“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
For some, fishing is a sport. For others it is a livelihood, and for yet others a waste of time. It was all business for one man who would return home from a fishing trip with tubs of fish. He never missed. If there were fish anywhere, he got them. So, a neighbor who happened to be a game warden said, “I’ve never known anybody so consistent in catching fish. I’d like to go with you sometime.” So, the two of them took their flask of coffee and fishing tackle box and headed out on the lake at the crack of dawn the next Saturday.
Arriving at the fishing spot, the fisherman reached into his tackle box, took a stick of dynamite, broke off the cap and threw it into the water.” After a loud explosion, the dead fish started coming to the surface of the water. The game warden exploded, “This is against the law. You can’t do this.” Then the fisherman took another stick of dynamite, broke off the cap and handed it to the warden saying, “OK, are you going to talk or fish?”
He was all business. So was another fisherman whose name was Peter. He had fished all night and caught nothing. That’s when Jesus told him to launch out into the deep and put down the nets. Three things mitigated this. First. He had already tried it. He had fished all night and hadn’t even caught a minnow—nothing. Second—night fishing is always better. Night fishing requires a light—probably a lantern–which attracts the fish, which means their nets, which are hard to see in dark waters, become deadly. Then Jesus said go out into the deep waters. Peter knew that the best catches of fish are usually where fresh water feeds the lake—not too far out from shore.
What Jesus was asking seemed to fly in the face of what you normally did to catch fish. It is often at this point we find ourselves when we pray, asking God to do something. Natural circumstances tell you that you are wasting time and energy, but faith says, “Nothing is impossible with God.”
The whole idea of prayer, of asking God to do something which seems cannot happen apart from divine intervention, runs contrary to human logic. “It just isn’t natural,” you say. I agree. “We struggle with prayer not only because it is unnatural,” says Randy Roth in his little book, Powerful Prayerpoints, “but also because it adversarial. Prayer is warfare, and just getting to prayer is half the battle.”
The natural mind says, “Why pray if you can work around something? Why pray if you can use some muscle and push people into conformity with what you want? Why pray when you can’t see the one to whom you are speaking? None of that makes sense.”
Looking down into clear water makes the fish easy to spot, and when you see the adversary in your vision, you have an identifiable enemy or object you want to grasp. It’s when the water is dark, the sky is overcast, and the doctors pessimistic, that you have to say, “Nevertheless, at your word, I will trust you.”
There will always be conflict between what you see and what you must take by faith. That’s why the world labels you a fool when you decide to trust God. But trusting the living God and responding to His command, you can say with Oswald Chambers: “I am not many kinds of fools in one, but only one kind of fool—the kind of fool that believes and obeys God.” That is what simple faith is all about. Forsaking everything, I will trust God.
Resource reading: Read Luke 5:1-11 again from another version.
