Cast Your Net

Luke 5:1-7
On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennasaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.

Sometimes I wish that I could have been a fly on the hills of the Galilean countryside, watching Jesus perform miracles, and seeing lives indelibly changed because of the extraordinary power that He possessed.

I tend to think that Simon was one lucky guy. Seriously! Can you imagine what must have been going through his head when, after fishing all night and coming back to shore empty handed, Jesus hops into the boat, tells Simon to throw his nets back in the water, and suddenly they are overflowing with fish?

We get a pretty good idea of the impact this miracle had on Peter, because shortly after coming to shore, he literally left his boat and livelihood on the shore of the lake of Gennasaret, and followed Jesus.

But the thing that strikes me about Simon is not that he got to be a part of a miracle, but rather that the miracle happened because he chose to have faith in Jesus by throwing his nets into the water, when all the evidence proved otherwise. And that experience changed the course of his life.

It was because of Simon’s faith in action that he got to be a part of the miracle.

It was because of Simon's faith in action that he got to take part in the work that Jesus was doing.

And the truth is, we don’t have to be a fly on that hillside two thousand years ago in order to watch the miracle, because watching a miracle is all we would be doing. Instead, God has called us to participate in the miracle by letting down our nets, and it is through that action that we experience Christ.