Have you ever worked all day or perhaps all night at your job and feel like you have just been spinning your wheels? Things don’t always go as planned. Do you get frustrated when this happens, does the tension set in, and do you feel like things are out of your control? Well….they really are! Yes, we make our plans and more often than not they probably fall into place, but for the times they don’t we need to keep on trusting God, keep on being courageous.
One night Simon and his companions worked all night fishing and didn’t catch a thing. Jesus told him to go out into deeper waters and drop his net. Simon and the others were probably all very tired and sleepy, they could have rolled their eyes and could have put up an argument as to why they shouldn’t go out again and I suppose they could have simply refused. Yet Simon knew Jesus, and tired or not, discouraged or not, he replied “But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
We know what happened next. When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. LK 5:6-7
Simon recognized the authority of Jesus, he trusted him, and he obeyed him. The fish even obeyed him! We’re not talking about a few fish here either, the nets were breaking and the boats begin to sink.
We are not to live in fear. Scripture is full of “fear not” and “do not be afraid”, why?? Because God will be with us. He is our shield, our peace our constant hope.
Like Simon, we are sinful men and women, and like Simon we are to “catch men.” The one thing that stops us regardless of our many excuses is FEAR.
We don’t have to be scholars and we don’t have to have all the answers. We are believers….fear not! Live the way Jesus has shown us, plant the seed and let him give the increase.
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We have had a guest teacher on Sunday mornings; he will be with us through August. He used part of the illustration I shared with you from Luke this past Sunday. He is one of those gifted humble men who you could listen to all day and all night and never fall out of the window. 
In his first class he wrote the following on the white board – Wisdom, Justice, Courage, Self-Control, Faith, Love Hope. These should be part of who we are…daily.
Rather than fearing what people might think of us or what they might say about us our real fear should be displeasing God.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Rom 12:1-2
(from THE MESSAGE)
Is fear the opposite of Courage or is it Conformity?
jkgarr