Priscilla Shirer - Fishing for Miracles

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Summary

Priscilla Shirer encourages those feeling discouraged after pouring effort into life's "fishing trips" with no results, using the story of Simon Peter in Luke 5:1-11. She highlights how Jesus sees our struggles, steps into our emptiness to turn it into a platform for His glory, and calls us to deeper faith and obedience. The takeaway: God allows seasons of emptiness to make room for His presence, leading to miraculous provision and a transformed life focused on following Him.

Good morning, church. Good morning, amen. What a gift it is for me to be with you again. You might not remember me, but I remember y’all. Six years ago was the last time we had an opportunity to be here, so it feels like a gift to me to be back with you. You may take your seats.

I’m thrilled to share God’s word with you this morning and honored to do that. It feels so surreal sometimes when, in my case right now, I’m halfway across the globe from where my family is at this minute.

I was talking to my son and my husband just a moment ago on the phone. They are in Saturday, and here we are on Sunday, so I told them I’m already in your tomorrow, asking God to provide solutions for you that you don’t even know you have problems about yet. The fact that the Lord is in our future already preparing for us and being able to be here with you feels like a gift to me and to my family as well. So thank you so much for inviting me.

I said this in the first service; I’ll say it again now, and some version of it as well tonight because I am unable to stand in this house without honoring the leaders that the Lord has given you at this particular church.

I’m going to tell you why: because part of the privilege that we have in ministry is to go to so many different kinds of churches in different parts of the world. You need to know that every church does not have the testimony that they actually have pastors and leaders who have integrity. That doesn’t happen everywhere.

The Lord has entrusted the state of your souls, your spiritual growth, to leaders who actually love Jesus and love each other. You can come to know the measure of a person not just by how they walk through good times but by how they walk through bad times; it’s how they walk through hard things.

Since I have seen you six years ago, our family has been through hard things, and so have the D Youngs. To be able to be with them and to see how the Lord has sustained you and kept you, how He’s healed you, and how He’s brought us all to today after six years of such hard things for all of us—it’s been a long six years, hasn’t it? The whole globe has been through stuff, and the same God who has sustained us in Texas, USA, has been sustaining you here in Auckland, New Zealand. I’m so grateful.

So, it’s a gift to be here, and as always, I’m excited about the word of God because it is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. I have asked Him to open up all of our spiritual ears here on this campus and on the others that are tuning in right now, that the Lord would open up all of our spiritual ears so that you don’t hear me but hear the voice of God. Let’s pray together.

Opening Prayer

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for your word, and I thank you today that you have a word for all of us. We are leaning in, Father; we’re sitting on the edge of our seats to hear what you have to say. In Jesus' name, everybody agreed and said amen, amen, amen.

A Fishing Story from Childhood
One of the reasons why I respect and am so endeared to Paul and Marie is because they have raised three sons, and my husband and I have three sons. Their boys are a stage above mine. So, anybody that has raised boys and survived blesses me because it means if they made it, I can make it too.

Our sons are now 21 years old, 19, and 15 years old, so they are becoming grown men now. Because they are older, I take a lot of time now in nostalgia just to think back about their younger years and some of the things that we would do together.

For a decade or so, we lived in a fairly rural part of our Metroplex, Dallas Fort Worth in Texas. It was about 20 to 25 minutes from the heart of the city. Intentionally, we could get there quickly, but when we drove home, it felt like it was worlds away, and I loved it so much.

I was endeared to this little lazy, quiet two-lane road where we got a little teeny small house. We lived there for 10 years while the boys were little. The reason why I loved it is because it had a big yard; there was a lot of room out there for them to run around and play.

I’m the kind of mama that believes in going outside and playing; out there in the country, I wished the boys would tell me that they were bored. Anytime they did, I would say, «Do you see that tree right there? Go play with it. You can climb the tree, you can play tag with the tree; I don’t care what you do, but go outside and enjoy yourself.»

One of the things they enjoyed the most was the fact that our neighbor, who lived across the street, has been one of my closest friends for over 20 years now. Her name is Rachel, and the boys call her Aunt Rachel.

There is a pond in the front of Rachel’s property, and we would take advantage of that. We would walk across the street often to go fishing. I bought two little fishing poles that were on sale at the local Low Mart around the corner. I got a tackle box. Inside the tackle box, I bought some extras—those little bobber thingies that you put inside, just in case you need more. I got some scissors to cut the line, and I also got some gloves that I put in that box because I don’t know if y’all can tell by looking at me or not, but I don’t mind going fishing, but I ain’t going to actually touch no fish.

So, we would take those two fishing poles and whatever hot dog meat we had left in the refrigerator because that was our bait; you know, we’re professionals. We would walk across the street to Aunt Rachel’s pond.

We would stand there in a little cove that was nestled under trees, so the shade provided this little cove for us to stand in. Also, the shade made all the little small fish pool right there in that particular corner.

We would drop the lines in, and almost immediately, there would be tugs on the line, and within two or three minutes, we would catch a fish. We would toss that one back in, and two or three minutes later, five minutes later, we would catch another fish.

If we were there for an hour, we could catch eight to ten fish—little small sun perch, one after the other. My boys loved it. The reason why they loved it is that this is the kind of fishing a 5-year-old needs in their life—just instant gratification, one after the other.

We did it several times a week because it was very convenient to just hop on over there across the street. So, I thought and assumed, because we did it so much at home and they loved it, that they must just like fishing in general.

One summer, we were out of town, and we were near a lake, and I said, «Okay, boys, let’s get these same fishing poles that I had brought with us for that particular trip. Let’s go fishing.»

We walked over to that lake, put the lines in the water, and we fished and fished, and Lord have mercy, we fished. After 45 minutes, an hour, turning into an hour and a half, has it ever happened to any of you that you’re doing something for your children, and then you look up and realize your children aren’t even there anymore?

That’s exactly what happened to me on this day. We’re there fishing, and it was taking so long, and I looked up and realized the boys had run off. They were now in a yard nearby throwing a football. They weren’t even participating in the fishing anymore.

So, I yelled over to them, and I said, «Boys, what in the world are you doing? I didn’t come out here for my health this morning; I came out here to spend time with y’all! Get back over here and let’s fish.»

The oldest one, who at the time was about seven, yelled back at me and said, «Mom, we don’t like fishing like that!» The second son said, «Yeah, Mom, fishing is not supposed to be this hard!»

I stood there for a little while longer with that line in the water, and I chuckled at what my boys had said, particularly that second son. «Fishing is not supposed to be this hard.»

It occurs to me that in a group this size, on this Sunday morning, both in this room and on the other side of the screen, there are some of you in some dynamic, some area of your life feel exactly the same way my boy did—that there’s some assignment, some fishing trip where you have invested in your life an amount of energy, an amount of emotional investment, an amount of ideas, or time, or money, trying to sustain the marriage or build the business or raise the kid or foster that ministry that the Lord has entrusted to you.

You’ve given it everything you’ve got, and you feel like for all of the investment you’ve made, you haven’t gotten anything to show for it. You’ve made all that investment but with little benefit; you feel like you’ve got only empty hands to show for everything that you’ve been giving to your family, or to those friendships, or to that job, or in that ministry.

You just feel discouraged because you’ve given so much, and you have gotten so little back. You feel like my boy—fishing wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

Jesus Sees the Discouraged Fisherman
There’s a fisherman in Scripture who knows exactly how it feels because in Luke chapter 5, we meet a fisherman who wasn’t just fishing for an hour or two like me and my boys. He was fishing all night long, and this brother caught absolutely nothing.

His story is found in Luke chapter 5, and there’s encouragement for any of us who are here today and honestly, you are right now or you have been in a season of life where you just need to know that it’s not a waste of your time, your energy, your investment—that there is encouragement here for anybody that’s ever had a fishing trip go bad.

Luke chapter 5, verses 1 and 2 set the stage. It says, «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 Gennesaret»—that’s another phrase for the Sea of Galilee.

«And verse 2 says he saw—somebody say he saw—saw! Come on, y’all, he saw! He saw two boats lying by the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had already gotten out of them, and they were washing their nets.»

Let’s just start right here with these two verses because in it, Luke paints this picture for us to show us what’s happening on this particular day when Jesus shows up on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, and he sees Simon Peter.

This is after Simon has already fished all night. All night long, he’s discouraged and disappointed and overwhelmed, maybe even a little underwhelmed because he’s given so much and gotten so little back.

He’s already abandoned his boat when Jesus sees him on this particular morning, and Luke wants to paint this vibrant picture so you know what the entire scene looked like on that particular day.

He said in verse 1 that there was a multitude. Scholars say this isn’t a couple dozen people; it’s not even a couple hundred people. Thousands of people were likely gathered that day, and Luke wants you to know that they were pressing in on Jesus.

Multitudes of people horde around him, vying for his attention, trying to get as close to him as they possibly could because people in this day and age—when Jesus was walking the Earth—they weren’t convinced yet that he was the Messiah. They didn’t quite know if he was the Redeemer, that you know the kingdom of God was at hand. They weren’t positive about all that stuff.

But what they did know was that when this guy showed up, blind people could see. They knew that wherever this guy went, the lame started walking and the dead were raised, and every single time he opened up his mouth, his words were dripping with an authority they had never ever heard before.

So, wherever Jesus went, a crowd of people came to where he was, and they were not satisfied just sitting calmly and sedately, like you and I are here today, just sitting and casually listening. There was nothing casual about this crowd because they wanted to get as close to Jesus as they possibly could.

They were elbowing their way through the crowd. They were vying for his attention. They were calling out to him. This was a whirlwind of chaos as the people pressed in on Jesus because they knew that if they could get close enough they might be able to be like that woman with the issue of blood, who when she got close enough to Jesus, reached out and touched the hem of his garment, and power left him and went to her and changed the trajectory of her entire life.

So, these folks wanted to get close to Jesus.

I mean, come on, y’all, think about how we’d feel if Jesus were our preacher this morning. There wouldn’t be anything casual about that gathering because we’d be wanting to get as close as we possibly can.

So this multitude is pressing in on Jesus, and Luke paints the picture so you’ll know that Jesus has literally physically been backed up against the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee by this multitude pressing in on him. There’s literally nowhere else for him to go.

In the middle of all this chaos, all this clamoring, and all this confusion, verse 2 says he saw one man who’d had a bad night fishing.

I want you to know that no matter how big the crowd gets, no matter how big the multitude is, no matter the multitude of problems and issues that are also pressing in on Jesus, no matter how many other prayer requests or needs or issues or dilemmas or problems that our Lord also has to contend with, you need to know that even in the midst of the whirlwind that is happening around you, you serve a God who sees you.

He’s got his eyes on you. This is encouraging for us today because sometimes we can look around us in a room like this on a Sunday like this. We can look around us and we realize that there’s so much happening in the lives of the people who came forward earlier, or the person sitting behind us, or beside us, or we watch the news and realize that God’s got so much to contend with in other countries and on other continents and governments of the world that he is orchestrating.

In the midst of all of that chaos and all of that confusion, we can feel like our little lives are lost in the crowd. I need you to know that even if your mama doesn’t know about your fishing trip, and even if your spouse is unaware of all the nights you’ve spent awake, the tears that you’ve cried, the beads of sweat that have bubbled themselves up on your brow as you’ve tried to figure out how to deal with that problem in your family or on your job or in your ministry or in your health or on your finances, you need to know that even if nobody else sees you, you serve a God who’s got his eyes on you.

Nothing, nothing that has happened in your life has been lost on God. He knows the investment you’ve been making; he knows what you’ve been giving; he knows what you have been sowing into that particular area of your life. He knows the discouragement that you feel because you’ve given so much and have gotten so little back.

Even if nobody else knows, your God has got his eyes on you.

God Comes to Us
It would be easy for us to read something like that in verse 2—a little observation about Jesus seeing Simon Peter—or to hear it taught and preached on a Sunday, especially if we come like you do to an incredible Bible-teaching church like this one, a worshipful church like this one. We can get so used to it that we see something like this—that God sees us, that he’s aware of us, that he knows us.

If we’re not careful, it can start to roll off our shoulders casually, like it’s no big deal. So I just want you for just a second to let it be absorbed into the recesses of your heart so that the gravity, the weightiness of it, the power of it hits you squarely in the eyes this morning: that the God of the universe sees you; that there’s nothing small or casual about the fact that this is God we’re talking about.

This is the one who is orchestrating the throws of the universe right now while we’re sitting in this room. He’s controlling the throws of the galaxies; he’s handling neighborhoods in the galaxy that scientists haven’t even yet discovered exist; he’s taking care of those.

He is the one that made sure that the sun got positioned in the sky exactly where it’s supposed to be. He’s the one that will hold it in place all day long ’til it swaps places with the moon later on tonight.

He’s the one tonight that will hang every single star in the sky. He will know every single one of them by name; he will know every single one of them by number.

He is the one that is making sure while we’re sitting in this room that the Earth is spinning on its axis at just the right speed that you and I can sustain life here.

This is a God who is almighty and all-powerful and is all-sovereign and all-holy, and that great mighty God sees you. What manner of love is this, that a God that great, who does not have to have a relationship with us, but chooses it out of his love for us, to be concerned with the details of your life—your marriage, the raising of those kids, your health, your finances, the things that are tucked within your heart and your mind that your closest friends may not even be aware of—you serve a God who knows, and he sees.

Thank you, God, that you see us.

The Scripture says that when he sees Simon Peter, Simon Peter has already gotten out of the boat and is washing his net. The Lord Jesus sees the detail of what’s happening in this man’s life who is so discouraged because of where he finds himself on that particular morning.

I remember several years ago, I was watching one of the national news programs in the States called The Today Show. They were doing a story on religions of the world that week; every day they were taking a different religion and highlighting it on the show, talking about the details of it.

The day I caught it, I remember I was sitting on the edge of our bed, folding all the kids’ clothes, and I was watching the news. That day, they were doing a story on the Buddhist faith.

I remember I didn’t know much about Buddhism, and so I just sat there for a moment listening. It kind of caught my attention. Campbell Brown is the name of the reporter; at the time, she was describing how she and her camera crew had to fly halfway across the world from where the studios are in New York, USA.

They flew all the way to Hong Kong to do this story. Once they flew halfway across the world, then they had to drive three hours to get to the base of a particular mountain, where they then climbed up 268 stairs so that they could get positioned for this story in front of one of the Buddha statues that stands in Hong Kong.

She described the length of the trip; she described the energy, the effort required to make this pilgrimage. And then the camera panned around, and you could see pilgrims there—people who had saved up for a lifetime, she said, so that at least once in their lives they could fly halfway across the world, make the three-hour drive, and climb up 268 stairs so that they could get down on their knees to pray to their God—little g.

So I’m watching this story, and you know, I had several thoughts as I was watching it, but one of them was this: that if I had to save up a lifetime’s worth of money and travel halfway across the world to make a three-hour drive to climb up 268 stairs to pray, I would never pray! Ain’t nobody got time for that!

And while there climbing up to talk to their God—little g—an idol, Habakkuk 2:20 says, «Idols have hands but can’t do anything; they have ears but can’t hear; they have eyes but can’t see; they have heads but nothing in them that can actually think to do anything for you and with you.»

While they’re climbing up to talk to their God—little g—the one true and living God, our God, he comes down to talk to us! Never let it roll off your shoulders casually that this great almighty God has chosen to condescend because he wants to come see about you. That’s how much he loves you!

And he sees Simon Peter.

Then verse 3 says he got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s boat, and he asked him to push out a little way, a little distance from the land. And then he sat down on this boat and he started teaching the multitudes from the boat.

Jesus Steps Into the Emptiness
I will tell you that when I’m reading the scriptures just personally—like in my devotional life, or if I’m sitting in church, which I usually am every Sunday listening to the pastor preach—if there is something that is repeated in the scriptures, like sometimes you will see «truly, truly I say to you,» if something is repeated, then I know it’s not repeated because God likes to hear himself talk. I know that if it’s repeated, that means I’m supposed to pay close attention.

The same thing is true if you’re ever reading through the Bible and something seems to contrast. The Bible is inerrant, which means if something appears to be a little bit of a contrast, you should lean in and pay attention.

What captures my attention about verse 3, «Jesus got into the boat,» is that just one verse earlier, in verse 2, Simon got out of the boat. In verse 2, Simon’s out; in verse 3, Jesus is in!

The very thing that was so discouraging, so disappointing, so frustrating, so overwhelming to Simon that all he wanted to do was get out of it is the same thing that when Jesus showed up and was looking around for a place to stand—a platform to turn into a pulpit—he chose the abandoned boat.

The circumstance of Simon’s experience, he planted himself in someone’s emptiness and turned it into a place to declare to everybody gathered, «I am who I say I am, and I can do what I say that I can do.»

Jesus will get into the thing you and I most want to get out of. The place in your life where you’ve experienced the most emptiness, the place where you and I have invested the most, but we keep coming up empty-handed.

This should be the day that we realize those empty places shouldn’t discourage us. Instead of looking down in discouragement, we ought to lift up our eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help, because our help comes from the Lord.

He is in the business of turning empty platforms into pulpits! He puts himself into our emptiness, and he declares to everybody in our sphere of influence, «I am who I say I am, and I can do what I say that I can do.»

In other words, our emptiness, y’all, it isn’t fruitless; it isn’t in vain. The fishing trip you’ve done, where you feel like you’re getting the least amount of benefit or harvest from, if the Lord has allowed the emptiness, that means he’s leaving room for his feet in your life; he’s leaving room for his presence.

Okay, our God is sovereign. Somebody say sovereign! There are many attributes that make up our God. I like to look at the attributes of God like links in a chain. There are many links in the chain of God’s character. He is holy, omnipresent, omniscient; the list goes on and on.

One of my favorites—the one that endears me most to our God—is that he is sovereign. Sovereignty means he existed before time began. He was in eternity past. In fact, the only reason time began—Genesis 1—is because God was already there so that he could say, «Let there be,» and there was!

He was in eternity past; he has seen the entire spectrum of time—Genesis 1:1 all the way to Revelation, the end of time, which we have not yet seen—and he’s already been in eternity future.

Sovereignty means he’s been and has seen the entire spectrum of time and eternity. But sovereignty doesn’t just mean he’s seen it. Sovereignty means that he’s got the whole thing in the palm of his hands—your life and mine.

The lifespan that we have—whatever it is, it differs for each of us—is a blip on the radar screen of time and eternity. If he’s got the whole thing in the palm of his hands, that means he’s got your life in the palm of his hands too!

Sovereignty, if you believe in God’s sovereignty, is what will allow you to do what Psalm 46:10 says: «Be still; cease to strive.» My version is chill out and know that I am God. Sovereignty is what lets us know he’s got our back, right?

So if we take God’s sovereignty and we apply it to this passage, Luke chapter 5, it means that Jesus knew before Simon ever went fishing in the first place that he was going to fish and catch nothing, and he let him go anyway.

He knew before he ever cast the net the very first time. Jesus was already fully aware that he was going to exert that much energy and that much effort when it was midnight and then 1 a.m. and then 2 a.m. in the wee hours of the morning.

He knew the discouragement; he knew the disappointment; he knew the confusion that Simon was going to feel, and he let him fish anyway.

The reason why is because if he would have allowed Simon to fill up the platform of his boat with all those flipping, flopping fish, there would have been no room for his feet.

Jesus knew, in his sovereignty, there was a morning coming. He knew there was going to be a multitude he wasn’t going to want any one of them to miss the clarity of his words. He knew that they were going to be gathered around, and that he was going to need a place to stand in order to turn that landscape into a natural amphitheater so that his voice echoed off the hillside, and every person from the very first row all the way to the furthest reaches didn’t miss one word that he had to say.

Jesus knew he was going to need a place to stand, so he let Simon fish, knowing his emptiness would be turned into a pulpit.

There are seasons in our life, God will—y’all—where the Lord will allow us, God will call us to fishing trips where he knows up front you ain’t going to catch nothing. He’s going to let you fish anyway!

He’s going to call you to an assignment that he knows is just outside of your reach—that no matter what your skill is, your talent is, no matter your connections or your money or the degrees that you may have on your wall, he knows there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do in the natural that’s going to get you to that result.

The reason why he does that is because it creates in your life what I like to call «God margin.» God margin is the empty space that exists between our natural resources and the assignment of God on our life.

That God margin is the empty space where he leaves room for himself to step into your experience and to declare to everybody watching your life that he is a God who is able to do Ephesians 3:20 and 21—"Now unto him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond anything that you can ask or think! To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus both now and forever.» Come on, somebody ought to say amen to that!

So if, like me, you’ve got some empty margin in your life, look to the hills! Jesus is on the way. He’s left room in your life so that he can stand there because there is a multitude; there’s a sphere of influence that is gathered around your life—the people that follow you on social media, the folks that work in the same office as you, or the students at your school, university student, or elementary student.

There are people who are watching your life, and the most profound message you or I will ever teach to somebody else will not come from the words that we say; they will come from the empty spaces in our life where God stepped in and took nothing and made it something.

Then they will not be able to deny that this Jesus must be worth serving—that this Jesus must be worth following—that he must be worth committing my life to because if he did it for them, he can also do it for me.

That is the testimony of this family that the Lord has entrusted you to at this church. The testimony is that when the medical community can’t do it, and when there are no more solutions, and when there’s no more opportunity for people to be able to figure it out, the Lord says, «But I will be a sustainer, and I will be a keeper, and I will confuse folks with my capacity to take nothing and make it something.» That testimony right there no one can deny.

So the Lord will allow emptiness; the Lord will sometimes, in ways that confuse us and discourage us, that we do not understand, allow emptiness. And then he steps into it and says, «I’ve got your back.»

So he steps into Simon’s experience. He’s standing there on the boat; he is preaching and teaching to all the multitude that are gathered that day. The landscape has now become a natural amphitheater. Every person can hear every word that he says.

And after he finishes speaking, verse 4 says he looks at Simon and he says, «Now let’s go deep-sea fishing.» He doesn’t look at the multitudes; he looks at the disciple.

He looks at the one who has had a front-row seat. Everybody else was standing from afar; Simon was next to him. He looks to the one who has literally had a front-row seat to everything that he’s been saying—the one who has heard the word up close and personal—the one who has had an opportunity to see the testimonies of others that he’s moved.

He looks not at the multitudes but at the follower of Jesus—the disciple—and he says, «Let’s see if you’re just going to be a hearer of the word or whether you’re going to be a doer also.»

I can’t tell whether or not you actually believe me! In shallow water, we’ve got to go to deep water! For that shallow water is where you can stand up on your own two feet. I prefer shallow water because, you know, I’m tall enough to handle shallow water.

The problem is in deep water, I’m in over my head! In deep water, that deep water place of faith, it’s where we feel uncomfortable because we’re out of our depths.

Oftentimes, the Lord will call us to a deep water place of faith because it’s where he will say to the disciple, «This is where I get to see whether you believe everything you said amen to on Sunday morning.»

I just believe that the only reason he would allow me to fly halfway across the globe to be with you on this Sunday morning is if he is fully intending to set you up for a deep water experience with him.

I’m going to tell y’all in the next few days after a Sunday morning like this one, he is going to call some of you into the deep where you’re going to have to believe that he is who he says he is and that he can do what he says he can do!

You’re not going to experience that in the shallow—you’re only going to experience that in the deep.

So he calls him out to deep water, and Simon says exactly what I would have said if I were in that experience. Simon says to him in verse 5, «Jesus, you do know we have already been fishing all night long, right? We’ve already tried this!»

«Jesus, you know what? How about you stick to the preaching, and I’ll take care of the fishing? Jesus, you don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m an experienced fisherman! This is what I do!

I know that the fish on the Sea of Galilee are caught in the dark, which is why he was fishing all night long! Don’t we go to deep water in the middle of the day to catch fish? What you’re saying does not make sense!»

Sometimes the way that you and I can know that God actually is whispering to us is that what he’s saying doesn’t quite make sense because his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts.

As high as the heavens are above the Earth, that’s how high his ways and his thoughts are above our own! And we would do well to stop trying to dumb God down so that he makes sense to us.

Because God, y’all, he is not just a bigger version of you—he’s in a class all by himself! He’s in a category all by himself!

Sometimes, the way he moves—many times, the way he moves and operates—has dimensions attached to it that our human capabilities and capacity can’t even comprehend and consider.

So Simon says, «It doesn’t make sense, but at your bidding, I will go anyway.»

Because for the disciple, there is no separation between the secular and the sacred. There is no fishing versus teaching, preaching, or committing myself to the scripture. All of it is sacred; my entire life as a disciple is sacred no matter what I’m doing from Monday through Saturday.

It doesn’t wait until Sunday for me to be committed to the Lord. No, my Monday is His, and my Tuesday is His, and my Wednesday is His, and whatever I’m doing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it is all for His glory.

So if I’m a teacher, then I teach that classroom for the glory of God. If I’m a lawyer, well, the bar association is getting ready to see what it looks like when God tries a case. If I’m a doctor, well, it’s going to look like what it would be if God is represented in this room for healing and the solving of people’s problems.

Whatever I do, I do it for the glory of God!

So Peter says, «I’m going wherever you’re going, Jesus! Let’s go!»

The Miracle in the Deep
And they go out into the deep water, and Jesus looks at Peter and says, «Cast out your net now.»

Jesus could have said, «Fish, get in the boat!» Come on, y’all know he could have done it, right? Because this is Jesus! It’s the same one that had just said, «Winds and waves, be still!» and creation had obeyed him.

This is the same man who the disciples had looked at in another passage and had said, «What manner of man is this that the winds and the waves even obey him?»

So he could have said, «Fish, get in the boat!» Y’all know the fish would have just started jumping into the boat from everywhere!

But he didn’t command the fish; he commanded the disciple. He said, «I have a miracle for you, but you have to partner with me in order to receive it!»

You’ve got to cast in your net in order to get what I’ve got coming to you anyway!

Whatever the Lord has planned for you in these days that are getting ready to follow after a Sunday like this where he’s speaking so clearly to us, he is going to tell you in some way to cast out your net—to give the apology, to extend the gift, to cross the aisle, to make sure that you bridge the gap with that particular person, to financially invest, whatever it is that he’s going to ask you to do—to write the first verse, to extend yourself in some way.

And for any of us who are willing to cast out our net, we will get to be recipients of something the likes of which we cannot even imagine!

In the scripture, there are over 8,000 promises. The promises for God’s people in the scriptures are basically opportunities to experience God—that’s what the promises are!

And most of those 8,000 promises, y’all, he did not put them in our hand; he put them in our reach! It means you have to do your part to grab hold of his part!

And when Simon cast out his net, verses 6 and 7 say that they pulled it in, and it was brimming over with fish that they could barely get the net into the boat! There were so many fish that the nets actually began to break!

They cast it in again, and it filled once more! The same waters that had been completely lifeless and fruitless the night before, now all of a sudden, there were fish everywhere that it seemed like couldn’t wait to get into the boat!

There were so many fish that the boat began to sink! That’s a lot of fish right there!

And it says in verse 7 that Peter looked over toward the shore, and he signaled to his partners. Remember, this is Luke writing! He is the one that likes to give us a lot of detail so that we know and can have in our imagination exactly what is happening.

He has specified for us here that Simon didn’t call out to his partners; he signaled! The scripture doesn’t tell us exactly why he did that, but I just wonder if it’s because he was speechless.

That when his mind tried to come up with the right words to say, he couldn’t even figure out how to describe what it was that God was doing.

What if God is setting you up to stun you speechless, where when you try to describe the testimony of what God did in the emptiness of your marriage, or the emptiness with your parenting, the teenager, or the emptiness in your finances, or the emptiness in your health, or the emptiness on your job, or the emptiness in your ministry, you have no explanation!

All you can do is signal to folks around you and tell them, «Come and see how good God has been to me!»

With a boat full of fish, they went back to the shore, and when you have time, read the whole passage. They rode back to the shore, and when they got to the shoreline, verse 11 says Jesus looked at them and said, «Now follow me.»

They left everything, including the fish, because now they realize this was never about the fish anyway! It was always about becoming a follower of Jesus Christ.

Their greatest ambition had been the catch, but the catch was only designed to lead them to the Christ—that really all of this—all of the disappointment, the discouragement, the heartache, the confusion of those previous verses had all been about introducing them to an up-close, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

The only difference in this story from the very beginning to the very end is that at the beginning Jesus was not in the boat, and in the end, he was!

When Jesus gets into the boat of your life, it changes everything—not just your circumstances; it changes you!

The fish are no longer as critical to you as they once were because you realize this is about going wherever he’s going and sticking with Jesus, and walking with Jesus, and making sure that when I see him face-to-face I hear, «Well done, good and faithful servant!»

He changes everything about you! Sometimes the biggest miracle God does is not in our circumstances; the biggest miracle he does is in our own hearts and minds!

He changes you! He changes me! He changes your ambitions; he changes your appetites; he changes your attitude! Everybody—anybody ever needed their attitude adjusted? He changes us!

And then he whispers to us, «Come, follow me!» And then we lay everything down at his feet and we follow hard after him.

Closing Invitation and Prayer
Would you bow your heads with me, please? I want to ask you if there is anybody in this room, and you are discouraged because of the fishing trip of your life. Maybe you were just about to jump ship and give up and throw in the towel, and you hear the Holy Spirit whispering to you today, «I’ve got you! I see you, and I have a plan for you!»

If you are discouraged and you’re just about to quit, but you hear the spirit speaking to you today, I cannot wait to pray for you and to ask the Holy Spirit to lift you up as you move forward in the assignment that he has for you.

If that’s you, would you please stand to your feet and allow me to pray for you? In any area of your life, if you need the Lord to be near and present, stand!

And then there may be others of you, even while they are standing, who are here and you realize Jesus isn’t even in your boat. You realize you’ve been rowing and fishing all by yourself—in your marriage, with the parenting, in your finances, on your job—and you need to make sure that Jesus is not just in the boat; he’s at the helm of the ship, calling the shots.

If you have never placed faith in Jesus Christ and you want to make sure you don’t leave here today without making sure he is in the boat with you, please stand to your feet so that we can pray for you today! The best decision you’ll ever make in your life is making sure Jesus is on that boat!

Yes, I see you! Thank you! Yes! Yes, sir!

Lord Jesus, for every brother or sister under the sound of my voice who is standing, I first thank you, Father, for the fishing expeditions you have assigned to every single one of us. We yield them to you, and Father, I ask right now in Jesus’ name that the blanket of discouragement that may be cloaking someone’s shoulder, that you would supernaturally lift it off in Jesus’ name, and that you would replace it with a cloak of encouragement. Father, I pray that you would offer them supernatural support, supernatural wisdom, supernatural strategy, supernatural insight! And Father, for the emptiness that exists in our life, we thank you in advance that they will become platforms through which our life displays your glory and your power through our lives! Father, we pray against every scheme of the enemy that is assigned to any of our lives. We thank you that right now, that assignment is canceled in the name of Jesus and by his blood that has been shed on Calvary! From this day forward, we will walk in victory and freedom! In Jesus’ name, Father, any fish you give us, we’re already committing to lay it down at your feet and be followers of you and you alone!

For everyone who is in the room, if you’ve never placed faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, you shall be saved. So I’m going to pray, and let’s all repeat this prayer together. We can build an atmosphere of faith for those who are praying it for the first time. Let’s pray. «Lord Jesus, I am a sinner in need of a savior, and I believe that you are that savior. So today, I place faith alone in Christ alone to remove my sins, take up residence in me in the person of the Holy Spirit. Right now, in Jesus' name.» Come on, everybody shout amen!