Sometimes we humans can really complicate matters of faith. In the gospel of John, Jesus gives the people a very simple and direct answer when they ask Him how they too can “do” the works of God. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 on a few fishes and some bread; a feat any common man would like to achieve! Imagine not having to toil by the sweat of your brow to produce enough food to feed thousands? But Jesus corrected the people by essentially saying, don’t seek after the bread that perishes, fulfilling you temporarily; but seek after Me, because truthfully, I am the bread of life and if you will believe in Me, you can do the works you see here and more:

John 6:28-29 Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”

It’s such a simple thing to believe in the power of Jesus and apply it to our own situations, yet we human beings like to muck everything up with long lists of requirements that we need to achieve before we can have what we will; but Jesus never said we would have to meet long lists of requirements to receive from Him. On the contrary, He rebuked the religious leaders of His day for placing those kinds of burdens on the people they were supposed to be serving. The message of Jesus was and still is quite simple; believe in Him and have what you will, even the ability to turn a few fish into a meal for thousands; but He inserts a caveat: never forget while we may carry that kind of power–that kind of faith–that ‘belief in Him’ has to be more important to us than those things we produce when we ‘do’ the works of God.