When the Cost is Too Great

“The cost is too great.” Have you ever thought those words? I have. Maybe it’s an actual financial cost, but it could also be a cost to your time, energy, or comfort. Seemingly impossible tasks or seasons of suffering can summon these words to our minds and mouths. It’s too much. I can’t do it. Is God really asking this of me?

It was Philip’s response to Jesus. Philip was one of the twelve apostles who sat at the feet of Jesus watching his ways. In John 6:5 Jesus asked Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” The feeding of the 5,000 is a miracle documented in all four gospels putting on display Christ’s ability to miraculously multiply a small contribution of fish and loaves into an overflowing abundance of provision.

Last month I read this story to my son before bed, and this sentence, “The cost is too much” leapt off the page and struck me in a way I’ve never before considered.

Hours earlier I learned that my grandmother would likely not survive through the night. At the age of 93, she welcomed the idea of going home to Jesus. I reflected on her life while I simultaneously grieved her absence in this world and celebrated her arrival at her heavenly home. Her life was one of great service and sacrifice to those around her.

She was a child during the depression, a wife to a WWII veteran, a mother to three, and a hard worker at her day job and within her church. I never asked her if she felt at times that God was calling her to do more than she could muster. Even though she was a woman of great faith, I wonder if she ever felt like Philip, looking at the task before her with disbelief in her ability to carry it out.

grandmother and lisa — Lisa, age 4, with grandmother, Pauline

Reframing the Cost

My resources are limited. Every day I make trade-offs. The way I use my 24 hours and caffeine-supplemented energy show my priorities, and yes, sometimes that does include naps and a little too much Netflix.

Isn’t it good that God’s ways are not our ways, and His resources know no limits?

God knows our limitations, and yet He asks us to use what we have. We can offer our scraps as an act of worship even while wishing we had a three-course gourmet meal to lay at his feet.

"God knows our limitations, and yet He asks us to use what we have. We can offer our scraps as an act of worship even while wishing we had a three-course gourmet meal to lay at his feet." Share on X

After asking Philip where to find all this food, John 6:6 tells us, “[Jesus] already had in mind what he was going to do.”

Before God asks us to walk through the scarcity or the storm, He knows what He is going to accomplish. Before we go into a mental tailspin figuring out the “how” and the “why” and the “what in the world,” He knows what He is going to accomplish.

We can trust in His provision by remembering his record of past faithfulness in our own life and in the lives of others.

Looking Around

Philip was not by himself when he felt Jesus put the weight of feeding thousands of people on his shoulders. He felt the task impossible, but in the next breath, his fellow apostle Andrew was offering input, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish.” (John 6:9)

Who in your life can help carry the burden? God created us for community, for showing up on someone’s doorstep with encouragement, for picking up the phone to tell someone you need help.

I find it interesting that Jesus did not directly respond to Philip’s statement about the cost. He could have sat down with Philip and hashed out the details and pennies required. He could have sympathized with Philip’s exasperation at the impossibility of feeding all these people.

Instead, within a few verses, Jesus is accomplishing the impossible and telling the crowd to sit down. He returned focus to the problem of serving those who had an immediate need. As a result, Philip didn’t sit long in the midst of his puzzlement. He acted, serving those in front of him as best he could, watching Jesus multiply the provision. With Philip’s focus shifted away from the cost, it simply vanished.

I know I can think of times when I slowly and begrudgingly moved my eyes from my problem to Jesus, and in doing so the problem shifted shape, sometimes disappearing, and sometimes dimming in its significance.

Trust the Multiplication

God is able to do more than we ever dreamed or imagined, and when we faithfully trust Him we get to participate in His kingdom work.

Some of our problems have practical solutions worked out with goals and checklists. But those that seem to demand far more than we have to offer require a solution not solved by human hands.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
-Isaiah 55:8-9

The Gain is Greater Than the Cost

My grandmother could tear up and down a piano like nobody I’ve known since. One of the songs she would often play was titled “Heaven’s Road.” This is the chorus:

Walking down heaven’s road
Gonna lay down that heavy load
Jesus said He’d walk along with me
Praise God, glory hallelujah!
I’m singing all the way
Got sunshine in every day
Won’t you come along and join me
On that heaven’s road?

While I never had this conversation with my grandmother about the cost of following Jesus, I have a suspicion she would tell me that the cost is as nothing in light of knowing him and walking with him.