"Called to go Further"

      A little over five hundred years ago a man named Ferdinand Magellan was commissioned by Spain’s King Charles the V (the grandson of the monarchs that commissioned Columbus) to find a Westward route to the Maluka Islands, aka the Spice Islands.  Magellan began this journey in the year 1519 with five ships and nearly 240 crew members.  The journey was anything but easy.  Constant storms raged against the ship, disease spread, multiple mutinies started.  For fourteen months Magellan and his men were searched for the Tip of South America so they could enter the waterways to the Pacific ocean.  Upon seeing it Magellan and his men wept, sang hymns, and shot the canons.  The maps which they had showed that it would only take a few more days, more possibly a few weeks at most to find the Spice Islands.  It seemed like the worst was behind them.

      But sadly the worst was not behind them.  The best maps of his day underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean by 80%!  Most of the maps from that day showed Japan only 100 miles away from Mexico….the distance was really over 6700 miles!  They did not experience any storms on the Pacific ocean, but they also had no wind or land.  Vast shortages came up, men started to die.  Food that they brought started to rot in the soggy tropical air.  Men started to eat the rats and eventually sawdust.  Finally they arrived at the coast of Guam.  That part of the journey that was only to take five days took 140 days.  By the end of the journey back to Spain only 18 of the 238 men remained. Magellan himself would not come home alive.

      The moral of the story is to make sure our maps are accurate. Magellan ventured into unknown territory with the wrong map, and sometimes the wrong map is worse then no map at all. Wrong maps give us false expectations, false hopes.  I say all of this because our modern world resembles a vast, uncharted ocean.  Most Christians would admit that we are in unfamiliar territory.  Landmarks have vanished, old cultural maps are out-dated.  How are we to navigate in this world?  

       The first way to navigate our world is by obeying Jesus when He calls us to serve Him.  Let first see that Jesus Calls us into the shallows in Luke 5:1-3 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+5:1-3&version=ESV). The scene of Luke chapter five was the Sea of Galilee.  The Sea of Galilee was in the North of Israel.  It was a lake that was surrounded by small towns and nobody really notable every came from that area.  The people were simple people, they were farmers, fishermen, moms, dads, sons, and daughters.  Most of them rarely traveled outside of the Galilee.  It was their home, it offered relative security.  Nothing really ever changed in the Galilee.  I would liken it to Mayberry North Carolina.  How many of you remember Mayberry?  The only excitement in the town happens when a goat eats a case of dynamite.

      That is nothing out of the ordinary happened until the Son of God named Jesus showed up.  Jesus began to turn the world upside down, or probably better right side up.  He healed, he committed miracles that could only be done by God, and most recently He taught with authority in the Temple declaring that He is indeed the promised one (Luke chapter four).  Jesus, the all powerful and yet most humble gathered along the calm, quiet, serene Sea of Galilee to deliver a vital teaching that day.

      Notice what happens in verses two and three (read).  Jesus makes a request of Peter, a well known fisherman in the area.  Jesus asked Peter to borrow his boat and to cast out into the shallow water.  This was not a major request, it wasn’t  much of an inconvenience for Peter.  It made total sense too.  If Jesus was a little further out onto the water more people would be able to see Him and hear Him.  Peter’s men were already done fishing (most fishing being done at night) and were washing and mending their nets.  Peter jumped at the opportunity to have Jesus borrow his boat. You can almost picture the other fishermen with him pushing the boat out.  The average fishing boat would have been around 28 feet long, 8 feet wide, and quite heavy.

      I picture Peter in this whole scene.  Peter probably beamed from ear to ear.  Peter would have been thrilled to allow Jesus to use his boat.  He would have considered it a great privilege.  He would have sat there with great satisfaction watching Jesus.   “He had allowed his resources to be used in the furtherance of the kingdom, and that was deeply satisfying.  Peter valued Jesus and he loved fishing, and now the two were being linked in the most exciting of ways (Gary Ingrig True North, pg 25).

       The Lord often does this with our life as Christians.  As we have our entry level position into His Kingdom ministry we realize that Jesus wants to use our skills, our abilities, our influence, our physical possessions or monetary gain.  Whatever our boat is, the Lord asks to use it, tells us to put out from shore, and allows us to watch as He uses our boat in a way that furthers His purposes (Gary Inrig True North pg 25).  It is so thrilling to allow Jesus to choose to use something that we own or have that makes a difference in the lives of other people.

      My heart, my burden is that we only have a few precious breathes on planet earth, only a few fleeting moments in time as we pass by the sun.  We need to make the most of it for the glory of God.  My heart is saddened to think of the times when I haven’t focused the right things, when my life has not been about lifting His name higher, when I want to selfishly hold that which God gave me and not be willing to allow Him to use it.  

      The shallows are not enough though in regards to our service and surrender to Jesus, Jesus also calls us into the depths (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+5%3A4-9&version=ESV).  Jesus finished His teaching and now in verse four looks at Peter and asks Him to cast out into deeper water.  The way the language reads is that Jesus commands Peter to go into deeper water.  This probably made Peter scratch His head (verse five).  Jesus was obviously done teaching, or at least that’s what Peter thought.  If anything Peter was expecting Jesus to ask to go back to shore, not to deeper water.  This was not what Peter was thinking.  This was something all together

different. The other thing about this is that Jesus does not make a request like last time, He does not merely ask to borrow the boat, He asks to have command of it.  There is a big difference between using something and taking command of it, but that is exactly what Jesus is doing here.

      Jesus then asks Peter and his men to cast down their nets. This doesn’t make any sense.  First of all the work of cleaning the nets is a laborious job.  It would take the men hours to get everything cleaned again after this second fishing voyage.  This was a total inconvenience.  And it seemed all wrong too, at least in the mind of the fishermen.  Mid-morning was a terrible time to fish, no fishermen in his right mind fished at that time of day.  Also fishing was best done along the shallow water, not the deep water.  Everyone on shore was watching too, they might have wondered if Peter and his men were going a bit batty.  And yet another thing about the passage, Jesus is the son of a carpenter and a carpenter by trade, what in the world is a carpenter telling a fishermen what to do?  That would be like a plumber telling a doctor how to do surgery, or me as a preacher telling marine biologist how to do his job.

       All eyes were on Peter to see how he would respond.  You can almost feel the reluctance of Peter in verse five. He calls Jesus Master, recognizing that Jesus was in authority. You can feel Peter handing over the command of his ship to Jesus, handing over everything that he loved and held dear, holding over everything that he felt he was an expert at.  Peter obeyed, even begrudgingly.

      Do we do that sometimes?  You better believe it.  We tend to

 let Jesus use our stuff, to borrow our things, but we do not do

 well when He takes command of our life.  When He literally

takes charge of our life, when He directs us to His will.  To

 when we are left with not other reasonable option other then

 to give obedience to Him, to step in faith though we do not

understand exactly what He is doing.  He will bring us to the

precipice of a cliff of which we do not see the bottom and

asks us to jump in faith, trust Him.

      If your anything like me we are ok with allowing the Lord to use our things for religious purposes, but there are times when we refuse to surrender a portion of our life.  We tend to think that we are experts, but beloved when our expertise is surrendered to His directions, WE BECOME EFFECTIVE BEYOND OUR IMAGINING.  He cannot develop fruit, we cannot expect to see the spiritual results that God wants for our life if we keeping holding on, if we refuse to allow Him to take charge.

       Remember the crowd was watching to see how Peter would react, likewise an unsaved world watches to see how we will respond to the call of God to serve Him.  We make no Gospel impact by allowing fear and familiarity to handicap us, to restrain us, to restrict us.  The world needs to see us live in obedience to Christ’s direction.  Let me give you a quick example, my wife works at a preschool.  Her co-workers are not saved, but they know that my family feels a call to missions.  They think the idea of living by faith is absurd, they think it is impossible, and to be honest that fear constantly battles my   spirit.  But I know what God has asked us to do, I know my True North, and they watch to see how God will provide.  I’m excited to let them see, through my families life what God can do if we obey.  So also the world needs to see what God can do, and beloved He can do above and beyond all that you can ever imagine or fathom.

      Notice what happens with Peter in verse six and seven (read).  They not only caught fish, but they caught more fish then they had ever caught before.  The blessing of God was

overflowing in their life.  The eyes of the people were on the

 work that Jesus was going in the life of Peter who simply said command my boat, even if it was said in reluctance and fear.  That is what God wants to do in our life, and not in material blessings, but He wants an unsaved world to see our nets bursting with the blessing of God.

       Peter saw want happened when Jesus commanded His life and there was no going back to normal for him.  Peter was

 not so much amazed by the huge catch as he was about Jesus.

Notice what Peter does in verses eight and nine.  Peter does

not merely call Jesus Master, He calls Him Lord.  This is no

mere stylistic difference, this is a transition of how Peter views Jesus.  Master implied Jesus was a great man, Lord showed that Peter understood that Jesus is so much more.  He is God.  In that moment Peter sees two things clearly that day, first of Jesus is and second who he is, a sinner, unworthy.  In light of the Lord’s grace and goodness Peter feels unworthy and overwhelmed.  A revolution was taking place in the heart and soul of Peter.

      Finally Jesus calls us to the ocean (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+5%3A10-11&version=ESV).  Peter was not alone in having his life changed, there were two brothers who watched the whole encounter and their lives were never the same either.  Jesus tells the men in verse ten “from now on you will be catching men.”  A clear call to these men to reach countless others with the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.  Until that moment their world was not much bigger then the lake they fished upon.  But Jesus was calling these men away from the shallow water, and even beyond the deep water, He was calling them deeper and deeper, He was calling them to a place of total and utter abandon upon Him.  Jesus was calling

these men on an adventure that would indelibly affect not just them but countless other people.

      Verse eleven says they left everything behind.  Though they did not totally understand it at that time, they were about ready to embark on a journey that would cause them to leave the familiar and consistent behind…God was calling them from the lake to the ocean.  How could they go?  One missionary once wrote “I looked into His (Jesus) face and was forever spoiled for anything unlike Him.”  O’ may we  love Him more then anything else in this world friends, may we be so captivated by Jesus that we would be willing to go whenever and however He wishes.

      Let me assure you of something, if we choose to live a life of

surrender we will quickly find ourselves our of our depths, in

uncharted water, but we are agents of His kingdom…and we

will find a door open that will help in reaching more people

and having a deeper Gospel impact in our community and in the world.

      Are you willing to raise the white flag and surrender?  Are

you tired of living a life that revolves around yourself?  Are you at the end of yourself because you have been pursing what you want instead of asking Jesus to lead and guide your life?  If you give in and give up to Jesus you will probably find yourself doing what you never thought you would do and you will find yourself places you could never have imagined.  God will expand you, in Christ we can rise to our God given potential…will you go?  Will you say Lord, here I am.  I’m not worthy, I’m not deserving, but in my inner most spirit I know you are stirring in me to do something for you.  I don’t even know what it is, but I know you are calling me out from shallow water to deeper water, I know you don’t just want to use my life, but you want to have command of life.  I want to lead a Gospel impact on those around me.  If that’s you, run to Him.  Serve Him like the gate’s been left open.