John 6 is a long chapter featuring an extraordinary day: a day when Jesus learned of the death of John the Baptist, taught crowds of people for hours, fed thousands of people miraculously and then walked on water to reach His disciples in a boat on Lake Galilee. If ever there was a day which demonstrated the secret to Jesus’s power, this was it.
Jesus did not perform miracles because He was God. He did miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit to show us that this is how life can be when we are connected to God Himself. After He had fed the five thousand, He sent His disciples off, dismissed the crowd and then went to spend time in prayer, alone, with God. Prayer was the very foundation of His life and He knew that He could not give out constantly without being filled again by God’s Spirit. This is a very important spiritual principle in life. Ministry is about service and giving, but we can only serve and give from the overflow of our relationship with God. We have to take time out to be alone with God, just as Jesus did. We need to seek God’s face, in the privacy of that one-to-one relationship. If we do not, we will have nothing to give and will not be able to serve people effectively, for our service must be based on the love of God which He pours into us and must be rooted in the very nature of God.
The Gospels show us Jesus rising early in the morning and going to pray outdoors (Mark 1:35) or, as in this case, praying at night. It doesn’t really matter where we pray. It doesn’t really matter when we pray. What matters is that we are praying, that we are seeking God for His presence and power in our lives. Some of us are morning larks, and for us, praying very early in the morning is our fuel. Others are night owls and are rejuvenated by prayer late at night. Some of us will have a quiet place in the house for prayer; others will enjoy praying while walking the dog or being outdoors. It doesn’t matter which we find suits our personalities best. What matters is that we all need time alone with God, without distractions, without other people, time spent simply enjoying His presence and pouring out our hearts to Him.
This time alone with God becomes the fuel for all we need. The good news for us, as Peter discovered when he walked on the water like Jesus, is that through reliance on the Father and dependence on the Holy Spirit, we too can be used by God to do miracles. Jesus did not do miracles because He was God. He did miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit to show us that this is how life can be when we are connected to God Himself. We often focus on the fact that Peter sank when he took his eyes of Jesus, but the truth is that he experienced the same miracle that Jesus did when his eyes were on Jesus. As we rely on God, as we remain connected and plugged in to Him, we can do the miracles He did. ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.’ (John 14:12)
