This last week I have been thinking a lot about the story in Luke 5 where Simon Peter is out fishing all night and he hasn’t caught a thing. Jesus comes along, tells him to lay down the nets again and they begin to break with the quantity of fish that fill them.
How often do I do things in my own strength and nothing happens? And then, simply responding to God’s prompting to do the same thing at a different time, I suddenly see supernatural fruit?!
So what if I waited for the word instead of striving to get things done? That would surely make me a lot more effective!
Because our mission team here is small at the moment, we have not been looking for opportunities to evangelize, only responding to the ones God gives us. We haven’t been looking for people to disciple – only responding to the relationships God has been opening. For example, a couple of weeks ago, a small group of women who we did not know, but who had heard about us being Christians, knocked on our door and asked us to start Bible studies with them! My husband, Mark, was able to lead one of them to making a decision to follow Jesus and they are all now doing the Alpha course together each week.
It makes me wonder how much of the Christian life should actually be about responding obediently to God rather then seeking out opportunities in our own strength. What do you think?
‘Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me’ – John 15:4
