, you are not going to be in the
natural. You surrender all this to me. Let it be detached. I don’t want any of these things in you. I
want you!
For at least an hour or more, the only thing He said to me as I lay there on the floor was< “Would you
fall into my hand? All I want is to possess you. Will you fall into my hand? All I want is to possess
you.” He never asked me preach or to teach or to sing or dance or pray. He never asked me any of
that. Those things have come automatically as a result of something, but it was never an issue. No. I
want you!
If God could actually get a hold of people in this room, this morning, without some of this religious
collateral, how many know that we would not need to pray for revival; it would be present here. It
would be a beautiful spiritual revival.
So, you see, that preceded even my baptism. What was He doing? He was doing this – he was
detaching me from any village experience. You need not go to any village. You bring life, bread, fish,
the potential; you bring that to me and let it get into my hand, that is all I ask of you. Will you let me
possess it? When I surrendered, I felt that this is the most real thing I have ever found though it is
wrecking my life and absolutely taking every thing I have ever thought completely out. I was as empty
as a barrel with both ends knocked out of it. Now what?
So the next night, He filled me with His Spirit. Now, he had something not work on. So, since then, I
have never dared, I don’t want to, if you really get reality, there is not temptation to go into anything
else. You just don’t want it. You have seen reality. Let me take this provision. What did He do with
it? He accepts it, He blesses it, He breaks it, that is a terrific thing, and He broke it off in pieces.
Well, who wants their life wrecked? Nobody! Self-preservation is too present. But He says, I can’t
feed unless it is broken. And so, He breaks it all to pieces. And then, on top of it, He passes it out to a
multitude. Isn’t that something?
Now, get this. When He stared to feed those people, He asks for this consecration and surrender which
is absolute and eternal and the life is put into His hand. How many of you know He uses the identical
bread and fish which you give, but it is no longer living under the power and impulse of this creature. It
is bread and fish which is put into the hands of God. It is a consecrated bit of bread and fish. The
crying multitudes within you; these urges and desires, fundamental, right drives, clear, beautiful and in
the spirit, some of them are tremendous, that radiates from this bread and fish. He will bring a
satisfaction in your heart and life if your heart and life can be consecrated, separated and filled with the
spirit of God, he can bring the satisfaction out of the very elements that you have. He did it here. He
did not introduce any other element. He used the identical elements, but they were blessed of God.
They had become holy. They were sacred. They were the medium He is going to use, but they are in
His hand.
I don’t tell about the tragedies. That is no ones’ business. You don’t publish your suffering. You mask
it. Is that an exception? No. It is scriptural. If you fast, if you are denied, if you are compelled to go
without, if God calls from you a denial, that is fasting. If you soul is exposed to fasting, I am not talking
about going without bread and butter, if you are called upon to fast, to be denied, to go without,
legitimate food, proper food, good food, not sin, good food, God ordained food, let you fasting be one
here, when you come out, anoint your face with oil – how many of you see the mask? You don’t come
out and say I’m almost killed. No, you come out and say isn’t the Lord wonderful!
People say, how do you get things from God? How do you know about the Lord? Well, you see, I come
out, but you don’t see me at home. Do you think I get things to peddle out to you by sitting in a little
trance? You have to learn to wear a mask. It is a holy mask. It is a legitimate mask.
He didn’t introduce any other element at all. He used the same bread and fish. He will use what you
offer to Him. God can so work in your heart and life that these things that are in you will be satisfied in
there by the very thing that you offer.
“Provision” He took you and He took me and He wrecked our lives. He just wrecks them. Do I cry
about it? Oh, no, I have something to sing about brother which I would not exchange for all the world.
This plowing business – I want to read you a poem God gave me one time when He had been plowing
me. You see, we have to be plowed to get anywhere. I was brought up in the country and I walked in
the furrow from plowing more than once with my bare feet. I went bare footed so we could have shoes
in the winter.
Dave was our man who helped dad on the farm, and he used to plow and I thought it was so wonderful
to walk along behind him in that furrow. How many can smell fresh ground when it is plowed! Oh God
bless you, I love every one of you! How many know we have a little secret that a lot of folks in the city
don’t have? Sure, that lovely fresh soil that turns to the sun. Well, now I had walked in those furrows
many times, and I had noticed the soil that he would have to plow. Sometimes we have what we call
running black berries. How many know there are prickles on them? Sometimes the plow would have
to go right through a patch of that old rambling, running blackberries, and oh my, did they ever sting.
And of course, we were awful careful walking in bare feet.
In order to gain any harvest in you and me, how many know you will have to be plowed? That is hard.
Well there is all kinds of plowing? How many know what plow sharing is? You know the point? You
have one for light plowing and one for garden plowing? How many know when one of those strikes
you? People are plowed like that. They have a surface plowing, a semi-depth and a deep plowing.
He has plowed me, I knew because I had been in it. So He gave me this one day. When I write, I don’t
sit down to study, but the Spirit of God releases me. I wrote this out in just a few minutes.
God’s plow struck deep within my heart
And plowed long furrows one by one
Through fallow ground so hard and firm
From early morn till set of sun
The plowshare was eternal truth
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