What We Need: Mark 6:8-9

You’ll be okay.  These words are easy to speak without meaning.  They frequently come off as a platitude even if genuinely spoken!  Yet, these words can be some of the most difficult words to believe.  In the moment of trial, it can be hard to focus on the light of hope. As life comes crashing down, it can be hard to believe it’ll be okay.

Jesus commands the disciples to take only a staff when they go out.  They don’t need food.  They don’t need extra clothing.  They don’t even need money.  They need a staff and they need a partner.

Jesus is making a blunt point here.  What His disciples need in ministry is support.  The staff will give them physical support as they walk, defend themselves from scavengers or would-be thieves, and a help should they stumble.  Their partner supports as well through encouragement, correction, growth, and general companionship.  The hidden partner in all of this is God, who supports the disciples by empowering them with authority and guiding them into open doors in the lives of other people.

This principle is true about the whole corpus of life and not just ministry.  To get through life, what we really need is support.  When we get tired, we need a place to rest.  When we get tired, we need people to encourage us and help us up.  When we get tired, we need God to empower us with authority and reveal the next set of open door to encourage us onward.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I like to make life much more complicated.  I get overly focused on my need for nice food.  I get overly focused on the tools I want in my woodshop.  I get overly focused on my need for a good-sized bank account or retirement accounts that will carry me through retirement.  I get overly focused on intangible things like my reputation or my status in my community. 

Don’t get me wrong.  We need food to survive.  We need a good reputation at our job and in our communities if we want to continue to make money and provide for family.  We need to pay our bills and save money without frivolously spending it all as soon as it comes in.  We need equipment for hobbies even if all we do is thoughtfully make things for other people.  It would be wrong to hear this passage and ignore that those things are a part of our life.

Jesus’ point, though, is to focus His disciples on what gets them through.  So long as there is a place to go when I get tired, so long as there are partners in life to encourage me to use the gifts God has given me and to encourage me to grow when needed, and so long as God is there to empower me and point me to open doors then I’ll be okay.

You’ll be okay, too.