By Samuel Calvelage
Have you ever had someone tell you how to do something when you already know how? You probably felt as if the person were treating you as a child, and it caused frustration.
It can seem as if whoever is doing this just wants to upset you. They may say something that is general knowledge, like telling you to put both hands on the steering wheel or not to give a dog chocolate. Maybe they didn’t intend to belittle you but, often, comments like this aren’t helpful and only make you resentful.
Jesus once made one of these seemingly unhelpful comments. In Luke 5, Jesus was teaching multitudes about the kingdom of God. As He was teaching, the crowd became so large that He got into a boat, pushed off from shore and taught from the water. Later, after the sermon was over and the people began to go home, Jesus turned to Simon, the owner of the boat, and told him to push out to the deep part of the lake to do some fishing.
Fishing today is generally done with a pole, a hook and worms. Simon and his fellow fishermen instead used large nets that could bring in hundreds of fish at a time. Simon grew up in Galilee and, because his career was fishing—he knew how to catch fish. But that night they had caught nothing.
Then, at this moment, Jesus asks Simon to let down his nets in broad daylight. He tells Simon to do something that was just not done.
Simon probably felt insulted to have this Rabbi tell him, a career fisherman, how to catch fish. Simon knew that he would come back with no fish. But still, he went out and let down the net.
As soon as he let down the net, it flooded with so many fish that the net began to break. He and his friends asked other fishermen nearby for help with this huge catch, but there were so many fish that the other boats began to sink as well.
None of us are planning to make a living by fishing, right? However, in every one of our careers, Christ is calling us to surrender our jobs and our goals to Him. Maybe you have been doing something that has worked out pretty well. Maybe your goals are lining up, and you’ve been making progress. But maybe your plans don’t always work, or you don’t even have any.
Just as Jesus asked Simon to trust Him with his night of fishing, Christ is calling us to trust Him with our careers. Luke 5:10-11 states, “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.” When we surrender our goals and our career and our relationships to Christ, He will work out something better than we could ever imagine.
So, I offer these three takeaways: (1) Allow Christ into whatever you are doing, (2) do things that God is calling you to do, even when you don’t know how it will work out, (3) and finally, open your heart to God’s plans even if they are different than what was expected.
