Brown's Daily Word 3-27-08

Good Morning,
The Biblical writers loved to tell true fish stories. We read about an amazing catch in Luke 5. In the Post-resurrection events of our Lord we read about another amazing catch in John 21.
Jesus’ relationship with the disciples began and ended with a miraculous catch of fish. The disciples met him in the midst of a miracle. It is important to obey Jesus. Sometimes the Lord puts us in situations where it seems like there is no answer. We have tried everything. We thought we knew what needed to be done. It worked before, so we think we already know how to handle it, and now someone tells us a simplistic answer that drives us up the wall. Perhaps the Lord is asking us to do something beyond what is simplistic; it may even seem like something foolish. It is counterintuitive. We have been fishing on the left side of the boat, and now you think fishing on the right side of the boat will make a difference? We have been working all night and you think one more cast is going to change anything?
Remember that the disciples were professional fishermen. They knew all about fishing, so they had to be humble enough to do what Jesus said rather than trusting what they had personally learned about fishing. Jesus wants each one of us to have a teachable spirit. I am convinced that having a teachable spirit is one of the most important characteristics that you can have in life. There are some people to whom you simply cannot tell anything, because they think they already know everything. They do not desire your advice.
King David, in his great penitential prayer said, “Restore unto me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me” (Psalm 51:12). We meet God when we come to the end of our resources.
The disciples had been fishing all night. They had done all they could do. They knew the best fishing holes. They knew how to use their tackle. They were experts at their trade, but they still had no fish. They were at the end of what they could do. Their resources were spent. That’s when God showed up. The point where we give up is often the exact moment that God shows up.
Simon Peter was certainly at the end of his resources. He had boasted that if everyone else left Jesus, he would still be faithful. Yet, he wasn’t. He had failed. He played the coward. He fell when he boasted that he would stand. He failed Jesus. When he first met Jesus he was very aware of his sinful heart. Before Peter had been called to be a disciple, at the first miraculous catch of fish, the Bible says, “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’” (Luke 5:8). At this second miraculous catch Peter would have liked to have said the same thing, but he was too ashamed to say anything.
It is interesting that the Greek word for charcoal fire is found in only two places in the New Testament. One is in this story where Jesus is cooking fish for the disciples' breakfast, and the other is when Peter stood warming himself after the arrest of Jesus in the courtyard. It was there that Peter denied the Lord and saw Jesus look at him as the cock crowed. As he smelled the charcoal fire on the shore this day, he must have been taken back again to that shame filled moment in the courtyard. Peter realized that he was at the end of his resources. He knew now that there was nothing good left in him.
Paul had the same moment of realization when he said, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out”(Romans 7:18). If anything good was going to come out of him it had to be through Jesus. It was good for him to give up thinking that he was someone special and realize that he could fail like everyone else, because that is when he really began to understand his weakness, the forgiveness of God, and the power of a new life. It was in his brokenness that he experienced Jesus in a new way.
It is good to come to the end of our personal resources and realize our weaknesses, so that we can give in to God utterly. We just turn the control completely over to him, and forget about personal success. We realize we cannot do anything on our own anyway, so we ask him to completely take over, and determine that we will do whatever it is he wants us to do. We stop trying to make things happen and we start to let him have his way. Amazingly, that is when things begin to happen. When we come to the end of ourselves we come to the beginning of God. When we come to the end of what we can do that is when we are ready to see what God can do.
When the disciples came to the end of their resources, that is when they had a miraculous catch -- 153 to be exact -- and all large fish. The catch was so large that they could hardly get the net to shore. But, in spite of the pressure on the net, it did not break or tear. And when they arrived on shore, Jesus already had breakfast for them. You have to wonder where Jesus got the fish. The fish were already on the fire before the disciples reached shore, and there was bread as well. Did Jesus go to the market, or did he miraculously create the bread and fish as he did when he fed the multitudes?
Jesus was always making something out of nothing, and he has not changed. He is still the same today. When everything you have tried in life turns out to be nothing, he can make something out of it. He creates fish and bread and wine. He gives health where there was only sickness. He gives strength when there was only weakness. He gives life where there was only death. He gives hope where there was only despair. He gives forgiveness where there was only shame. He is the God of new beginnings. When we reach the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of him.
Consider this. The fish were not on the other side of the lake; they were just on the other side of the boat. The answer is often as close as your willingness to obey and do what God is asking.
There is an interesting story in the Old Testament about a Syrian General named Naaman. One day he awoke to find that leprosy was beginning to spread across his body. His slave girl, whom he had taken captive in one of his battles against Israel, said to his wife: “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy” (2 Kings 5:3). So Naaman went to Elisha, the prophet, who did not even come out of his house, but had his servant go out and tell him to bathe in the Jordan River. He was to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times. Naaman was furious. He felt insulted that he had to bathe in a river of Israel. Besides, he wanted something miraculous, something stupendous, to happen. He said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy”. So he refused to obey and submit to what the prophet told him, and stormed off in a rage. Then one of his servants tried to reason with him, saying, “If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” Then the Bible says, “So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy” (2 Kings 5:14).
The answer was closer than he realized. It was humbling, but it was the thing he needed to do. It did not make sense at the time. He thought he had better water where he lived in Syria, but the answer was closer than that.
If you are going to fish, you have to put down your net where the fish are. If you are going to receive the answer God has for you, you are going to have to do what he says, when he says it, and where he says to do it. I have known many people who have prayed for an answer to their problems, but when the answer came they didn’t like it. They already had it fixed in their head how God should do it. They did not want to humble themselves and would not accept what God was asking them to do. They did not want to look foolish. They did not want to do the thing God was telling them to do. They wanted God to do it all. They wanted him to wave his hand and make it all go away. They wanted a supernatural, exciting answer. They would do a great thing, but not the small thing, the humble thing. But God is not asking you to do a great thing that will get lots of attention; he is only asking you to do the simple thing of obeying what he says, and do it consistently. Eugene Peterson calls it “a long obedience in the same direction.”
In Christ,
Brown


One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Worst Analogies Found in High School Papers
"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."

"She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again."

"The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't."

"McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup."

"From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30."

"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze."

"Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center."

"Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake."

"Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever."

"He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree."

"The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."

"Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like 'Second Tall Man.'"

"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."

"The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can."

"They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth."

"John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."

"The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play."

"The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon."