As you begin to grow and become blessed, things can become really dangerous. You must remember that your life is all for and all about Jesus.
‘When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. ‘ Luke 5:4-7
In Bible school, they will teach you how to navigate the early stages of life when you don’t have any money and how to survive those early frustrating days but they don’t teach you how to survive success. And success is when things get really dangerous.
Every group of disciples has one Judas, every deck of cards has two Jokers, every garden has a snake. And the more God begins to bless the more those things begin to come to the surface and things get dangerous.
The even bigger danger occurs when God begins to bless and as humans, we come under this illusion that we are successful and blessed because of something that we did or because of who we are. We start off with a pure heart but then it becomes about who we are or what we’ve done.
Pride has no place in the kingdom of God. It’s all about Jesus.
Unity
In the story of John, we come across the word schizo which in English translates to schism. It is used to describe division in the body of Christ and within the church itself. The enemy has a very keen interest in bringing division into the ranks of God because he knows that if he can do that then he can rip the nets apart and the harvest will be lost.
Whenever the enemy wants to bring down a home, family, or ministry, his number one strategy is to bring schism. It looks like gossip, slander, back-biting, infighting, and revelry.
Every single day this is something that the enemy is working on bringing into your lives and community. The more successful we are and the more we do for God the more of a target we become for the enemy and the more he tries to do this. He would try to bring about situations that would cause the harvest to be lost.
Do not tolerate it. Close it down and shut the nets.
Obedience
Luke 5:4 says, “And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’”
Jesus commanded them to let down the nets but instead, they let down a net instead of nets. Maybe they thought that Jesus was going overboard and doubt and fear arose. Maybe they didn’t want to look stupid in front of their fishermen colleagues.
Whatever the underlying motivation was, what remains true is that they did not obey God and their lack of obedience almost caused them to lose everything that was in their nets.
This might be the case for you. Maybe God will pull back the veil of eternity when you get to heaven and allow you to see what might have been in your life if you had simply been willing to obey, and how much you cheated yourself by not stepping out and obeying the word of the Lord.
Many times we comfort ourselves in half measures. We obey part of the word and see results, we get comfortable, and make this the norm. But if you only knew the catches and harvests that have been lost because of a failure to obey. Partial, selective, and delayed obedience is disobedience.
Obedience is only the real thing when it is total, immediate, and indiscriminate. That’s what God responds to.
Obeying the voice of God begins with your primary source of inspiration. This is not your dream, vision, gut feeling, or the thing that some prophet said to you at the altar. There is one foundation for the word of the Lord in your midst and it is the word of God. It is the Bible.
A person who is not reading their Bible does not know God’s voice and a person who is truly hungry for the word of the Lord is digging into the word because it contains His utterances, meter, and tone of His voice.
Pride
In Luke 5:7 after they caught the great haul of fish, they filled both boats so that they began to sink. The disciples were out fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus said to throw your nets on the other side of the net and although they found this request crazy, they listened to him, but they cast only one net. The water was filled with so many fish that it began to pull the boat over to one side, almost tipping over. It’s at that point as the net is being pulled that they begin to break.
In John 21:8, the other disciples followed the boat towing the nets full of fish behind them. Rather than trying to get their nets into the boat, they haul the nets into the shore where Jesus was waiting.
In the first story, the fishermen tried to pull their nets into the boats. In the second story, they took the fish to Jesus and this is why the nets didn’t break.
You have to remember what this is about. If it ever becomes about you, then you are lost. If it becomes about your name, reputation, and platforms you are lost already. It should not be about you. It’s only a moment of time before the nets break and the harvest is lost. At the end of the day, God is not going to compete with you for that which He has died, which is the souls of human beings.
As long as we stay Christ-centered, we bring people to Jesus and it stays about Him, we cannot fail. If it’s not about Him we cannot succeed, but if it is about Him we cannot fail.
Satan at one point, was more pure than you and blameless. He was not corrupted because of evil desires; he did not have an insatiable appetite for money or a fetish. What brought him down was his beauty and his splendor. It made him proud and turned this angel into a demon.
Ezekiel 28:15-17 says
“You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.”
Pride is very deceptive because the more of it you have, the less aware you become. The moment you say that something doesn’t apply to you, that is a symbol of the pride you possess.
Any time you feel tempted to bring fish into your boat, beware, because there is an infection that is set into the heart. The world needs to see Christ and Him crucified
John 15:21 says, “When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’”
God is also asking you that question. Do you love Him more than the harvest, souls, and ministry? Fall in love with Him again, not what He does, but who He is. It’s truly all about Jesus.
Application Questions
How are you letting pride into your life? Are you letting fish into your boat?
In what ways is the enemy trying to bring division in your family or in your ministry?
