Worthy to follow
Samuel Prime · Tidal Church Moncton · May 17, 2026 · The Chosen series
Samuel Prime teaches from Luke 5, where Peter obeys Jesus, sees his sin in light of Christ's greatness, and leaves everything to follow Him. Jesus alone satisfies the heart's longing, so He is worth every sacrifice of discipleship.
More from Samuel Prime · The The Chosen series
Topics: Faith, Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] I don't know about you, but all that I have to bring Him is a hallelujah. Amen? Amen. Back in Halifax, I'll never forget the time that my friend wanted to take me to a coffee shop that I've never been to before, and being somebody who loves coffee, I said, "Sure, why not?" And so we go, and as we're standing in line, I don't know if you've ever been in a situation before where you're talking with someone or to somebody, and they keep looking over your shoulder or looking somewhere else, and you're trying to figure out, what is this person looking at? What are they... Anyways, so I was trying to figure it out, and eventually I came to the conclusion while we're standing in line at this coffee shop that he's looking at this pastry cabinet. And being somebody who loves pastries, I said, "Hey, man, what looks good? What do you recommend?" And he stops and he goes, "Man, these chocolate-filled croissants will change your life."
[0:55] And I'm like, "Man, I like chocolate, I like croissants. Let's go." And so we get out, we get our coffee and our pastries, and we go and sit down. And I don't know if he... It was weird. He was leaning in, and he's staring at me as I lift it up and I take a bite of it. I'm like, "This is kind of strange." I don't know if he was waiting for my face to glow as I ate it, or I'd levitate up off the chair, whatever it is, but he's waiting with, I would say, a level of anticipation. And so eventually he goes, "So, man, what did you think?" I go, "Well," I go, "to be honest, man, it tastes like a chocolate-filled croissant." And he was crushed. When I mean crushed, he instantly became defensive. He's like, "Well, they must have changed the recipe." I was like, "I don't know what's going on, because these are life-changing croissants." And you're probably sitting here this morning wondering why I'm opening this message or talking about pastries and coffee at a coffee shop.
[1:56] But it really made me think that truthfully, we do that in our day-to-day life. Right? It's not that the chocolate-filled croissant is bad or wrong. In fact, I will tell you, it was quite good. But the problem was is that I expected life from something that was never meant to give me life. I expected something from it that it could never give me. And I think truthfully, if we're being maybe a little bit too honest, I think all of us would have something in our lives that is like that. Maybe it's a job. Maybe for you, you expect your job, the thing that you're going to go and do, will be the thing that'll give you life. It'll be the thing that sustains you, that brings you joy, that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you're like, "Ah, this is it."
[2:50] Maybe for you it's a relationship that you're in that you've maybe experiencing things that you've never experienced before. Maybe it's a healthier relationship. Maybe it's a person that you're like, "This is it. This is 100% the thing that is going to give me life that I get out of bed for." And I'll tell you, those things aren't necessarily wrong. It's just I think sometimes when we go through life, we expect things from those that they were never meant and are never meant to give us, if we're being completely honest. I think we approach the things like the job and the work and the thing that we're looking forward to in our weeks, where we go, "This might be it.
[3:35] This might be the thing. This might actually be where the longing in my heart and my soul is answered." But we know that it tastes just like the croissant. That it's not bad, it tastes good, but it's just not life. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5, which is where we'll be here this morning, that's where we find Peter. We find Simon Peter, who's been working all night long, who is tired, who is frustrated, who probably had expectations of how that night was supposed to go that it didn't. He's probably frustrated out of his mind, and there in that moment is when Jesus enters the picture.
[4:24] That's when Jesus enters the picture. Jesus steps in, and truthfully, as I thought more about this, Jesus has a way of stepping into the picture when we come to the end of what we can produce on our own, and showing us and showing them where life is truly found. And so we're going to be in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5. I'll be reading out of the NLT translation. If you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to follow along. If not, it'll be on the screens behind me. And to just give you a moment to do so, I just want to say that this passage of Scripture, God has used quite formatively in my own life. I truly believe that this is a very powerful story that we see in the Scriptures, in which I'm hoping that this morning we will uncover what it means not only to follow Jesus, but to truly show you that Jesus is worthy of following.
[5:21] That He is the only one that you will find life and the longing that your heart and your soul looks for. That there is nothing else that can fulfill that except the person of Jesus. And so we read in Luke 5, "One day, as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on Him to listen to the word of God. And He noticed two empty boats at the water's edge, for the fishermen had left them and they were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So He sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. And when He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, 'Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.' "Master," Simon replied, "We worked hard all night, and we didn't catch a thing.
[6:15] But if You say so, I'll let down the nets again." And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear, and a shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish, on the verge of sinking. And when Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, "Oh, Lord, please leave me. I am a sinful man." For he was awestruck at the number of fish they had caught, as were the others with him. His partners, James and John, sons of Zebedee, were also amazed. And Jesus replied to Simon, "Do not be afraid. From now on you'll be fishing for people." And as soon as they had landed, they left everything and they followed Jesus.
[7:03] And so today, as we look and go to the Scriptures, this is a great passage, truthfully, on what it means to be, or we see a lot of truths of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. If you don't know what a disciple is, to put it simply, it means to be a follower, someone who has a relationship with Jesus, who tries to not only obey His teachings, but truly walk in His way. And so what I want to do this morning is I want to look at a few different fruits that we see of somebody who is a disciple of Jesus. You can call them fruits, you can call them markers, you can call them whatever, but there are some true principles of what it means to follow Jesus in these Scriptures. And so the first one that we truly see in the Scriptures is the disciples do as the master says. The disciples do as the master says. I want us to think about this for just a minute, okay? Jesus is teaching this large crowd, and so part of me goes, "Okay, well, where did this crowd come from?" And so if you go earlier in Luke 4, what you begin to see is you begin to see that Jesus actually healed Peter's mother-in-law shortly before this miracle. And so Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law, and then Jesus went to go seclude, to be away from people, and the crowds hunted Him down and they found Him.
[8:23] And there's enough people that began to gather around Jesus that He was actually pushed, as scholars would say, were pushed into the water to the point where there were so many people around Him that pretty much the option so that everybody could hear Him would be to get in Simon Peter's boat, so that way His voice would actually carry, and the crowd could actually hear in which Jesus was teaching. And what I find quite interesting about this passage of Scripture is what we actually see is we actually see the way that Jesus instructs us, the way that Jesus speaks to us, what Jesus asks us to then go and do, is often radically different than the way that we want to do things in our lives, or different than the ways that we would handle them, or that we would approach them. For example, in the Scriptures, it says Jesus actually commands us to love our enemies.
[9:19] I don't know about you, but when somebody's done wrong to me, man, my first instinct, fleshly instinct, is to not love that person. It's to maybe throw hands and get defensive and get upset. And so what we begin to see is we get to this character of Simon Peter, or this person of Simon Peter, and kind of what's happening in this passage is Simon Peter is a fisherman. It's what he does for a living. And so fishermen fish at night. And so Simon Peter fished all night long. He's tired. He didn't catch anything. He's cleaning these massive nets, which would've been heavy, and they would've been hard to clean with all the stuff that gets caught in them. And so Simon Peter is exhausted. I can only imagine he'd be frustrated when Jesus rolls into the scene and tells him to go out and to cast his nets again. I can only imagine there would've been a little hesitancy on Peter's behalf to say, "What do you know? You're a carpenter.
[10:10] I'm a fisherman. I do this for a living." But what's interesting is Simon Peter doesn't become defensive, although I would argue he probably didn't want to do it. What he does is Simon Peter answered, "Master." And the Greek word, of course, translates to master, but it also means leader or commander. And you see, Peter is starting to understand in this moment who Jesus truly is. He saw Him heal his mother-in-law. Peter, I'm sure, looked out at the crowd and said, "Man, this guy, there's something radically different about who Jesus is." He's already starting to understand who He is, but look what happens next. And Simon answered, "Master, we toiled all night long, and we took nothing.
[10:57] But at Your word, I will let down the nets." Everyone say this with me. I'll point to myself when I'm going to say it, then I'll do this when I want you guys to say it. Okay? We're going to do this. But at Your word. But at Your word, I will let down my nets. I will let down my nets. And we'll say it all together. But at Your word. But at Your word, I will let down my nets. I will let down my nets. And here's the thing. I think in the West, it's really easy to be under the tension or the belief that maybe God doesn't speak to us today. Maybe you haven't heard Him speak in a long time. Maybe you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus and you're kind of curious and you're kind of wondering. I'm here to tell you that God does indeed speak to us today. God speaks through His written word, His living word. We believe that these aren't just words on a page written for a bunch of old people. We believe that this is the living word of God, that when we read on it and feed on it, it has the ability to change the posture of our hearts.
[12:01] We also believe that God speaks through what I call the friends of God, people who are in communion and relationship with Him, who are followers of Him. We believe that God speaks through open and closed doors. We believe that God speaks here today. And so I want to start, if you are not a follower of Jesus, if you are somebody who isn't sure if God is speaking to you or not, simply approach the Lord and approach the Scriptures and say, "God, if You are real and this is true, then give me the faith to believe it." And then go to the Gospel of John and start wrestling with the Scriptures. I always say read for quality, not quantity. What I mean by that is don't feel the need to go and read 15 chapters at a time. Read a chapter, read two, ask questions. Why did this happen?
[12:48] Why did Jesus say this? What's the context of this? Why does this matter? And simply, before you do that, if what I said was too wordy, say, "God, would You reveal Yourself to me?" And do so with a humble heart. Say, "God, would You reveal Yourself to me in Your Scriptures?" Because this is an important mark of what it means to be a follower of Christ, to hear, to listen, and to obey the voice of the Holy Spirit. Somebody who is a follower of Jesus can say, "Because You, my Father in Heaven, say so, I will do it even when it doesn't make sense." Remember in this passage, Simon Peter is asked to do something that was diametrically opposed to everything he had ever been taught.
[13:39] It was the daytime. Fishermen fished at night. He was told to go out into the deep. Fishermen fished in the shallow water. To further the point, the nets they would've used would've been clear, and so in the daytime, the sun would shine on the water, and there'd be a glistening on the nets, and so the fish would see it, and they'd swim in the opposite direction, or they'd swim around it, or they wouldn't go into the nets, which is part of the reason why they actually fished at night. And so everything that Jesus asked of Simon Peter was diametrically different than everything he had ever been taught at any point in his career as a fisherman. And honestly, I truly doubt whether or not Peter wanted to do what Jesus was asking of him. He fished all night long. He was tired. I'm sure he was frustrated.
[14:25] He didn't catch anything at all. And I can't help but think that he knew that this man that was standing in front of Simon Peter was different. It would've been really easy for Simon Peter to say, "Jesus, you're a carpenter. What do you know about fishing?" And what stood out to me about this passage of Scripture, and truthfully of what I've observed in life and in following Jesus, when the Creator speaks, we have a longing as created beings, as created creatures, as created humans, to not just follow, but be curious about, to ask questions, and to follow the Creator.
[15:11] I truly believe that when the Lord speaks, that that creation actually obeys. So my question for you this morning is simple. What has God been asking of you lately that maybe you've been putting off because it sounds a little bit uncomfortable? What is it that you feel like God has asked you to do, but you've been putting off because it feels a little bit uncomfortable? Maybe it's something that God has asked you to do that is radically different from the way in which you would do it, but you know it's true because the Scriptures say so, because the friends of God are saying so, because the situations are saying so, but you're hesitating because it's different than how you would handle it. And I'd like to just put forth that the way that God moves and asks us to do stuff is often very, very different than how we'd do it.
[16:02] But His way is always better and leads to fruit in our lives. Disciples obey the Creator. So my question for you is truly simple. Is there something the Holy Spirit has been putting on your heart? Maybe something that you need to obey from His word, and maybe it's hard for you. Well, let me ask you this question. Is our Father in Heaven trustworthy? Yes. Is our Father in Heaven good? Yes. Does He keep His promises? And if the answer to those questions is yes, then even when things are hard or confusing or scary, it doesn't make sense to you, I would encourage you this week to say, "Master, at Your word. Father, at Your word.
[16:55] Because You say so, I will let down my nets." That's one of the fruits of being a disciple or a follower of Jesus. And so for you, if you're in the room, and you're not a follower of Jesus, maybe for you, for it's the very first time, you say, "God, I'm going to open up Your Scriptures. I'm going to start in the Gospel of John in the New Testament and say, God, would You reveal Yourself to me? Would You speak to me? I want to know You." And I would contend this morning that if you go to Him with a humble heart, the Lord will reveal Himself to you, and He will speak to you, and He will draw near to you. The second mark of a disciple or a fruit of a disciple that we see in this passage is disciples see their sin in God's greatness.
[17:41] And so we look at verse 8 where it says, "But Simon Peter saw it and he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.'" And what's beautiful about this passage is the word that I kept coming across in my study of this passage was the word undone. Peter became undone in the presence of the Lord. And to be truthful with you, I wrestled with that a little bit. I was like, how can I clearly articulate what it means to become undone in the presence of the Lord? I've experienced it, but how do I put it into words? And so I was talking to Dan Cooper, who is an Old Testament professor, a really solid guy, and the way that he put it to me is, he's like, "Well, think about what the opposite of being undone is."
[18:29] He's like, "The opposite of being undone is being put together." And it made me think that when you are in the presence of the Lord, the Lord wants you to bring everything to Him. He doesn't want you to put all the stuff you're going through, and thinking, and fighting through, and wrestling with in a pretty little bow and say, "It's okay, Lord, I've got it figured out." Because if we leave it to ourselves to figure life out, life's probably going to be pretty miserable. But when we sit and know and are in the presence of our Lord, and we become undone in His presence, when we say, "Lord, there's nothing in my heart that is off-limits to You. God, You are loving and full of grace, and beauty, and majesty, and holiness," there's something in us that begins to come undone, and what is in the depth of our hearts and our lives begins to become unraveled.
[19:26] And to be truthful with you, it blows my mind a little bit that Peter says, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." Because part of me goes, "Why would he not go to Jesus and say, 'Come closer to me.' Like, 'Give me a hug.' Like, 'Jesus, come here.'" And I've often heard the expression or the phrase put this way: The closer you get to God, the more sinful you feel. And to be truthful, I don't think that statement is fully complete. I actually think it's better put, the closer you get to God and His beauty, and His grace, and His holiness, and His majesty, the more aware you become of your need of His grace. Let me explain it this way. My mother- and father-in-law often will bring us their dog to dog sit when they go to Ontario, or they need to go visit somewhere and they can't bring her with them. Her name's Lexi.
[20:19] She's a beautiful dog. I only had a small dog growing up who did not shed. She did not shed at all. She was a small dog. The amount she did shed, it wasn't really a big deal. And this is a fairly large dog, and she sheds. It could be the dead of winter, and she would shed like crazy. I'm like, "How do you go outside and you're not freezing cold?" And so what I noticed, though, is I would vacuum the house. And so one morning in particular, the dog was there, there was hair everywheres, and I'm like, "I'm going to get a head start on this. I'm going to vacuum, and it's going to be perfect." And so that's what I do. I get up before sunrise, I vacuum the apartment, I'm feeling good. I sit down to have breakfast. I'm sitting there eating a piece of toast and a banana and whatever, and the sun then comes up over the horizon and shines into the apartment. And I look and I'm like, "There's hair everywheres.
[21:10] There's dust everywheres. I'm breathing that in, then I'm eating toast. That's disgusting." But the truth is, it wasn't that fur and that hair wasn't everywheres. It's that I could only see it when the light actually shined in on it. And that's the same way, that's the same thing that happens, the same principle happens with the Lord. The more you walk with Him, the more you experience and know His light that shines into the dark areas of our life, the more we see our sin, the gross stuff, the stuff that it'll be revealed to you. And two things should happen in that moment. Two things should happen in that moment.
[21:57] The more you see of your sin, the more you should see of His greatness, of how amazing and awesome He is, of His goodness. And true disciples see both of those things, and then they let His greatness, and His goodness, and His grace change them. Notice how Peter blurts out, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man," and what does Jesus do? Does He go, "Ew, Peter, get away from me. Gross." Does He go, "Actually, never mind. I'm going to find somebody else to be My disciple." No. He doesn't do that at all. Read the story. The very next thing He does is He calls this broken person into a life of walking with Him as His follower and His disciple.
[22:50] That broken people can become great disciples of Christ, I am so thankful for that. Look at verses 10 and 11. "And Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.' And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and they followed Him." So these fishermen leave everything that they knew behind, everything that they were familiar with. Scholars would suggest that Peter was relatively successful. He had two fishing vessels. He had partners who worked with him, and so he was doing pretty well for himself, and yet when they met Jesus, they left all of that behind to follow Him. Keep in mind, the catch of fish that they had, the miraculous catch that filled both boats to the point of them sinking, would not have been enough money to sustain them for the life of ministry in which Jesus was going to call them to financially.
[23:44] Wasn't enough. And so the principle that we get from these scriptures is being a disciple of Jesus requires us to sacrifice. It requires us to sacrifice and lay down things that we desire sometimes. It requires us to sacrifice our time, our energy, our efforts to make disciples who make disciples. And I think it's a really hard word for us, sacrifice, in the West. I think it's a really hard word for us in the West because oftentimes we think that faith and following Jesus is all about us, and how our lives can be made better, and what we can get from God, but that's not a true faith. That's not a true gospel.
[24:32] Faith, simply put, is demonstrated trust in the gospel. The false gospel that I believe so many of us have believed at one point or another is that Jesus came to make bad people good. That is a lie. That is not the truth. Jesus did not come to make bad people good. You cannot get to heaven by being a good person. The only way to heaven, the only way to eternal life, the only way to enter into the kingdom of God here on this earth, is through Jesus and Jesus alone. Jesus did not come to make bad people good, He came to make dead people alive. He came to give us life. He came to fulfill the yearning for the Father that is in our hearts, and that requires us to sacrifice.
[25:20] Requires us to sacrifice, and we don't like that word. I think if we're all being honest, or if most of us are being honest, I think a lot of us, we hear that word sacrifice, and there's something in the pit of our stomach that goes like, "Oh, what is He going to ask me to give up?" Maybe some of us think about money. That's not where I'm going with this at all. One of the number one marks of being a follower of Jesus isn't our education, it's not our learning, it's not what we can get. It's are we making disciples? Are we sacrificing to make disciples? To go out of our way to reach people who do not yet know Jesus. The fishermen leave everything behind, including the best catch they've ever had in their entirety of their lives. They left everything behind because Jesus was that important to them.
[26:09] And I think we've lost this ancient day definition of sacrifice in our modern day. I think we've lost that a little bit. We come to church maybe when we don't have sports. We wake up and spend time with the Lord in the early mornings when maybe we don't have a meeting that morning, or when maybe we didn't stay up super late at night. But if we read the New Testament afresh again, you'll see that following Jesus is a sacrifice. It's not just about convenience. Leading others to Christ is a sacrifice. But let's think through this word for just a moment. Because I think the reason that so few of us sacrifice for others and for the Lord is because we don't understand what it means.
[26:58] To sacrifice, we think it means we have to give something up because, well, shucks, it's what I'm supposed to do." Or, "Like the Lord told me to do it, so I have to sacrifice." But that's not what sacrifice means. This is what it means to sacrifice. To sacrifice means to give something up for the sake of something better. Think about athletes. They give up time with their friends and their family so someday they can go to varsity or they can maybe go pro. There's many of us in this room that sacrifice financially so someday you can put a down payment on a home or something that you're saving up for. To sacrifice means to give something up for the sake of something better, and I believe that the same principle applies to spiritual sacrifice.
[27:46] How is Peter able to leave his fairly successful fishing business behind to go and follow Jesus? Notice how he didn't guilt himself into it. He didn't go, "Well, Jesus is here and I was making money, so shoot, I guess it's the right thing to do." That's not what Peter did. He didn't do it just because it's what good godly people do. He sacrifices because he saw something better. He saw something different. He saw God Himself walking on this earth, who healed his mother-in-law, who when he spoke it, He brought so many fish into his boat that it began to sink. And he goes, "This is better, that there's nothing in this world or this life that can compete with the person of Jesus."
[28:35] No matter how hard we look, no matter how hard we search, no matter how hard we look for, we will never find something better than the person of Jesus. Peter goes, "I'm doing this, so I will sacrifice for a big God." He goes, "I'm doing this, so I'll sacrifice for a big God." But listen to this: you will never sacrifice for a small God. You will never sacrifice for a small God. And far too many of us, the God that we worship in our minds, the God that we sing songs to, the God that we live for, is too small. And I think that's why we find it hard sometimes to sacrifice for Him. But the real God, when you truly experience who He is and when you know Him, there's something within the core of your being that desires to sacrifice for Him, that desires to go out of your way so that others can experience the transforming grace that He has done in your life.
[29:38] And I'd like to maybe contend a little bit with you here this morning that most of us that are in this room are as a result of not only Christ Jesus' sacrifice for us, but also somebody else's sacrifice in our lives. And here's the truth: when you experience the person of Jesus, your life becomes radically transformed. He gives you a new heart and a new life. As followers of Jesus, we should have that burning desire within us, a fire in our hearts and in our lives to then go and reach other people so they can experience the same grace that has saved us.
[30:29] That's why prayer is so important. That's why God's Word is so important. That's why the merger between your heart and your mind is so important. So my question for you is: how is God asking you to sacrifice? Maybe for some of you, God is putting on your heart that you need to start a Bible study in your workplace. Maybe for some of you, there's somebody that you see every day when you drive home after work or after church or wherever, that you feel the need to actually bring them into your home and cook a meal and break bread with them and share the things that God has done in your life. Maybe for you, it's actually that you need to go ahead and start a neighborhood barbecue in which you can then have an opportunity to not only meet and know who your neighbors are, but start building relationships in which God may open doors so that you can share what it is He has done in your life and how good and gracious He is.
[31:28] And sometimes I think that we forget that sacrifice, chasing after the person of Jesus, spending time with Him, being in His presence is actually what helps most of us grow. That actually is what makes us grow. I read something not terribly long ago about lobsters, and I love how practical this is, truthfully. And I read something a little bit ago about lobsters. And so lobsters, every so often, have to get rid of their old shell, which I didn't know. I found that pretty interesting. And so when they get rid of their old shell, they have to form a new one, and so they're always growing, and if they don't get rid of their hard shell, what actually happens is they become fixed in it, and they get stuck in it, and the lobsters die. I'm like, "Wow, that's really encouraging." And so what happens is lobsters actually have to get rid of their old shell, and there's a period of time in which they are vulnerable to predators.
[32:23] They're vulnerable to people coming in or the other creatures coming in and attacking them, and they aren't protected. And so they actually have to take off their old shell, and they begin to grow the new one underneath. And I can't help but imagine how that lobster must look back at that old shell and go, "That looks pretty good right now. That looks pretty safe and cozy right now." And I think in a lot of ways, we're like that lobster, that if we don't get rid of that old shell, we can't grow. And as I wrestled with this message, I came to the hard conclusion that many of us, and myself included in this, have stopped sacrificing for Jesus because others have let us down, or we had expectations of God that we think that He didn't meet.
[33:31] I think many of us have stopped sacrificing because there's something that we expected from God that He didn't give us. There's something that we expected Him to do or move in that He didn't do it the way that we wanted, or we didn't think the way that it played out, so we stop sacrificing for Him altogether. We stop doing as the Scripture said, which is to pick up your cross daily and to follow Him. And it could be a variety of things for you in this room. Maybe it's that job that you think that God promised you that you didn't get. You're like, "Man, God, You promised me this." Maybe it's a diagnosis that you prayed for, for healing for your son or your daughter, your mother, your father, your grandparents, whoever, and you prayed hard and harder and harder, and you got other people praying for you, and then eventually they went on to pass away.
[34:20] I don't know what that disappointment is for you. I don't know what that thing is, but I think we all have had moments in time in which it didn't shape out like the way that we thought it was going to shape out. And I think somewhere along the way, what happened is we go... Our hearts become hardened. But we go, "God, man, this isn't how this was supposed to play out." But let me tell you something. Our God is so worthy of putting our faith and our trust in because the way in which He moves and He works is so radically different than what most of us are used to, than what most of us would do, how most of us would handle things.
[35:12] And when we truly believe and know that God is good, even when we're in the worst spot of our lives or we think it's the worst spot of our lives, God is still faithful. God is still good. God is still a provider. And it made me think of Simon Peter in John chapter 21, where after Jesus was crucified, Simon Peter actually went on to say, "I'm going fishing. I'm going back to my nets." And scholars suggest that there could be a few reasons for that. Maybe that it was being disobedient to what the Lord had asked. Others would suggest maybe that he just went back to what was familiar. But what I do know is that Simon Peter went back to something that he was not made for.
[36:04] Simon Peter was not made for the nets of fish. He was made for the nets of men. And I think sometimes what we do is when we're faced with a disappointment, a disappointment in the Lord, what begins to happen is we go back to our nets. When we lose hope, we go back to our nets. He returned to what he was not made for. And I think we hear the word sacrifice, and there's a point in our lives where we first come to know the Lord, and we become so on fire for Him. We want everybody to know Him. We want everybody to know about Him. We want lives to be transformed. We want to see what God has done in our lives happen in other people. And then somewhere along the way, something happens. There's an unmet expectation, there's an unanswered prayer, there's something that you didn't hear from God, and that you really wanted Him to do something in.
[36:58] And somewhere along the way, we make the decision, either consciously or subconsciously, to say, "I'm going back to my nets." And I'd like to point this out truthfully that as harsh as this is, I don't believe that Jesus is too concerned about your earthly comfort. I believe that we have made an idol out of comfort. I strongly believe that we have made an idol about what is comfortable for us and what is convenient for us and what we want and what we want to do with our lives and what we think we're good at and what we think we should do. But here is the truth. When Jesus calls you away from your nets to come and follow Him, you lose yourself to follow Him. You lose yourself to gain new life. He reorients the desires of your heart.
[37:54] He gives you a new path to walk on. He gives you a new calling. I think so many of us that something happens and we forget that, and we walk away. I equated to, and I've talked about this before, it's what Dallas Willard calls a vampire Christianity or vampire Christians who say, "Jesus, I want a little bit of Your blood, enough to save me, enough to get me into heaven, but I don't actually care to look like You or follow You," or no desire to follow or do anything that Jesus said or did. And many of us have slowly drifted into a version of Christianity that wants the benefits of Jesus without the surrender of following Him. But Jesus very plainly in the scripture says that "If anyone would come and follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." And I don't know about you, man, but that cross looks pretty heavy.
[38:55] That cross looks pretty heavy. And for a lot of us, I think we're afraid of change. We're afraid of the unknown. We're afraid of what it might cost us to follow Him. But I will tell you something this morning, that most people in this room are a testament to somebody risking the pursuit of Jesus. And I would urge you if you've lost that pursuit, if you've never been in that pursuit, if you're curious about that pursuit, to risk the pursuit of Jesus. In many ways, the fastest way for you to grow, not even the fastest way, the best way, the only way is for you to let down your nets and to follow Him.
[39:47] Because He is the only one that will fulfill the longings and the desires of your heart. He is the only one that will fulfill that searching that you do in life. That searching that you do of is this the next thing? I'm here to tell you that Jesus is that thing and that person. And so I don't know where you are this morning. I don't know if you're somebody who's never heard the Lord speak before, or you're somebody who walks with the Lord and hears Him speak and hears Him move. Or maybe you're somebody that used to, but you went back to your nets. My call for you this morning is, it's time to come back to Him, to lay down your disappointments, to lay down the things that you think that God owed you, to lay down whatever it might be, any ideas that you have of Him, and let God and His scripture speak for who He is.
[40:42] I don't think we've also made an idol out of comfort. I think we've made an idol of what the world thinks of us. We've made an idol of not being weird. We have made an idol of performance. And I think it becomes an idol when we care more what other people think of us, when we care more what the world thinks of us, but we don't go here, and we don't search for what God says is true about us. What the Creator of the universe who knit you together in your mother's womb says about you. And as we close, my ask of you is to risk the pursuit of Him. And so for you, if you are to follow our Jesus for the first time, maybe that's you open up the Gospel of John, which is in the New Testament, and you say, "God, would You reveal Yourself to me? There's something in my life, a longing in my heart, that I'm maybe coming to the conclusion on that You are the only one that can fulfill."
[41:39] If you're a follower of Jesus, and maybe you've gone back to your nets, and you've maybe strayed away from Him and you've drifted away from Him, my encouragement to you would be, go back to the one who called you. Go back to the one in whom you said you would follow. And if you are a follower of Jesus, my encouragement, my challenge to you would be to go and sacrifice. Invite somebody into your home. Start a Bible study in your workplace. Open up the scriptures. Make it so that you are available and say, "Holy Spirit, do whatever it is You want to do. God, I give You the space to move. God, this life that I live is not my own. It is Yours to do as You please." And so as we pray, I would just ask that you would ask the Lord to speak to you, and you would sit, and you would reflect upon what maybe it is the Lord is stirring inside of you.
[42:31] Because we believe as followers of Jesus that He speaks to us today. We believe that He speaks to us today, that we need to posture ourselves in a way that can listen to Him. And what might He do? What might He change? What might He transform? What might He redeem? What might He renew if we were willing? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Holy Father, oh, we thank You. God, I thank You that You speak today. I thank You that You move today. I thank You that You did not come to make us good people, but You came to make us alive. And Lord, I pray that anybody under the sound of my voice, whether they're a follower of You or not, would hear Your still small whisper, hear Your still small voice.
[43:27] I pray for those that maybe have disappointment, that have unanswered prayers, who have things in their lives that have gone unresolved. Father, I pray. I pray, and I ask, and I even plead that You would show them the light, that You would show them who You are, that You would show them that You are good and You are trustworthy and You have so much more in store for them than what they even want and desire for themselves. And Lord, I pray that we as Your church would be Your hands and feet. I pray that You bring names to mind. I pray that You would give us words of wisdom and knowledge that we can speak life into people, God. Let us not be a people that are divisive.
[44:13] Let us not be a people that cause strife. Let us not be a people that have disagreements with one another. Let us be people of love. Let us be people that are sons and daughters of You, that we go out into the world, and we're radically different than anything they've ever experienced. May they encounter You, Lord. Lord, we love You. We worship You and we praise You, all in the powerful name of Christ Jesus.