Luke 5:1-11
so…. Luke is freaking awesome. I think it has moved into the #1 Gospel spot.
among many many other things (which will eventually make their way into this blog) God taught me something from chapter 5 this weekend.
Peter & Co. had been working all night out in their boats and had caught absolutely nothing. It’s not that they were crappy fishermen (they were actually very skilled!) they were just having a bad night. Then along comes Jesus, and he’s like… bad night guys? Why don’t you try throwing the nets off the other side? (Which I’m sure they had already tried… more than once). Well they did, and lo and behold so many fish jumped right into their nets that they had to recruit their buddies in boat #2 to help them haul the catch to shore.
Jesus takes this experience and tells them they’re going to fish for men from now on. I toyed with that a little in my mind and here’s what came out:
It doesn’t matter how skilled of a ‘fisherman’ you are, how shrewd your arguments are or how charismatic you are, you can holler the Good news from the rooftops if you wanted, and you could come up dry… then Jesus shows up, he points you in the right direction (“Why don’t you try talking to this person, Katie?”) and lo and behold hearts are jumping into my metaphorical net. It’s not a Katie thing, this is a God thing. God prepares hearts, God reveals truth. He just lets us help. Its not by our power or smooth speech that people turn to God. It’s soooooo much easier to listen to where God is directing you to cast your nets than work all night and come up empty-handed.
