Cast Your Net

“A prayer that’s seeking passion should not be about manufacturing a better feeling or jostling up a better mood. It’s simply about holding out your open hands—in thanksgiving first, in gratitude for God’s faithfulness and His goodness and His assured, accomplished victory over the enemy. Then asking. Asking for what He already wants to give you. Then waiting (expecting) to receive the promise of newness and freshness from His Spirit as you go along, more each day—praying until, as the prophet Hosea said . . . He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. (Hos. 6:3)”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

That’s hysterical.
Well, hi y’all.
I’m so glad to have an opportunity to be with you.
Um, having been able to be here during the women’s conference and to be a part of that and now to be able to share with you during a part of your Sunday service is really, is a huge treat for me.
Um I said to the women that I appreciate you letting me kind of hobble up on your platform.
Um This is what happens when you try to take on your growing boys in a rousing game of basketball.
And so my husband and I had a three on three game with the boys and we invited a couple of friends over and the big boys and we had this game and I used to not have to bring my, a game when I played the boys.
You know, I had to let them win.
But the problem now is that I brought my, a game and they still won.
They beat me very badly and I walked away with what we thought may have been a broken foot, but just some pulled tendons.
And I was glad because I didn’t want to be, I didn’t want to miss this.
I didn’t want to miss being a part of this church.
You need to know that the work that happens in and through this church, through the leadership of this church.
Um It, it precedes you. We, we hear about what God does through your church, this area and so to have an opportunity to serve you is our privilege.
So I bring you greetings from my home church in Dallas, Texas where my daddy is.
My pastor has been since I was one year old when they started the church where we still are um members and love serving God there.
And I’m excited to share God’s word with you this morning because I believe in the power of God’s word.
Anybody believe in the power of God’s word. Amen. It is not just a book.
Um you know, with ink on a page, the Holy Spirit causes it to come alive to us, it’s spirit and life to us.
And so let’s pray and see what it is that he has to say to us today.
Lord, I thank you so much for the privilege of hearing you speak.
Thank you God that every single time we come to the scriptures, we can expect to feel the warm breath of God brushing across our cheeks as you speak a present tense word into our lives.
So God, I’m praying that you would do what only you can at this second service on this wet cold Sunday in Austin.

Would you take this one little message?
Would you divide it a couple of 1000 different ways so that everybody under the sound of my voice will hear a direct personal word straight from the mouth of God.
Lord. We are glad each other is here, but we didn’t come to see each other.
We came to see you so speak. Lord, we are your servants and we are listening in Jesus name.
Everybody agreed and said, Amen. Amen. Amen.
As I mentioned, Jerry and I have three boys together.
Jackson is 12, then little Jerry Junior is 10 and Jude is our surprise six year old and my full time job, you should know that my normal regular life job is that I am a stay at home mom.
Really. I count it as my privilege to raise these boys who will grow up to be warrior men for Christ or I will spank them.
So my life is very much like like anybody who is a parent, you know how it is when you are maybe in the summer months when you’re at home with your Children and they’re not going to school during the day.
They’re at home all day long, 24 7. You know how it is every day.
The goal of your life is to try to figure out how do I get to bed time more quickly today than I did yesterday?
So you fill the hour activities and errands and things to just keep life full when your Children are younger and when they’re at home.
And so I do the same thing. We play basketball together, we run errands together.
We do lots of different things and one of the things we enjoy doing is going fishing.
I like taking the boys fishing. We live in a fairly rural part of the Dallas Fort Worth area.
Um, we like it that way.
It’s quiet enough, uh lazy enough out in this little uh south of downtown Dallas.
Um Just, just so that we feel like we’re worlds away. We can get to the city really, really easily.
But our little two lane road is a little lazy and sleepy and quiet and got horses over there on that property and somebody over there has got some cows and our neighbor across the street has a pond.
Rachel is one of my best friends and she and Tom live across the street and they let us come and use their pond.
We love going fishing on this pond every now and then when the weather is nice, the boys and I will grab some fishing poles that I bought on sale at the local Super Walmart around the corner.
A tackle box that I also bought on sale at the local super A Super Walmart.
I have several things in, in the tackle box.
Um Not the least of which is some gloves because y’all know, I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t gonna touch no fish.
So I send one of the boys to the refrigerator to grab whatever hot dog meat is left over from the day, from the week.
That’s going to be our bait.
We put it inside the tackle box and we go across the street and we fish.
We enjoy fishing on this pond because when we put the line in the water in this particular corner that’s underneath some trees.
We really love this one little cove at the pond because in this particular corner, it’s like a bunch of, of fish.
A school of small fish always seem to be right there in that particular corner.
So when we put the line into the water almost immediately, we feel some tugging and then within 3 to 5 minutes, likely we’re going to have a fish.
It’s going to be a small, you know, sun perch or something like that.
But we’re gonna, we’re gonna catch a fish within five minutes. So then we throw it back.
We do it again in five minutes. We have a fish.
If we stay there at the pond for an hour or more, we’re going to catch 10, 15 fish maybe in the course of that time.
My boys love fishing like that instant gratification.
It’s the kind of fishing a six year old needs in his life. So we do it fairly frequently.
I thought that since we like fishing so much at home that the boys must enjoy fishing just in general.
So there’s a Christian camp that we go to pretty much every year.
Actually, since I was five years old, we’ve gone, we’ve gone to this camp. So now we take our family.
They have a big lake there and the boys got up early one morning, uh, this particular week we were at camp.
Um, they got up early one morning. It was too early for the dining hall to be open for breakfast.
So I said, well, boys, the lake is down by the dining hall.
So why don’t we go down to that lake and fish this morning until it’s time for breakfast?
So we got those same fishing poles that we brought along with us, that same tackle box.
We walked down to the lake and we fished and fished and fished.
That painful kind of fishing.
Not only was there not a tug on the line, but, but we certainly didn’t even see anything underneath the top of the water.
I mean, we just, we just had nothing going on. We couldn’t seem to catch anything.
And I was getting intense and intentional about figuring out what was going on and figuring out a way to catch a fish when I looked up and it occurred to me that my boys weren’t even there anymore.
They had run off into a nearby field and they were playing football with each other, I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you where you’re doing something for your kids and then you realize your kids aren’t even there anymore.
I yelled over to the boys and I said, boys, I am not out here early in the morning for my health.
I came out here for y’all get over here and fish with me again.
One of them yelled back to me and said, mom, we don’t like fishing like that.
The other one yelled over to me.
One of one of the other, one of the older, older ones yelled over to me and said, yeah, mom, fishing is not supposed to be that hard.
So I sat there on the dock for a little while longer with the line in the water.
And I thought about what my second son had said. I giggled a bit thinking about it.
Fishing is not supposed to be that hard.
It occurs to me that in a group this size, there are some of you that know exactly how that feels because you’ve been fishing not necessarily out on a pond but in your own life and in mind, you know, we have all been commissioned and called to our own individual fishing expeditions.
It’s the marriage that you are in. It’s the ministry. God compelled you to start.
It is the business that is uh that, that you work at. It is the um parenting.
It is some area of your life.
Where you are investing some time, some energy, some effort, investing your passion, your creativity, your ambition, your ideas, you’re investing your skill, your, your talent, you are sowing in your life to this, this ministry or this business or this person.
And maybe you’re in the room on this Sunday morning.
And honestly, this Sunday meets you a little bit discouraged because you have been fishing and fishing.
But you feel like you keep coming up empty handed that the investment you are putting in to you just doesn’t seem to be equal to the benefit that you’re getting out.
And so after all, you’ve been giving to you, it just feels like a fishing trip that has gone bad.
You keep on putting in, but it doesn’t seem like you’re getting the same, same benefits out.
There is a fisherman in scripture who knows how it feels to have a fishing trip gone bad because he didn’t just fish for 45 minutes or an hour.
Like me and my boys, this brother that we’re going to read about, he fished all night long and caught absolutely nothing.
So if you have your Bible and you want to turn with me to, to Luke chapter five, please feel free to do that.
Or if you have your I phone your ipad, any manner of I, I just flip on over to Luke chapter five.
Um because that is where we meet a fisherman and through his story, I think we’re gonna find encouragement for day today for anyone who is in the room who’s ever been fishing and you felt like you’ve caught nothing.
Luke chapter five verse one says this.
Now it came about that while the multitude were pressing in around him that is Jesus.
And listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gene Lake of Jere is another term for the Sea of Galilee.
So he’s standing at the sea of Galilee verse two says, and he saw somebody say, he saw Jesus saw two boats, they were lying at the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and they were washing their nets.
Let’s just start right here with these two verses because we get to meet Simon, the fishermen in these two verses.
The exact same way that Jesus saw him on this occasion as he taught a crowd of people that were gathering around him.
Simon at this point has already fished all night long.
He is already discouraged, disappointed, irritated, upset because he has been pouring in all of his time and energy and effort all night long into this fishing trip, but he has yielded no benefits.
He has no fish. And when Jesus sees him on this occasion, Simon has already abandoned his boat.
He has already gotten out of that, which represents his discouragement and irritation.
He’s abandoned the boat and Luke wants to make sure that we get the whole picture of what this looked like.
When Jesus spotted Simon, he says in verse one, that there was a multitude of people that were gathering around Jesus.
He uses the word multitude specifically because he wants to make sure that you and I know it wasn’t a couple dozen people that were there that day.
Not even a couple of 100 there were likely two or three or maybe even more thousands of people that were gathered around Jesus on that occasion, everywhere Jesus went, when he showed up, there would be masses of people that would be gathered around him and listen.
Everybody didn’t believe that he was who he said he was. They weren’t quite sure about this whole Messiah business.
But what they did know beyond any reasonable doubt is that when this Jesus showed up, blind people could see what they knew for sure.
Is that deaf ears could hear that the lame could walk and that dead people were being raised.
What they knew was that every time this Jesus opened up his mouth and spoke, his words were dripping with an awe and an authority they had never heard before.
They had heard good teaching before from the Jewish leaders of the day, but they ain’t never heard nothing like this before.
And so everywhere Jesus showed up, the crowd came and they brought with them, their ailment and their needs, they brought with them, the discouraged and the downtrodden they bought with them, their, their health issues and their financial issues and they were trying to get as close as they possibly could to Jesus.
They wanted to be like the woman with the issue of blood.
Do you remember who forced her way through a crowded group of people?
She wanted to get close enough so that she could just reach out and touch the hem of his garment and when she did power left him and went to her.
And so Luke wants to make sure you understand that this was not a calm, casual sedate group of people that were sitting in their chairs just casually listening to the word of God like you are this morning.
Mm mm These people were with Jesus and they knew what he could do for them.
And so they were a clamoring chaotic group of people.
Verse one says where they were pressing in on Jesus, he was back up against the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee because people were coming at him from every direction vying for his attention trying to elbow their way through the crowd.
They were shouting out his name, they were trying to get his attention. There was chaos swirling all around.
I want you to just think of how you’d feel if Jesus were your Bible study teacher And in the midst of all of that chaos in the midst of all of these people vying for the attention of Jesus.
Verse two says, he saw one man who’d had a bad night fishing.
I’ve got good news for you today.
Shoreline, no matter how big the crowd gets, no matter how many other ailments.
God also is dealing with, no matter how many other prayers might be lifted up to him, no matter how many other needs.
He is also contending with. You need to know that we serve a God who sees you that your fishing trip has not been lost on God.
That your mama might not know and your dad might not know.
Your spouse might not be aware that when you turn off the lights at night and roll over that tears are rolling down your face because of that issue that you’re trying to figure out how you’re gonna make it through.
Your spouse might not be aware.
Your kids might not understand your parents might not have your back, but you need to know we serve a God who sees his eyes are on you.
Every single tear that you have cried.
Not one of those tears has been lost in the carpet fibers of your bedroom floor.
Every single one has been captured in the palm of Almighty God.
You need to know that that brother, every single bead of sweat that has formed on your brow.
As you’ve tried to figure out how to deal with that particular issue in your family or your business life.
You need to know that every single bead of sweat has been noticed by the hand of God he cares about and sees everything that concerns you.
He saw Simon and he sees you, you are not lost in the crowd.
It doesn’t matter how big shoreline gets, it doesn’t matter how many campuses you have to multiply to.
It doesn’t matter how many online viewers will view these services you need to know in the midst of it.
All God sees the collective, but he also sees the individual you are seen and known and cared for by God and never in a million years, should we consider this very fundamental aspect of our faith that God sees us?
Never, should we ever hear it or contemplate it?
And it roll off of our shoulders casually as if it is not something unbelievably profound that the God of the universe sees me That, that he can with all the stuff he has to do and he cares about my 24 hours.
He cares about what’s happening in my heart and in my mind and on my job and in my ministry and he cares about my family.
He cares about what breaks my heart.
He cares about the details of my life that a God that great would care about a woman or a man like us.
That’s something that should never be casual to us because He is God.
After all, he has stuff to do y’all.
He is the God that is the one that causes the sun to rise in the morning.
He is the one that makes sure it stays exactly in its place until it swaps places with the moon.
He is the one that makes sure that this earth that, that you and I can exist on.
He’s the one making sure that it is spinning on its axis at exactly the right speed as to make sure that human beings can sustain life.
Here, he is the one that will hang every single star in the sky and we know its number and we know its name and we will make sure that it is hanging exactly where it should until the morning rises.
He is the one that will make sure that Galaxies, Galaxies, that scientists have not even yet discovered that they exist.
He is the one that is making sure it’s hanging exactly where it ought to be and that God who is orchestrating the throes of the universe has his eyes on you.
There’s nothing casual about that, that He would see people like us And somebody today is here on this Sunday and you just need to be encouraged because you need to know that you may feel so unseen by the people in your sphere of influence.
But your God, listen, I drove up 35 from Dallas to tell you his eye is on you that he sees.
He’s aware. I was watching an episode of the Today Show.
I have for years as have many of you, I’m sure.
And this was years ago when Campbell Brown was one of their only kind of roving reporters.
And on this particular day she had been for the entire week during a series on Religions of the World.
The day I caught it. She was on the Buddhist faith.
So I kind of, I was folding clothes there on the edge of the bed and I’m distracted now because she’s talking about the Buddhist faith.
I was intrigued, I don’t know much about it.
So I was just listening And her camera crew had flown over to Hong Kong.
They were standing in front of one of the big statues of Buddha.
There’s one of, she was standing in front of one of five of them that is in and around the area.
She said, she said that they had to fly halfway across the world and then the statues are on the sides of mountains.
And so they had to climb up 268 stairs.
She and the camera crew with all their equipment to get up to the side of this mountain where the statue was.
And she began to chronicle what it means to Be a Buddhist. And she talked about the faith itself.
And then she began to mention how the goal of everyone who subscribes to the Buddhist faith is that they save up as much money as they can.
A lifetime’s worth. If they have to so that at some point they can make this pilgrimage so that they can come halfway around the world and go to one of these buddhist statues and then climb up the 2-300 stairs so that they can be near the statue and pray to their God.
And I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, folding clothes and all I can think to myself is if I had to save up all that money and fly halfway around the world and climb up 300 stairs to pray, I would never pray.
Can I get one witness in the house? I mean, ain’t nobody got time for that.
And while they’re climbing up to talk to their God little G, our God capital G, the one true God, he comes down to talk to us y’all.
He doesn’t have to, he chooses to condescend because he just loves us so much.
He sees Simon and, and I want you to know today that because he sees Simon in this scenario that we can also have full confidence that he also sees us.
And you know what’s so interesting is again, Luke is so descriptive, which is why I love the book of Luke so much because I like all the juicy details and he gives us lots of details.
He wants us to know that when Simon got out of that boat and Jesus sees him out of the boat that Simon and his fellow fishermen are doing something very specific.
They are washing their nets. Now, if we did not know that Simon was finished fishing, we’re not sure about that.
Now, we know for sure. I mean, he is out of the boat, that brother is washing his net.
He is throwing in the towel, it is over. He is done, fed up, finished.
And, and I’ve often heard Simon given a bad time a hard time when I’ve heard others maybe teach on this or read some materials about it.
They were concerned that maybe Simon has thrown, had thrown in the towel too quickly.
Maybe he should have hung in there, stayed on the boat instead of abandoning it and maybe thrown out that, that net one or two more times to just hang in there a little bit and try again.
But do you know that of all the people I have heard give Simon a hard time for getting off of the boat and for washing his net.
There is one person in this story who sees that Simon is out of the boat.
He sees that Simon is washing his net, but he doesn’t say one negative word to him and it’s Jesus.
Jesus sees exactly what’s going on here. He doesn’t say one.
There’s no, not one Skold, there’s no rebuke, there’s no negative word to Simon.
And I think this might be why because I want you to know if I had been fishing all night long and had caught nothing.
The last thing I’d be doing is washing my net. I’d be trying to sell my net on ebay.
I would not be trying to wash my net because if you are washing your net, yes, it means you’re done.
But it also implies that you have every intention of using it again.
Otherwise, why would you be caring for the net? Unless at some point, maybe not right now.
But you are planning on getting back on that boat and casting it out once again.
Do you know the reason why you come to church on a Sunday?
The reason why you gather sisterhood at the sisterhood meetings or once a year at the women’s conference, like we just had the reason why you come is because we don’t come in here in our perfection.
We drag our torn and tattered nets of our marriage and our ministry and our job and our broken hearts, we bring them into the building and it’s in this place that we wash our nets and there’s no rebuke.
There’s no negative reaction from our God.
When we’ve got to wash our nets, we abandon the boats of our regular lives, not to escape our reality just to come aside long enough to wash and tend our nets and then get back to the realities to which God has called us with our nets intact and prepared to go.
And please notice that the fisher men pearl were washing the net. Nets were so large and so big.
And then there were weights uh strategically positioned around the outside of the nets and that’s, that’s how it would sink and catch fish.
They would cast it out heavy as it was with the weights in place around the circumference and those weights would cause it to sink and drag down to the bottom of the sea floor.
It was a heavy net and the weights made it even heavier.
Fishing was never meant to be a one fisher person job. It was meant for several fishermen. Always in scripture.
You see fishermen, pearl fishing and washing nets because it was never meant to be a job for one person.
When you were born into the family of God, you need to know you were not born into an only child situation.
This is a family and the reason why church on TV is a good addition to your membership here but should never supplant or replace it is because when you’re not in this room, you are missing out on being connected with your fellow net washers.
You and I are supposed to have people who are around us who love us enough to get down on their hands and knees on our behalf and help us to tend the net of our marriage and the net of our ministry and the net of our broken hearts, the net in our parenting and then encourage us to take that net and get back onto the boats that God has called us to.
And so Simon’s washing his net and, and Jesus.
Jesus sees that happening and then verse three tells us what happens next.
He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, that’s Jesus. Jesus got into Simon’s boat.
Jesus got into Simon’s boat and asked him to push out a little way from the land.
He sat down, he began teaching the multitudes from that boat. Jesus got into one of the boats.
It’s verse three, Jesus got into them.
What’s most interesting to me about verse three is not actually verse three.
What’s most interesting to me about verse three, Jesus getting into the boat is that in verse two, Simon just got out of the boat?
Verse two, Simon got out verse three, Jesus got in the very thing that was so discouraging, so disappointing, so frustrating, so overwhelming to Simon that all he wanted to do in verse two was get out of it was the very thing in verse three that when Jesus was looking around trying to find a place to stand so that he could proclaim his word to the people who were gathered when he was trying to find something that he could turn into a pulpit.
He discovered the abandoned boat circumstance of Simon’s experience and he got into it and proclaimed his word through Simon’s uh experience.
Do you know what this tells us this tells us not only that he sees you, it tells us that he will use the part of your life you think is useless.
The abandoned boat circumstance of your life, that portion of your journey that you’re wondering how in the world anything good can come out of that?
It’s so empty, it’s so dry.
I’ve been fishing but I haven’t been catching anything that empty platform on your life is preparing itself for the feet of Jesus to come and stand, declaring this power, not only to you but also to the people in your sphere of influence who are watching on and need to see a life that has been invaded by the hand of God.
He will use the part of your life you think is useless.
That portion of your journey that, that you’re, you’re wondering whether any good can come out of this because you haven’t been able to catch any fish for that one.
Your marriage is still hanging on by a thread. You keep investing, but that particular child is still making decisions.
You cannot, you just can’t figure out why they are.
You’ve been investing and you’ve been fishing but your, your ministry is still in its fledgling place and it’s still difficult for you to figure out how to uh what step you’re going to take next.
You’ve been fishing. But on your job, man, you still haven’t gotten that promotion that you, that you thought would have come your way a lot sooner.
You’ve been fishing and fishing and now the platform is empty.
You cannot catch anything and you feel like it’s gonna be a useless part of your life. Good news.
He’s the master of taking the useless and making it useful for his glory and also for your good, he’ll use the part of your life you think is useless.
I believe in the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign.
Somebody say sovereign sovereignty means that our God stood before time. That is pre Genesis 11.
The only reason there is a Genesis 11. Let there be light, let there be such and such.
The only reason there is one is because God already existed.
So he could say let there be and it was sovereignty means God stood before time.
He has seen the entire spectrum of eternity passed all of time from Genesis 11 to the end of time which we have not yet seen and he has seen into eternity.
Future sovereignty means not only that He has seen it all sovereignty means that He has the whole thing in the palm of his hand.
That’s sovereignty. Sovereignty. When we believe it is what allows us to do church.
What Psalm 46 10 says, be still relax, chill out and know that He is God.
Sovereignty means what happened to you last week surprised you but God was not in the heavens going oops, that one slipped past me, he’s sovereign.
He’s already been there and done that.
If we apply God’s sovereignty to Luke Chapter five, then what this means is that while Simon was out in the deep, while he was out in the waters fishing all night long and catching nothing, when he kept throwing out that net, he’s an experienced fisherman.
He kept throwing out that net and pulling in nothing.
And he’s surprised and shocked and in complete disbelief when he does it again and there’s still nothing and again, and there’s still nothing and he cannot for the life of him comprehend this tragic situation, this fishing trip gone bad what it means that even though Simon didn’t quite understand what was going on, Jesus in his sovereignty did.
And Jesus knew in his sovereignty, something Simon and his humanity could never know that there was a morning coming and that in the morning, Jesus already knew there was going to be a crowd of people that were going to be gathered around him and he was going to have to try to find somewhere to be able to stand to make sure that his voice was uniquely amplified so that the people on the front row all the way to the folks that were in the far reaches of the group would be able to hear every word that was gonna come out of his mouth.
Jesus in his sovereignty knew that if he let Simon catch all those fish, the deck of that boat would be filled with flipping flopping fish and there would be no room for his feet.
So Jesus in his sovereignty, listen to me.
He allowed Simon to fish and catch nothing for the purpose of leaving room for himself.
I want you to know that in His sovereignty.
God will oftentimes put you in a scenario on purpose where he knows that your skill is not gonna be able to handle it.
Your talent is not gonna cover it.
Your money is not going to be able to get you where you need to be the diplomas on your wall are not gonna cut it this time, your connections, your your abilities.
He puts you specifically in a scenario where He knows you are gonna fish and give it you’re all, but you’re still going to come up up empty handed and it’s a difficult place for us to be in.
But he knows that if we are always capable of filling up our own, our own boats with fish, there will never ever be room for his feet in our lives.
And so it is sovereignty. He allows emptiness.
It makes us uncomfortable, but in that discomfort, we are given an opportunity, a great gift to see what it looks like.
When Jesus plants his feet on the deck of our lives, he will use the part of your life you think is useless.
He’s gonna make a miracle out of that mess.
My friend, he’s gonna turn that thing around for, for your good and for his glory.
So my mom, my mom is a master chef.
Um, actually she’s just my mom, but there’s no cooking. Like your mom is cooking.
You know, I will tell you that when I grew up, I’m sure that so many of you are like this in your families.
When you were growing up. When you think that we were, when we were growing up, there was none of this.
Go out to eat dinner business on Sunday. Hm. That was like a special treat.
And we would go to Wyatt’s cafeteria. Do y’all remember Wyatt’s cafeteria?
Um That’s where we would go, that was a special treat every now and then.
But most of the time on Sunday there was no going out to eat. My mom cooked Sunday dinner.
It was like a deal. You know what I mean? It was a big deal.
We look forward to that Sunday dinner. It was a meal that sometimes she would start cooking on Saturday night.
So we would, we would smell the roast cooking all night long. We would wake up with our mouths salivating.
We hadn’t even gone to church yet. We were already ready for Sunday dinner.
You know, she’d have the macaroni and cheese laid out and ready.
She’d have these yeast rolls rising and maybe a sweet potato pie and she’d make some fresh green beans.
Am I killing y’all? I’m killing. It’s lunch time, it is lunch time.
So she would make all this stuff and we loved Sunday dinner.
And I gotta tell you now that I’m a mom with three kids myself, she had 43 kids.
I, I cannot for the life of me figure out how that woman did it.
I appreciate her so much more, I appreciate. Don’t you appreciate your parents so much more the older you get?
I appreciate my mama so much. I got, I have one oven. I don’t have double oven.
I have one oven. My mom had one oven at the time for the, no matter how hard I try, I cannot figure out how you get all that food on the table all hot at the same time.
I can’t do it. My poor family poor Jerry. Something’s gonna be cold, something’s gonna be cold.
I’m trying, babe, I’m trying.
So now I understand why on Monday and Tuesday my mother didn’t cook nothing.
It had been so much work on the weekend.
You know, all that cooking and cleaning all those dishes. All that time spent. It was so much work.
I totally get it now, but I will tell you what she did do on Monday.
She would go into the refrigerator and see all the leftovers from Sunday.
A little broccoli left a little onion, a little chicken there. A little macaroni.
You know what, I’m gonna cut this dice it.
She would kind of put everything together in this big casserole baking dish and she’d stir in some cream of mushroom soup because, you know, that’s just what you do.
She would Sprinkle on top some shredded cheese because, you know, cheese makes everything better.
Then she would put it inside of the oven for just a little while and she would stand there watching it to make sure that it was at the perfect, perfect baked goodness and she would at the right time take it out.
She would set it on the table in front of the family on Monday and Tuesday.
She would give it some French sounding name.
We thought there was a brand new dish in front of us. We devoured it.
We loved it so much, but it wasn’t something brand new.
It was just leftovers in the hands of a master.
So this is what God does with your life.
He looks at every single season of your life and he takes this little bit and that little bit, this little part that you thought was useless and wouldn’t do any good or bring any good for anyone or anything.
And he takes all those bits and pieces and he chops it up and dices it and reconfigures it.
And then he pours the cream of the Holy Spirit on top of it and he mixes himself into the equation and then he sprinkles a little grace and mercy on top because you know grace and mercy make everything better.
And then he puts you inside of the oven of fire and trial for just a little while.
But like any good loving master chef, he’s standing there ready to take you out at just the right moment.
And then he gives you a brand new name y’all.
He, he changes your identity and then he places you in front of a lost and dying hungry world that needs to know that our God is.
Mm mm Good amen.
Church. Listen to me.
There are some people as great as this church is that will never darken the doorsteps of this church or any church.
They’re just not coming in. They’re not, there are stereotypes or there are things from their past experiences with other Christians or churches that have made them steer clear from darkening the doorsteps of this church.
They may never come but they can see the church in you.
They can, they can hear because you’re their coworker, you’re their neighbor.
They can see how there was this emptiness in your circumstances.
And then you can show them what it looked like when Jesus Christ stepped into this thing and turned it all around and changed it and made it something beautiful.
They should be looking at us like how in the world did that happen?
And then you can point them to the one not because you talked so great about who Jesus is, but because when they looked at your life they couldn’t help but see how great our Jesus.
And so he sees you, he sees you and he will use the part of your life you think is useless.
And when Jesus finished speaking to the crowd, verse four says, he turns to Simon and he says, push out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.
Simon answered and said, excuse me, master, we’ve worked hard all night long.
We’ve caught nothing but at your bidding. I’m gonna let down my net. Anyway.
Verse six, when they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish so much.
So y’all that their nets began to break.
Verse seven says, so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them and they came, they filled both the boats with fish and both boats started to sink y’all.
That’s a lot of fish. So here’s the deal. God says he’s been in shallow water.
Jesus has been in shallow water teaching the people from Simon’s boat. He’s talked to them from shallow water.
He turns to Simon now and says, let’s go deep.
I don’t know about you all but I, I don’t prefer deep water.
Like in my life, I like shallow water situations because in shallow water, I could stand up on my own two ft.
I got it covered in shallow water.
Deep water is the place where I’m in a scenario where I am in over my head and I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to keep myself afloat.
Simon had a decision to make even though he was going to this irrational, uncomfortable place of risky faith, which by the way, went against his experience.
As a fisherman, an experienced fisherman on the Sea of Galilee knew that to catch fish.
You fished in shallow water. Jesus was saying to him the exact opposite of his experience, Let’s go to deep water.
Simon had a decision to make.
Will I lean on my own understanding or will I trust that where he’s leading me is the place for me to be, even if it does not make sense.
Simon said, yes, Lord, it doesn’t make sense.
We’ve already tried this, but Jesus will go out to the deep water and in the deep water, Simon got the miracle of a lifetime.
The shallow water was to teach them the deep water was to teach him the shallow stuff was for everybody else.
The deep stuff is for you.
When God calls you to the deep, the place of risky irrational faith in Him.
Listen, if you’ll say yes, Lord, he’s, he’s, he’s fully planning to do something for you.
It’s a set up, do you understand?
It’s, it is a divine set up when God calls you to the risky place of faith.
If he could just find some folks that will say, yes, Lord and row out into the deep risky place of faith with Him where you’re in over your head and by the way, maybe you’re in here this morning, you’re already in over your head.
Can I just tell you that once you’re in over your head, it doesn’t matter how much further you go, you’re already up under there now.
So just keep going to the places where God is calling you knowing that if he’s called you there, you are better off with Him in deep water than you would ever be in shallow water.
Standing on your own two ft, shallow water might be more comfortable, but the fish aren’t in shallow water.
The fish are in the uncomfortable place and, and he throws out his net and all of a sudden the water that that was completely lifeless and fruitless the night before all of a sudden it is teeming with fish.
There are fish everywhere. I mean, it’s almost like they just want to get in the boat themselves.
In fact, you do know that Jesus could have said fish get in the boat and fish would have just started jumping out of the water into the boat, right?
This is the same God who said wind and waves be still and they obeyed.
He could have done that, but he didn’t. He said Simon, you cast out your net.
In other words, he wanted Simon to cooperate with him in the experience of the miracle In the scriptures.
There are over 8000 promises that are available for you and I as daughters and sons of God.
Over 8000 opportunities that we have to experience God.
But do you know most of those promises in the Bible? He did not place them in our hand?
He placed them in our reach, which means to grab hold of God’s part.
You first have to do your part.
Is he asking you to cast out your net, exert a little effort and energy Do it.
There’s fish waiting on you, my friend. So many fish.
In fact, that verse seven says Simon had to signal to his partners if it would have been me, y’all, I would have called out to my partners.
I would have been like Cheryl. Laura get over here. You are not gonna believe this.
I cannot wait for you to see this.
But this author wants us to know for sure that Simon did not yell.
He signaled the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly why that is.
But I just wonder if the reason why Simon signaled if the reason why he didn’t say a word is because he was speechless because when his brain tried to come up with the right words to describe what he was seeing in front of him.
It couldn’t. So the best he could come up with was I wanna ask you a church.
When’s the last time God stunned you speechless.
When’s the last time you saw a miracle of a lifetime in your personal circumstances.
I wanna tell you something if he’s calling you out to deep water.
In fact, if you are here or listening on this Sunday morning, I believe that the only reason he would put you under this word and me under this word is because he’s telling you right now, I’m getting ready to call you deep in the next week or two or a month.
God is gonna beckon you to deep water today.
He’s telling you in advance if you will say yes and come with me to the deep and cast out your net.
I’m telling you, you are putting yourself in a position to be stunned, speechless by the miracle working power of God in your life.
So today, if you’ve been discouraged because you’ve been fishing and catching nothing.
I wanna pray for you.
I wanna pray that that discouragement would be lifted off of you today in jesus’ name, I wanna pray that you would be encouraged in knowing that you are seen by God, that He will use the parts of your life that you think are useless, that he’s a master at that.
And I want you to always remember that, that when we venture out into the deep risky place of faith with Him, he can do a miracle in the very place in the very environment where it seems to us today that a miracle can never be done.
If you’re struggling in some specific area.
You’ve been fishing in your marriage or in your ministry on your job or with that child or in your classroom?
And you’ve been fishing and catching nothing, I believe this morning, he’s preparing you for a miracle.
Let me pray for you. Lord Jesus, would you make us men and women of risky faith?
Lord, if you call us to the deep, we’re gonna go because we want every single thing that you have for us.
And more so Lord, I’m asking you in Jesus name to lift in discouragement off of anyone who under the sound of my voice who is a bit overwhelmed today, Lord, because they’ve been giving and giving and giving and they feel like they have seen no benefits for their investment.
Lord, I just pray that your hand would be upon them, that you would comfort them, that they would know that you see them.
Would you wipe the tears from their eyes?
Lord and God, I’m going to ask that you would use all the useless places of our stories to bring you glory?
Thank you Lord, that you are setting us up.
You are preparing us to do great and mighty and wonderful things through our lives.
Thank you for Simon’s story because it sure encourages us. We’re grateful Lord in Jesus name.
Amen.