Fishing for Miracles • Priscilla Shirer • Church Online: 10 March

go defano Welcome To Church online my name is Braden and I'm the Next Generation Pastor here at life and it's such an honor to be joining you for Church online today we have an amazing guest speaker with us today all the way from the United States of America we've got Pastor Priscilla shyra now I know Pastor Priscilla brings powerful words and messages to the house of God and I know you're going to love today's one so we're going to go to that message right now good morning church good morning amen what a gift it is

for me to be with you again you 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 thrilled to share God's word um with you this morning and um honored to 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 right 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 go ahead and provide solutions for you you don't even know you have those problems yet and the fact that the Lord is in our future already um prepare ing for us and being able to be here with you feels like a gift to me and U to my family as well so thank you so much for inviting me I said this in the first service we'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 and I'm going to tell you why because part of the privilege that we have in Ministry to go to so many different kinds of churches 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 don't happen everywhere and that the Lord has entrusted the state of your souls

your spiritual growth to leaders that actually love Jesus and love each other and you really can come to know the measure of a person not just by how they walk through good times it's how they walk through bad times it's how they walk through hard things and since I have seen you six years ago our family has been through hard things and so have the D Youngs and to be able to be with them and to see how the Lord has sustained you and kept you how he's healed you how he's brought us all to

today after six years of such hard things for all of us it's been a it's been a long six years a it the whole globe has been through stuff and the same God that has sustained Us in Texas USA is the same God 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 so I have asked him to open up all of our spiritual ears here on

this campus and then 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 you hear the voice of God on let's pray together 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 seat to hear what you have to say in Jesus name everybody agreed and said amen amen amen one of the reasons why

I respect um and and am so endeared to Paul and Marie is because they have raised three sons and my husband hband and I have three sons her boys are a stage above mine and so anybody that has raised boys and survived they bless me because it means if they made it I can make it too our sons now are 21 years old 19 and 15 years old and so they are becoming grown men now and 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 and for a decade or so we lived in a fairly rural part of our Metroplex Dallas Fort Worth in Texas it was about 20 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 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 and I'm the kind of Mama that believes in go outside and play out there in the country I wish 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 eat the tree you can play tag with the tree I don't care what you do but go outside and enjoy yourself and one of the things they

enjoyed the most was the fact that our neighbor who lived across the street she's been one of my closest friends for over 20 years now um her name is Rachel the boys call her aunt Rachel there is a pond in the front of Rachel's property and so we would take advantage of that we would walk across the street often to go fishing I bought two little uh uh fishing poles that were on sale at the local little Mart around the corner I bought a tackle box inside The Tackle Box I bought some extra those little

bobber thingies that you put inside and just in case you need more and I got some scissors to cut the line and also I got some gloves that I put in that box because I don't 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 CU you know we're professionals and 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 and also the shade made all the little small fish this pool right there in this particular corner we would drop the lines in and almost immediately there would be tugs on the line and within 2 or 3 minutes we would catch a fish we would toss that one back in two or three minutes later five minutes later we'd catch another fish if we were there for an hour

we could catch eight to 10 fish little small sun perch one after the other and my boys loved it the reason why why they loved it is because you know this is the kind of fishing a 5-year-old needs in their life just instant gratification one after the other and we did it several times a week through the 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

and so 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 IID 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 and 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 and so I yelled over to them and I said boys what in the world are you 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 he yelled back at me and said mom we don't like fishing like that and 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 amount of emotional investment amount of ideas or time or money trying to sustain stain the marriage or build the business or raise the kid or or Foster that Ministry that the Lord has entrusted to you that you've given it everything you've got and you feel like for all of the investment you given you haven't gotten anything to show for it that you've made all

that investment but with little benefits 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 and you just feel discouraged because you've given so much and you have gotten so little back you feel like my boy that fishing wasn't supposed to be this hard 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 or man

my boys he was fishing all night long and this brother caught absolutely nothing his story is found in Luke Chapter 5 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 that it's not a waste of your time your energy your investment that there is encouragement for here for anybody that's ever had a fishing trip gone bad Luke chapter 5 verse 1 and two sets 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 jzz that's another phrase for the Sea of Galilee and verse two says he saw somebody say he saw saw come on y'all he saw 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 SE 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 look like on this particular day he said in verse one 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 on this day and Luke wants you to know that they were pressing in on Jesus multitudes of people hoarding 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 not 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 that 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 she got close enough to Jesus she 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 and 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 and in the middle of all this chaos all this clamoring and all of this confusion verse two 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 dilemas 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 and in the midst of all of that chaos and all of that confusion we can feel like our little lives are lost in the cow Crow I need you to know that even if your mama doesn't know about your fishing trip and even if your spouse is unaware 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 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 sewing into the seeds the seeds you've been sewing 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 it would be easy for us to read something like that in verse two 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 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 and 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 orch 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 till it swaps places with the moon later on tonight he is 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 allmighty 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 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 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 and the scripture says that when he sees Simon Peter Simon Peter has already gotten out of the boat and he 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 SE several years ago I

was watching one of the um national news programs in the States called The Today Show and on the Today's Show back then this is many years ago they were doing a story on religions of the world that week every day they were taking a different religion and they were 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 I was folding all the kids' clothes and I was watching the news and 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 3 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 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 life they could fly halfway across the world and 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 they're climbing up to talk to their God little G an idol habach chapter 2:2 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 and then verse three 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 I will tell you that when I'm reading the scriptures just personally like in my own personal 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 inherent 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 three Jesus got into the boat is that just one verse earlier in verse two Simon got out of the boat in verse two Simon's out

in verse three 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 pull pit he chose the abandoned boat 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 H eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help because our help comes from the Lord and 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 that 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 Sovereign there

are many attributes that make up 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 like he is Holy omnipresent omniscient list goes on and on one of my favorites the one that endear 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 an

eternity passed 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 an 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 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 it's a blip on the radar screen of Time and Eternity and 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 it is what will allow you to do what Psalm 4610 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 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 before Peter 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 1:00 a.m. and then 2: a.m. in the we 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 and Jesus knew in his sovereignty there was the 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 pull pit there are seasons in our life God L 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 and 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 place 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 and 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 or the folks that work in the same office as you or the the the students at your school you University student or or Elementary student there are people that 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 life too 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 um 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 testim ony 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 he allows emptiness and then he steps into it and says I 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 four 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 been sitting in the church the one who has heard the Bible being taught with Clarity the one who has had an opportunity to see the testimonies of others that he's moved he looks not at the multitudes but he looks 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 and I can't tell

whether or not you actually believe me in shallow water we 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 depth often times 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 and 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 that 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 he can do what he says he can do and you're not going to experience that in the allow only in the deep and so he calls him out to deep water and Simon says exactly what I would have said if I would have been in that experience Simon says to him in verse five Jesus you do know we have already been fishing all night long right we we've already tried this Jesus you know what Jesus 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 CAU caught in the dark which is why he was fishing all night long and in shallow water we don't go to deep water in the middle of the day to catch fish what you're saying does not make sense and sometimes the way that you and I can know that God actually is Whispering to us is that what he's saying do quite make sense because his ways are not our ways and

his thoughts are not our thoughts and 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 and 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 that's your bidding I will go anyway because for the disciple there is no separation between the secular and the sacred there is no fishing verses teaching preaching uh committing myself to the scripture all of it is sacred my entire life as a disciple is sacred no matter what I'm doing in my 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 and Friday and Saturday it is all for his glory so if I'm a teacher then you teach that classroom for the glory of God and if I'm a lawyer well the bar association is getting ready to see what it looks like when God tries a case and if I'm a doctor well it's going to look like what it would 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 going Jesus let's

go 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 made him this is the same man who the disciples had looked at in another passage and they 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 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 to uh make sure that you make sure to get over the breach that you have with that particular person to seow financially 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 verse 6 and 7 says 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 and they cast it in again and it was 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 and there were so many fish that the boat began to sink that's a lot of fish right there and it says in verse seven that Peter looked over towards the shore and he signaled to his Partners remember this is Luke's writing he is the one that all likes

to give us a lot of detail so that we know and can have in our imagination exactly the picture of what is 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 didn't say anything 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 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 come and see how good God has been to me and with a fit boat full of fish they went back to the shore and when you have time

read the whole passage because 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 and 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 that 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 and 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 and 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 C 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 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 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 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

guard 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 and your finances on your job and you need to

make sure that Jesus is not just in the boat but 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 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 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 are assigned to any of our lives we thank you that right now that assignment is cancelled in the name of Jesus and by his blood that has been shed on Calvary and 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

and 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 take up residence in me in the person of the Holy Spirit right now in Jesus name in Jesus name come on everybody shout amen we trust that message really impacted and encouraged you today and if you'd like to find out more about what it means to have a relationship with Jesus then we would love to connect with you you can text the word Jesus to 49 89 or you can visit our website and one of our friendly team would love to get in touch and let you know about your next steps we'd also love

to invite you to come along to one of our campuses on Sunday it's a great place to meet people and to be part of a community so if you'd like to find out more you can click on the link below we hope you have a great week ahead and we look forward to seeing you again really soon