My dear friends, Let’s take a short trip through Scriptures today. In Mark 6:30-43 you can read the account of the feeding of the five thousand. While the feat itself is a miracle, it holds principles for our benefit. We are confronted daily with challenges as individuals and as a nation and I will share with you today five things you and I could take advantage of as we go about our day and lives to give a perspective that helps us make rain in our own way.

Let’s set the tone by recounting from verse 37.

37 But He answered and said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

And they said to Him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?”

38 But He said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.”

And when they found out they said, “Five, and two fish.”

39 Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in ranks, in hundreds and in fifties. 41 And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and the two fish He divided among them all. 42 So they all ate and were filled. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of fragments and of the fish.

So here are the four lessons I picked from the account of the feeding of the five thousand,

1. ASSESS - Take a moment to look at the challenges that confront you. Be it finances, your education, family management or running a government, your first task will be to be able to identify what confronts us. To confront a challenge you need to collect data about the situation. For a nation to even attempt to adequately administer resources to the benefit of it’s citizen, it must gather data on what’s needed and what’s available to meet the need. In our personal lives, we need to collect enough data to make sense of the now and to pain the future well in our minds.

2. ARRANGE - Group your challenges and tasks into three categories. High, Medium and Low priority. This requires deciding what is needed for immediate survival, what can be worked on for the long term benefit. Your ability to arrange you challenges or tasks will be depended on how well you group them, and same will be dependent on how much accurate data you have collected on the situation.

3. APPLY - Now that you know where you are, what you need and what resources you have to achieve your goals; now that you know what’s priority and what’s not, it’s important to set your vision in motion by applying the right resources to the right challenge at the right time. As leaders in our various spheres of life, we must show discipline to apply the resources available to us to the right challenges.

4. ACCOUNT - While it is good to review what you have achieved at the end of task, it’s critical to review your results as you go along. Constant review provides you data to measure whether you had the right data at the start and whether you are approaching it correctly.

My dear friends, these are the lessons I have learnt from the feeding of the five thousand. I am confident that you have learnt a thing or two as well. You have the resources to make things work better for you, your family and your country. Approach you day and you life well and you will be successful.

I am Nhyira Addo, The Rainmaker and I resolve to feed my five thousand!

Shalom!