Mark 11: 3 “If anyone asks you, ‘ Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘ The Lord needs it and will send it back to you shortly.”

I find this account fascinating. Jesus just has an expectation that what he needs to fulfil his ministry will be provided by the Father from people around him. God obviously reveals to him where to go to get the colt so Jesus sends off a few of the boys to grab it, and he tells them if someone asks you just tell them the Lord needs it and it will be returned to you shortly. People of this culture and time must have had a better handle on how God and human beings work and interact together! Think about it, the disciples just rock up and begin to take the colt- do you know what that is called in our day & age?- stealing! Then when they get challenged they just say the Lord has need of it and the people let them go with the colt. Imagine’ if you will, me going next door to my neighbours house and starting to push his new car out of the garage. He asks me what I am doing? So I tell him the Lord is in need of the car for a season and he will return it to you shortly. What kind of a reply do you think I would be likely to get? How about something like this. I don’t think so – You go and tell the Lord if he wants a car, he can go out and buy a car like everybody else! At that point in time either I could persist in my endeavours to take the car, get in a brawl and after a short period of time take myself to jail!

It must have been a very different day.

Either this was a believer who was sympathetic to the cause so he was honoured to have his colt used and borrowed for such a noble task. Or it was unbeliever who still understood about how God and humans work together. In the book of Acts it tells us that in a genuine bible community people never regarded anything as their own so everything was available for the Lord’s plans and purposes. We really still are a long way off understanding how the relationship between us, our possession and our availability to God is outworked.

Prayer: Lord help me to always remember you own everything, and at any time you can make the request for it to be released for kingdom purposes.