God has been speaking to me lately that
the deepest things he will do in my life start shallow. I know this
sounds like a contradiction of everything you would normally hear in
a pulpit, because we want a deep sermon, a deep word from God, one we can't
understand so then we don't have to obey. But when I was reading the text, I
was drawn to verse 11. I was like, "Yes, Lord! I want to follow you
wherever you lead. Though none go with me, I still will follow. Yes,
Lord! I just want to go into the unknown. I will follow you, Lord. Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death." The Lord was like, "Kid, you haven't even read
your YouVersion Bible plan. Start shallow." That's about the deepest thing you could
do. Leave everything and follow him. But notice in the verse. It's in the verse. It's in the Bible. I don't understand
everything about decision-making science, but I understand something about Scripture.
I understand a little bit about Scripture. It said that the boats were at the water's
edge. The crowds were coming around. In verse 3, he got in a boat and asked him to put out a
little. I stopped when I read the word little. I realized that before they left
everything, they did a little thing. The reason we keep on deciding to do stuff, and
then we go from deciding to disruption to denial… It's a cycle. Deciding to disruption to denial.
The reason sometimes is because we stay too deep. I want to give you a story I never had the guts to
share before right now, but something about this year has made me a little bolder. I don't know
if it's just that I think Jesus is coming back next Thursday and it doesn't matter
anyway, so get me out of here. Whatever. I feel a little conspiracy theorist
rising up in me this year. I don't know. I never had all that before, but it's coming now. Anyway, when I was going through a period of
criticism… And I'm not going to live in it, because God knows. It was about this time in
2013. Many were in the church. It was weird, because it was more criticism
than we had ever experienced as a church. It kept coming. That's
all I want to say about that part. I lived in fear for six months. To really tell you
the extent of it, let me tell you the text I sent to Chunks after about three months of it. I said,
"If anything happens to me and I don't make it, you've got Holly and the kids. Right?" I wasn't
suicidal. I just didn't know if I could keep day after day after day… I was trying to
preach through it, and I didn't know if I could or something bad would happen. I
didn't know what bad would happen, but… So, during that time… That'll make you pray,
and it'll make you pray deep things. "Lord, I need your peace. I need your vindication.
Many of the things they're saying are not true, and they're twisted. I don't want to keep
having to deal with this, so, Lord, deliver me." When I tell you what brought me peace,
you are not going to be satisfied. While I was praying the deep prayers… I
found some prayers in the Psalms where David was praying stuff like "Smash
my enemies' heads against a rock." I found some great Scriptures during that time
that I never saw before. Very meaningful to me. But my answer wasn't on my Bible
app. It was on my Twitter app. When I decided to delete Twitter… I know that sounds shallow, but that little… I
don't even know if people use Twitter anymore, because I haven't really been on it in seven
years. They put stuff out. That's not me. That's somebody on a computer somewhere putting
Bible verses out in my name. I can't go on there. I was telling my friend, "It's like when I deleted
all this stuff…" Now, I'm going to tell you what God is going to speak to some of you through
this sermon today. He's going to tell you to delete something that is defeating you. You think
victory is so deep. The battle is the Lord's, but the app is yours. The brain
is yours. The decision is yours. When I deleted Twitter… I told
my friend, "It's like I thought there were mountain lions in my yard waiting to
attack me, and then I saw it was just squirrels." I thought, "I can't survive it"
because I was surrounded by squirrels. I know it sounds so silly. I prayed. I said,
"God, I can't tell them to do that. There's a lot of stuff going on in people's lives.
I need to go to the book of Revelation. The mark of the Beast, 666, the number of the Beast." God said, "Some of the things they're praying for me to deliver them from I have
given them the power to delete." Can I preach a shallow sermon? Jesus
didn't call them to leave their boats. He called them to push out a
little. It's a little decision. I was talking to a friend about depression. They
said, "Have you gone for a walk today?" I'm like, "You don't hear me. It's spiritual warfare." They
said, "No. I said walk, not war. You're trying to be so deep. You don't need God to give you
the victory; you need to go get some vitamins." I'm not saying the problem isn't deep. I'm
saying that sometimes the solution is so simple. "Lord, give me a simple solution." Not just what
they did. "Put out a little bit from the shore." Hey, leave a little bit of space. What one
thing are you willing to do differently with this addiction that's so deep in your
life that you don't think you'll ever be free from it? Will you do
a little thing different? That little event, that little thing, led to
something so massive Peter would be the one who would preach the Holy Spirit into the earth in
Acts, chapter 2. If you read his sermon in Acts 2, you'll be like, "This dude is deep." He
didn't start deep. He started shallow. I don't want you to think it's always that deep. It was a little decision. How many believe
that's a little decision? "Just put your boat out a little bit and let me use
it for a few minutes while I teach." That's a little decision. "I think I'm
going to watch Elevation Church today." That was a little decision, but God can
do a deep thing with a shallow start. I think if I were the Devil, I'd try to get you
so overwhelmed with something that felt so deep that you wouldn't do something so simple. I think that's his strategy, but God's
strategy was very simple. Remember, these are the ones Jesus wants to use. It's
a little bit of a trick, because he's asking them to carry him in the boat, but he
really wants them to become boats so the gospel can go out through them. It's really
a picture of the purpose he has given them. This helped me. He put out a little bit, and then Jesus preached, and then (verse 4),
"When he had finished speaking…" First the word. "…he said to Simon [Peter], 'Put out into deep
water, and let down the nets for a catch.'" "Now let's go deeper. Put out a little. Now put
down the nets. Don't try to do too much at first. Don't leave the boat yet. I need it right now. Put out a little. Put down the nets." I think this
is really powerful. I don't think it's a small thing. I really don't. The more I study it, the
more I realize that every decision that others see contains millions of little
decisions that were invisible. "How could they do that? Why would they make that
decision?" There were a million little decisions. When they said, "I do," they never thought
there would be a time when they didn't. I remember early in our marriage getting
in a fight with Holly on the phone, and one of us hung up on the other
one. I don't know which one hung up on the other one. I really don't remember
the details of this. Maybe conveniently. But I remember one of us hanging up, and
I remember talking about that and saying, "We're never going to do that again. We're never
going to hang up the phone on each other in the middle of a conversation again." Because nobody
walks away from someone they gave their heart to all at once. Decisions have momentum. So, today
I hang up on you; five years later I hate you, because I put out a little.
See, this works both ways. Nobody decides, "I would like to be straddled
with an addiction that will follow me to the grave." Nobody decides that. What I do decide
sometimes is "I don't want to feel the way I feel, so if I do that, I won't have to feel
this." The decision has momentum. Isn't it a horrible thing for somebody
who's 11, 12, or 13 years old, that they can look at something on their phone, and
out of curiosity they can see something that will take them into a place that
will wrap them with something that will limit them the rest of their life
from being able to be free mentally? Nobody decides, "I want to have something
that masters me the rest of my life." That's not the decision. But decisions have
momentum. I was impressed by what they did. "Push out the boat and let down the nets."
These are the nets they just got done washing. These are big nets. One guy said they were 25
feet in diameter. So, it takes a long time to clean them, and they're made of linen, so
if you don't clean them, they're going to rot and they're not going to last very long. I
thought it was cool that they were just fishing. They didn't go out that day to decide to
follow Jesus. They went out to catch fish. Can we talk about daily decisions for a moment? This is what they did every
day. What do you do every day? This is not what they did on Christmas and
Easter. This is what they did every day. This is not what they did on New Year's Eve,
like the calendar is going to change your habits. The point of the illustration is this is what
they did. What do you do? Just by being there. I'm telling you, this is Bethsaida. This is a fishing
village. Bethsaida means house of the hunt. But they fished. They were fishermen. They were from
Bethsaida. That's where Peter was from. So, guess what you do when you grow up in a fishing village.
You fish. It wasn't deep. It wasn't a decision. Peter didn't go to a job fair, take an Enneagram
and a Myers-Briggs, ESTNJ, LMNOP, ADD, ADHD. None of that. We want deep. "I want a
calling from you and a purpose in my life. Deep calls to deep." He went
fishing, and he caught nothing. Can you make a positive decision even
after you've experienced a negative result? This is what amazed me. See, when I get on a roll, I can do amazing
things. When I get on a roll, it's like, Boom! Knock them down. Boom! There's another one. Boom!
Another one. Boom! Another one. I don't mean to bring DJ Khaled up here with me on the stage, but
I feel like sometimes I can get in a zone. This is not the situation. This is not the event. It was
after the event of a failed night of fishing at the point where they were vulnerable because they
were exhausted that they did what he said anyway. 2020 has been a year for us to have to learn how
to do what we know God has called us to do anyway and to know that we can have a feeling and
not act on it and make a different decision, have a temptation and not act on it. Do you
know how grace is the power to cover your sin? It's also the power to change your decisions. Just because you're frustrated
doesn't mean you have to make decisions that create more frustration. When they did what Jesus told them to do, when
they obeyed the Word of God… That might mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
That might not mean anything having to do with a fishing net, but it could. It could be a career
thing. I always get scared when I preach like this that people are going to take Luke 5:11, quit
their jobs, leave their boats, and follow him. I'm going to tell you something. If you leave
your boat without a backup plan in this economy, it's going to be a minute before you're going
to leave your apartment, leave your house too, because they are not going to take the
message of the Lord as a mortgage payment. So, you'd better be very careful that
you put out a little bit from the shore. Praise him. Glory to his holy name.
And the 24 elders said "Amen." Decisions have momentum. Right? So, you
put out a little bit from the shore, put down the nets. Boom, boom, boom. And their nets were breaking, but the nets were
not the only thing that broke in that moment. When I obey the Word of the Lord,
it breaks the flow of frustration. "We fished all night and
caught nothing." Frustration. When he put down the nets, not only did the nets
break, because God blessed them so much because they were just obedient. Not only did the nets
break, but so did the flow of their frustration. So did the flow of their failure. So did the flow of their fear. You do not think
your way out of the flow of fear, failure, and frustration by thinking deeper about it. It
broke the flow when they did something different. I'm going to have to talk to people
differently. I'm going to have to manage my thought life differently. I'm going
to have to manage my time differently. I'm going to have to manage my money differently.
We hear the truth, and we still won't tithe. It would break the flow. It would break the
flow of everything that comes to me is for me, and it would open me to receive the blessing
of God. We hear the truth, and the Word of God speaks from our boat. Jesus gets done
speaking, and we still won't drop the nets. I heard the Lord say, "Drop it." That applies
to every offense you've been carrying. Drop it. That applies to every empty net that's
in your life, where you've been failing and carrying the failure around of fishing all night
and catching nothing and what you did last week, even the fight you had before you clicked on
this YouTube video, and even the stuff you looked at online before you came to online church
today. I heard the Lord saying, "Drop that." Sometimes we don't drop the net because
we're so busy. We're so caught up in the discouragement. It's really hard to drop the
net when you're drowning in disappointment. I make good decisions when I'm
in a good flow. "Oh, this worked, and that worked, and this did good, and that did
good." That is not the occasion in Luke 5. That is not why they left everything and followed
him. He got in their boat at a bad time. How annoying is this? He came
in their boat as a distraction. You say, "Well, Pastor Steve, the Lord is
never a distraction." It was for Peter. He was trying to wash his nets. He was still
dealing with a night of coming up empty, and God was trying to fill him in that
moment with not only fish but faith.
