Out of my brokenness, I realized that it was time to let God step into the ruins of my life. Personally, I thought it would be awesome to have some of that supernatural strength, so I said to the Lord, “Go for it!” So I slowly started to let God have His way, but it didn’t take long before I became impatient with the process and tried to wrestle some control back. Taking inventory of my current state of affairs, I hit the pause button and thought to myself, “Wait a second!” I had lost my hope, my family, my house, many friends, my financial resources, and almost my job, and I kept crucifying myself with the regrets of my past and the fear of my future. Furthermore, I had lived in a basement, in a dreadfully hot and small apartment, and now found my existence within a single room in a friend’s home with the remainder of my stuff. I just wasn’t feeling the supernatural strength, so I got on my knees and began to have a chat with the Lord, during which I basically asked Him why this was all happening, and He simply replied, “Because I love you!” I have to be completely honest and transparent with you: I was wondering if He could love me a little less, because this was not fun!

I could not see the picture that God was painting.

Here is where the lesson in fuzzy math began for me.

This was an uncomfortable part of my life where I was loosing everything I knew and had. Spending most of my life in the pursuit of “addition” and “multiplication” for myself, I couldn’t wrap myself around the idea that loosing everything was somehow adding value to my life. Notice how none of this seemed to effect God? For me, it just didn’t add up!

Funny thing is that God had me right where He needed me to be to get a first hand glimpse of how the economy of His math works — meaning what He can do with what we have. There is a well told story in the Bible where God demonstrates the economics of His math. You know, when the multitudes were fed with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Here is that story told via the Message translation of John 6:1-13. Emphasis added is mine.

After this, Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee (some call it Tiberias). A huge crowd followed him, attracted by the miracles they had seen him do among the sick. When he got to the other side, he climbed a hill and sat down, surrounded by his disciples. It was nearly time for the Feast of Passover, kept annually by the Jews.

When Jesus looked out and saw that a large crowd had arrived, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy bread to feed these people?” He said this to stretch Philip’s faith. He already knew what he was going to do.

Philip answered, “Two hundred silver pieces wouldn’t be enough to buy bread for each person to get a piece. Jesus seriously? Are you kidding me?”

One of the disciples—it was Andrew, brother to Simon Peter—said, “There’s a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But that’s a drop in the bucket for a crowd like this.”

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” There was a nice carpet of green grass in this place. They sat down, about five thousand of them. Then Jesus took the bread and, having given thanks, gave it to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish. All ate as much as they wanted.

When the people had eaten their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the leftovers so nothing is wasted.” They went to work and filled twelve large baskets with leftovers from the five barley loaves…

What can we take away from this story from scripture? First, the economics of God’s math simply doesn’t make sense to us! Second, there is something else going on here that doesn’t add up at first glance. There’s some fuzzy math going on here, but in typical God fashion everything after the equal sign is crazy amazing.

We have always been taught that it was Jesus who fed the people, but look closer at this story. What does Jesus do? We has the disciples feed them. He brings them in close to teach them how to expand their love, care and compassion for others. Think about it…would the disciples have learned the lesson if Jesus did this all by Himself? Of course not! What’s so cool about God is that He is willing to slow down His process so we can be experience life with Him. Some crazy calculus going on here, isn’t there?

When you sign up for this Jesus thing you will discover that “you” are “you”, the person He created. You’re a new “you”, but you are still “you”. God doesn’t need someone other than you, He needs you. He wants to take you, with all the brokenness and messiness of who you are and He wants to show how you were always 5 loaves and 2 fish away from feeding the multitude and serving others.

There has always been more in you then you can bring to life on your own, but in order to experience this we have to give everything we are and everything we have to Jesus. What we give to Him; He will bless and in return we will have the unexplainable blessing, presence, power and wonder of God expressing Himself through us!

If you want to do more you have to care and love more. If you want God to give you everything, you have to give Him everything. If you want God to trust you more, than you have to trust God more.

We worry so much that if we give up our stuff and give it all to God that somehow we will come out short. Notice that there was an abundance of bread and fish left over when everything was given to God? The disciples ended up with more than they began with.

When you give everything you have to God to serve people, what you gave will be returned to you over and over again. Imagine being used by God to meet the needs of the world!

Time has passed since walking through that tough time in my life, and although life still has its challenges I now find it easier inviting the Lord into the details of my life as I am learning to trust Him more. I gave God everything I had left and He somehow multiplied it tenfold. Taking the time to include me in His process…He is restoring my heart, expanding my compassion for serving others, my trust in Him, my kids are doing well (they got their dad back) and I am finding it easier to live in His peace. Oh, and whats really cool…He blessed me with a new home.

Again, God’s math doesn’t add up!