Father, I give You thanks for Your blessings and watchcare over the weekend’s festivities. I am so grateful to not hear of any incidences of problems in families travels and I give You praise that You were amongst us in our celebrating.
Luke 5:1-7 (<<click to read the passage)
One struggle that occurred fairly often in retail was when people felt they were at liberty to tell you how to do your job. Now that might possibly be accurate in certain circumstances, i.e. if an experienced associate from another Kohl’s store came upon an inexperienced associate. But for the most part, most associates (me included!) would be, “Just be quiet. I’m the trained, experienced associate here…not you!”
In the first portion of today’s story in the life of Jesus, He, as He is teaching, is being hard-pressed as crowds, in an attempt to see and hear Him more clearly, are pushing Him closer and closer to the water’s edge. He steps into a boat just offshore and asks Simon (Peter), the boat’s owner, to push it out into the water. Now here comes the potentially testy part of the narrative.
When he had finished speaking, he [Jesus] said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.” v.4 NLT
Now we definitely have to give Simon credit here in that he is not just some puttering little tyke with a stick pole who has had a poor day of fishing. Simon is a trained professional. Fishing was his job. He knew it in and out. His boat. The water. The fish. He had to know it all – it was his livelihood. It kept food on his table. And with all that skill, he could have laid into Jesus but he didn’t. This seasoned sailor politely replies, and the Amplified Bible fleshes it out a bit more.
“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].” v.5
Now I don’t know about you but I would have put a little bit more on that last word… “lower the nets again.” How many of us would have been at least a little indignant? “Who does this guy think He is? Yeah, He’s a good teacher and all and I really didn’t mind Him using my boat as His podium from which to teach, but, I mean, we’ve fished all night and caught absolutely nothing! I know my trade and out of the blue, He thinks we can just drop out nets and ‘poof’ they’ll be full of fish? Well…”
But that’s exactly what happened! Not just Simon’s boat but his partner’s boat, as well, became so full of fish that they both were on the verge of sinking!
We’ll look at Simon’s response to the whole thing tomorrow but aren’t we hesitant to move forward when God directs us to do something? Oh, we try to shrug the Holy Spirit’s suggestions off as wild ideas. “Where in the world did that thought come from? Crazy!” …right? But especially if you are striving to follow Jesus in all the ins and outs of each day, you know that He guides you. You know that He is the One who is putting those thoughts in your mind…because you have asked Him to!
Lord Jesus, help our actions to follow suit with our words. We want to do Your will – we say so – but we would ask that You would enable us to do not just to say. Amen.

Jan 12th, 2020, Sun, 4:38 pm