Gone Fishing

The heart of this collection of messages is to dig into the concepts following, leading, authority, and influence

One thing i was especially good at growing up was compartmentalizing my life.

School compartment

Football compartment

Home compartment

Church compartment

I could block out everything going on in other compartments of my life and focus only on the compartment i was currently engaging with

The upside is that it cut down on distractions and it helped me focus.

The downside was that I thought i could shelter parts of my life away from God’s reach.

I was one person at church, but i was somebody totally different at school.

Attempting to hide parts of your life from God, is the opposite of following the leader. When we attempt to tell God that he can have this, this, and this, but this other part is for me - then we are trying to lead God and that never works out in our favor.

God refuses to compete with us.

Often what God does in our life when we try to hide part of it from him is he rearranges everything so that he can resume his rightful place as Lord.

I want to look at a passage right now that speaks to this.

Luke 5:1–11 CSB

As the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear God’s word, he was standing by Lake Gennesaret. He saw two boats at the edge of the lake; the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the land. Then he sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” “Master,” Simon replied, “we’ve worked hard all night long and caught nothing. But if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.” When they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them; they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!” For he and all those with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s partners. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus told Simon. “From now on you will be catching people.” Then they brought the boats to land, left everything, and followed him.

Jesus is using Simon Peter’s boat as an amplification tool.

Sound waves carry over water. So Jesus is being really strategic.

He teaches a crowd of people and then tells Peter to sail out into deeper water and put down the nets and catch some fish.

Instead Jesus tells Peter to sail his boat off the shore into deeper water and put down the nets for a catch.

Peter’s response is actually kinda funny here:

Jesus, i respect you, that was a great teaching you just did, but you’re a carpenter turned preacher, I’m a propfessional fisherman, we just got done working all night, and didn’t catch anything, so we’re definitely not gonna catch anything during the day