How to Turn Your Nothing Into a Blessing

“How to Turn Your Nothing Into a Blessing”
by Pastor Andreas Nielsen
January 26, 2020

But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!” They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves and two fish.” He said, “Bring them here to Me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and he took the five loaves and the two fish and, looking up toward heaven, he blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people, and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up twelve full baskets of the leftover broken pieces. There were about 5,000 men who ate, besides women and children.

• Matthew 14:16-21, AMP

Even in nothing, there is a blessing for those who dare to trust God. Things may not go according to plan, or in the way that you may think, but at the end of the day, God is always faithful. Your nothing is all that you need for God to turn it into a blessing that you could not see coming. Trust in God’s faithfulness. 

1. Lift It Up

In Matthew 14, Jesus had been teaching the crowd all day. The Bible says that there were about five thousand men there, which did not include women and children. So, with women and children, there easily could have been fifteen thousand people. The disciples came to Jesus and said that they had nothing except for five loaves and two fish. 

The disciples say that they had “nothing”, then they say, “except.” In many cases, we go to God, and we juggle a “nothing” and an “except”. The disciples thought that the five loaves and two fish were nothing. But Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, lifted it up to the Father and asked him to bless it. What the disciples called nothing, God was able to turn into abundance. The disciples ended up collecting twelve baskets of overflow. 

On Earth, many experience lack, hurt, and all kinds of hardship. But, in heaven, these things do not exist. So, Jesus takes what is not enough down here, and he lifts it up to God and says, “God, I need you to bless this nothing, so that it can turn out to be everything that people need.” We must learn to take our nothing and lift it up to God. 

2. Cast it Out

In Luke 5, the disciples had been out fishing all night, and Jesus comes to them and asks how things are going. “Simon replied, ‘Master, we worked hard all night [to the point of exhaustion] and caught nothing [in our nets], but at Your word I will [do as you say and] lower the nets [again].’ When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets were [at the point of] breaking; so they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.” (Luke 5:5-7, AMP).

The fishermen, Peter and Simon, took fishing advice from a carpenter, Jesus. They gave it one more try because Jesus said to, and they cast their nets one more time. The Bible says that they caught so many fish, they had to get other people to help them. God had a plan for your life before you were born. You must learn to cast your net one more time and not stop because it did not work the first or second time. 

3. Pour it Out

In 2 Kings, there is a widow whose husband left her and their two sons deeply in debt. The widow wants the Prophet Elisha to help her (2 Kings 4:2-3, NIV). The widow comes to God through Elisha, and God, through Elisha, immediately asks her for a seed. God can do everything exceedingly, abundantly, and beyond, but he is going to ask us to do something too. God needs something to work with-- our faith, trust, and submission. 

If we go before God, and God asks us what we have, we should not tell him “nothing” and then follow up with “except”. God calls us to great things. In many cases, we look at what is in our heart, then we look at what is in our hands. What is in our hands often looks insignificant compared to what is in our hearts. 

God never called us to fulfill our own destiny or dream; he calls us to use what’s in our hands and trust him so that he can turn what’s in our hands into the fulfillment of our calling. If what we have in our hands is not enough for harvest, we have to turn it into a seed. We have to let it go and allow God to bless it. 

Here, the widow could have locked herself in and died with her two sons. Instead, she collected the empty jars and poured the oil. It became so much that she was able to pay off her debt and live off the rest. God did a miracle because she released that oil. 

4. Lift Our Eyes and Look Again

In 1 Kings 18:41-45, Ahab is in the middle of a drought. But, all of a sudden Elijah hears something in his spirit, and he tells Ahab, “for there is a sound of heavy rain.” We have to learn to hear it before we see it. In the spiritual realm, we hear it before we see it. We are not called to walk by sight, we are called to walk by faith. There is always something to hear from God. 

The next time we need a miracle, let’s do an inventory of what is in our hand that we can release to God. This will allow God to supernaturally fulfill the promise that he has put in our lives.

Reflection/Discussion Questions:

1. What is your “nothing, except” that you need to lift up to God? What has God put in your hand?

2. Is there something that you need to try again that you have previously given up on trying?

3. Discuss what blessing you are believing God to perform in your life.

4. Praise God for what he is going to do in your life--have faith for the blessing before you see it.