Radical obedience you say? Just you wait!

Luke 5:10-11 “…Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.’ 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.”

 

Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet…

When I moved to Germany, it felt like I was being “radically obedient” to God’s call.  I didn’t want to come here.  My parents witnessed a near mental breakdown as I stood in the empty kitchen of my brand new VA home. Three remaining canisters, still filled with their respective ingredients, sat staring at me.  I began to cry as I asked, what do I do with these?

My mom took my hand and gently said, “Heather, we will just throw the flour and sugar away.”

My brain was too overloaded to see rationally.  Together we dumped the ingredients out, cleaned the canisters, grabbed my massive, overpacked suitcases, and said goodbye to my home.  This move was radical obedience to my terrified heart.

However, while the decision to come here was, at the time, radical, it turned out to be a stepping stone for a boat load of many more radical choices in the coming years.  Getting here, in the end, wasn’t the hard part, after all.

Radical obedience normally isn’t a one-time decision.  Very often, there is a “pre-radical” choice that serves to position us for the ONE that is going to be truly life changing.

In Luke 5:1-11, Simon Peter “got it” and shows us what to do:

“One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.  He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets.  He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.”

Did you notice that there were TWO boats by that shore?  Jesus walked up and purposely CHOSE just one.  He had something specifically for Simon Peter.  Remember that these fishermen had been out all night without catching a thing.  They were both tired and defeated.  But when Jesus asked Simon Peter to use his boat, HE DID IT (1st right radical response).

“When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’  Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’”

Now, at the end of a long day, even at the wrong time of the day, Simon Peter made the decision, against all earthly rationale, to listen to Jesus and cast his nets (2nd right radical response).

“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…”  

AND THEN….He gets the catch of his life.  Perhaps, it was THE catch of ANY fishermen’s life.  A huge reward for his obedience.  You and I would likely pat ourselves on the back, sell that boat-load of fish, use the money to care for our families, build up our savings, and maybe take a month off to get some much needed R&R.  The prize of obedience!  We’d deserve it, after all.

But that’s not what happened.

“Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.’  So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.”

Jesus told Peter to LEAVE IT.  He told him to walk away from his boat (his livelihood) and to leave all those fish just sitting there.  And, ultimately, the men in the second boat – the one Jesus didn’t even choose – were the ones who gained his reward.

Jesus asked Peter to walk away from what he thought was his wildest dream coming true.

How many of us would have left our dreams on that shore?

Simon Peter heard Jesus calling him to be a fisher of men.  He didn’t say, “YES, LORD! I will leave everything to follow you!  Just give me a couple of hours to sell this awesome catch and give the money to my family.  THEN I will be ready.”

To me, that would have been a radical response in itself.  But, NO, he made the truly radical choice and left it all to follow Christ. (3rd right radical response – PETER’s TIPPING POINT)

Would he have been blessed if he’d said “yes” to allowing Jesus to minister to the people from his boat and stopped there?

For sure.

Would he had been blessed if he’d let down those nets, despite thinking it was a waste, and stopped there?

Absolutely!  Richly blessed, in fact.

But all of this was to get him to the ONE position which would make his ULTIMATE radical decision worthy.  And he got it right.

If you say you are ready for radical obedience, you are in for a wild ride.  When God asks you to do something so beyond yourself that you can’t figure out what to do with the flour sitting on your kitchen island, you’ve got to TRUST HIM and just DO it.

Following Him will never be the wrong choice.  And if He believes in you enough to choose YOUR boat, you need to know He also designed YOU for this mission.

Be. Radical.

Luke 12:48 tells us…”From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”