"Lower Your Nets for a Catch"

"He [Jesus] said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.' Simon said in reply, 'Master, we have work hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.' When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing" (Luke 5: 4-6)

I am sure many of you are wondering why I left out probably the most important part of this story: "Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.'" There is a very good reason why I left this verse and it is not because I don't like it. I love this verse and I think it is one of the best verses in the Gospels, but I feel that plenty is said with the quote above.

I want you to totally forget that Jesus is talking about fish in this quote and I want you to imagine he is talking about men. For most of us we are not a professional fisherman so we can't really imagine how difficult and tiring it must be for them after a whole night of catching nothing at all. Although, many of us know exactly how this feels when trying to bring our fellow brothers and sisters closer to Christ. We can try and try and we have no results.

A question to answer is why we aren't successful?

Here are a few suggestions to avoid catching nothing, but to have a large catch just as Simon does.

1. Pray more. Do we just go about our day and try to bring others to the Christ or are we first praying for them? Prayer has to be central to evangelization. Before the day begins we need to surrender every moment of that day to God and let Him be in control. He will insert those Divine Appointments into our day and will inspire us to say the right things. Trust God and He will bless your day.

2. Hope more. It is impossible to expect us by ourselves to do anything to build the kingdom. We need God and the only way to do that is to hope in Him. He is the Alpha and Omega, nothing is too large or too small for Him, He is able to anything He wants, so just hope in Him and He will inspire you and lead you where you ought to go.

3. Trust more. How often do we just openly trust the Lord? We plan out or days and never leave time for just allowing God to work as He wants to. The reality is no matter how much we schedule our day, even if our Blackberry calendar is completely filled, God has no obligation to follow it. Instead of waiting for God to rearrange our day maybe we should trust in the first place and allow Him to move in our hearts and souls.

If we can pray, hope and trust in God then the catch will come. Let Simon be an example for us. No matter how much doubt he may have had, he still lowered the nets at Jesus' command. Let us trust and wait for the time when Jesus commands us to go out and fish. Wait for those daily Divine Appointments. They will come and have been coming, but we all miss those because we are too busy with ourselves and are not able to see how God is using us to build up His Kingdom. Wake up and pay attention! We are only the tools by which God builds up His Kingdom, never think that you are alone in doing it. Release all your goal and desires and just be. Be still before God and listen then respond.

Peace be with all of you and allow yourselves to be God's hands and feet.