AUG 2 2015 | Luke 5

Sea Change Church · "Luke 5" · Ryan Pfeiffer · August 2, 2015
Luke 5
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

In worship, just as I am, O Lamb of God, I come. We come to Jesus. The theme of our brother's message this morning is drawing closer to God. We're invited to also be led by the Holy Spirit. That's what being a disciple means. And this morning, we're in Luke chapter 5. We go all the way back to the calling of the first disciples. And in reading that scripture, I invite you to follow along if you're led, and then we'll offer prayer for our brother as he ministers and look to the Lord through his word. Luke chapter 5.

One day as Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, with people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. And then Jesus sat down and taught the people from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Now put out into deep water. Let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we've worked hard all night, and we haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets. And when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish, their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners on the other boats to come and help them.

And they came and filled both boats so full they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man. For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken. And so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's friends. And Jesus said to Simon, Don't be afraid. From now on, you will catch men.

And so they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him. Lord, may we find in your word today a word for us. And as your servant Ryan comes and ministers to us, may you both fill him with your Holy Spirit so he might enjoy your deep presence and also so he might be even more a fit instrument to share your good news. Thank you this morning.

In Jesus' name we come. Amen. Ryan, would you come? Welcome, brother. Ryan's the director of InterVarsity Ministry here in San Diego. And it's an international ministry, and it is one of the ministries that we support as a church. These guys create world changers. And Ryan has been used over the years of getting an emphasis of evangelism back into the ministry.

And it's real exciting to have him as a friend and to have him here. But people's lives are changed through his praying and teaching. And I'm not trying to just say for him. God's using him as an instrument. And I just want to pray for your ministry also. Father God, we just pray for Ryan and Stacey as they minister on the campuses and as they lead the leaders.

We just thank you for that special influence that they have on so many people's lives and the benefits that we get from it as people from different nations go back as Christians because of the ministry of InterVarsity. We're so thankful for that. We're thankful for Ryan being here. We pray that you'd strengthen him and meet his needs and his family's needs and the needs of InterVarsity.

And thank you, Lord God. We just pray that he would speak as if we're the oracles of angels today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks, Kai. It's great to be here with you guys this morning. One of my favorite passages in Scripture comes from James 4, verse 8. And if we have that on the slide, I want to put that up on the screen for us. Do we have that on the PowerPoint?

And while that's getting up, let me read it to you guys. James 4, 8 says, Come near to God and he will come near to you. And I'm going to be with you today, as I am, and then I'm going to be with you next weekend. And we're going to dwell on this theme of drawing near to God. And it comes from this incredible Scripture, this promise that comes from God to us, that if we will draw near to God, he will draw near to us.

And what I love about this passage is it lays down this incredible promise that we are as close to God as we want to be. Oftentimes, there may be people in our life that we want to get close to, that we want to get to know. And we're not maybe successful enough, or we don't live in the right place, or we don't have the courage to get to know that person, or the right connections or networks.

We don't feel important enough. We're not significant enough to get to know those people. And that can oftentimes feel the case with God. We don't feel that we're spiritual enough. We don't feel like we've been to church enough. We don't feel, for some reason or other, that there is that open access to knowing God in a personal and intimate way.

And yet, the scriptures are clear that we are as close to God as we want to be. And I wanted to lay that with you at the very beginning of this message, to think about, do you really believe that's true? And what are the implications for your life if that's true? That you are as close to God as you want to be, meaning there's nothing on God's end that is preventing you from being closer to him.

There's nothing in his heart, his attitude, and his posture towards you, preventing you from being significantly closer, more intimate, than you currently are to knowing God. And it doesn't come from just fanciful wish dreams. It comes from the scriptures itself. And I want to illustrate this with an experience I had when I was young. Do we have like the next slide, the cliff jumping scene?

When I was young with a bunch of my friends from high school, we used to do this hike in Orange County along the ocean, the coast. And it was this great hike. And my friend told me the first time I did it, there's going to be a cliff jump. I don't know. It's like 20 feet. I'm like, oh, okay, I can do that. That's no big deal. So as we're doing the hike, we had to jump, you know, into the ocean, swim to the other side of this little area.

This little area. And as I climbed up, my friend says, oh, there's the cliff. And I could see this cliff. And it didn't look 20 feet. It looked more like 10 feet. I said, that's not a problem. So as we started to climb up on this path, we started walking around. It's me, my friend. And his friend, who was the youth pastor of this junior high group, some junior high boys and girls.

So we're all, and I'm in college. So we're all going up this cliff together. We get to the spot that I saw that I thought was the point where we were going to jump from. The 10-foot spot. And then I couldn't see it from behind. But as I got closer, I noticed that it made a turn that I couldn't see from a distance. And it turned and it got higher.

As I'm walking, I'm going, we're getting higher now. We're not 10 feet. Now we're at 20 feet. Now we're at 30 feet. Now we're at 40 feet. And we're just getting higher. And finally, my friend says, here's where we're going to jump. And I walk to the edge. And I just stand on the edge. I look down. It's like, it feels like it might as well be 100 feet.

And I can just feel my stomach just flip upside down. You know, I can't. I mean, it's just water down there. But just this primal fear of height kicks in. And I start to just imagine a way to get out of this situation. Some way to protect my own reputation and my ego to not have to make this jump. And, you know, I'm with junior high boys and girls.

I don't want to look like I'm afraid of this. So I start coming up with, you know, my ankle hurts. You know, I can't. I shouldn't jump from this. Or, you know, I want a better workout. So I'm going to go down to the 10-foot spot and just swim around this thing. So as I'm kind of coming up with ways to get out of the jump, all of a sudden I hear someone yell, bonsai.

And this junior high girl comes running full speed and cannonballs off the 50-foot jump. And just goes blasting off the cliff. And I just stand there. Now, women, this may not be, I don't know, maybe for some women it is. And this may be a foreign experience for you. But for a man, your ego kicks in and makes you do the stupidest things in the world.

And it just makes you do things that suppress your will to survive. And the will to not look ridiculous and look weak and stupid, well, you know, that gets stronger and overrides the will to live. And so I'm standing there and I'm thinking, there is no way I cannot jump. And now I have to. Here's the point. The point is this, that oftentimes things look safer.

They look easier from a distance, but as we get closer, they become more imposing, more intimidating. And we see things, we see challenges that we didn't expect to see as we get up close. That's true about relationships. That could be true about a job that we take or it could be true about any number of things. And that's certainly true about God, that the closer we get to God, the bigger he gets.

The closer I got to the edge of the cliff, the bigger it got. Physically and then mentally. And that's true about God. That is an unavoidable reality as we get to know God. And as you think about knowing God, you have to accept the fact that he's going to get bigger in your life. And the closer you get to God, the bigger he will be. For many of us, we begin that walk up the cliff, so to speak, with God spiritually.

We begin that walk and we get intimidated by who God is and what he asks of us, what he wants of us. We read the scriptures, it's exciting, but then we begin to feel the claim of that same Jesus on our life. And it's not Peter doing these crazy things, God is asking us to do crazy things. He's not saying, Peter, leave behind your nets. He's asking you to leave something behind that you don't want to let go of.

He's asking you to change your life in some way that intimidates you. And we begin to walk back down the cliff and find some other way around that challenge with God. For others of us, we don't even realize there's more to God. We start up that cliff of knowing God and we just settle on that 10-foot jump, not realizing there's a jump that is that 40 feet around the corner that there's so much more to God than we could ever imagine.

And so we settle for a smaller God in our life. And I want to talk about what it looks like to get closer to God and let God get as big as he is in our life and to not pull back. And to reflect on our life, where is God inviting us higher up on the cliff and allowing him to get bigger? In order to do that, we're going to look at Luke chapter 5 at this moment where Peter has known Jesus.

This is not the first time Jesus or Peter and Jesus have met. So let me give you a little bit of context on the passage that we just read. So Peter met Jesus first, we see in John, where he gets invited by his brother. And Peter means he's like, oh, this guy's fine. And Jesus gives him a nickname and says, hey, you're not going to be Simon. You're now Peter the Rock.

And so Jesus gives him a nickname. That's a cool little start to a friendship. And then their friendship builds. And Peter invites Jesus into his home. And he sees Jesus do more than just teach, more than just become a friend. But he sees Jesus heal his mother-in-law who has a fever. He's like, wow, okay. Jesus doesn't just teach. He doesn't just heal.

He's bigger. But how big exactly is Jesus? Does he have the right to lay claim on every area of my life? I don't know about that. And so here we find Peter sitting comfortably in the boat while Jesus is teaching the crowd. He's comfortable with him as a healer, comfortable with him as a friend, comfortable with him as a teacher. But now Jesus shows Peter a bigger picture of who he is.

He takes Peter higher up the cliff, and he lays claim on Peter's entire life. And I want to talk about what it means to take steps closer to Jesus and allow him to get bigger in our life. What happens when we choose to let Jesus get bigger? There are two things that will happen in your life. And one of these two things is specifically probably happening in your life right now that's pressing in your life.

And I want to start with the first. Okay? The first thing that's going to happen when you let Jesus get bigger is this. When we let Jesus get bigger, our egos are going to get smaller. This is the first experience that you're going to have when you choose to draw near to God. He's going to be your friend. He's going to do some awesome things in your life.

But when you choose to get closer to Jesus, he's going to get bigger, and your ego has to get smaller. Let's talk about what that means. It says in verse 8, When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, Go away from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man. So let's ask the question, why does Peter say this? If you have your Bibles, you can look at it.

Nowhere in the text does Jesus look at Peter and go, You know, Peter, you're a sinful guy. Nowhere does he go, You know, Peter, I know what you did last week. Remember that argument with your wife? Yeah, you know, you need to deal with that. Nowhere does Jesus call Peter's, you know, recent attendance to the local synagogue, his church attendance.

He doesn't address his issue of tithing. He doesn't bring up any area of Peter's life. There's no indication that Jesus is saying anything specific to Peter other than let's go out into deeper waters. And yet, nonetheless, here we have Peter when he sees what Jesus does, this amazing miracle of the catch of fish. His reaction isn't just to go, You are so awesome.

Jesus, you're amazing. We would expect that. Maybe the way you see a magician do something awesome. Whoa! Or we see someone hit a home run. Woo! He doesn't have that reaction. Now this is where we encounter something really unique about Jesus. When we experience more of God in our life, which hopefully we will throughout our whole life, it creates a response and a reaction in us that brings us to our knees.

It confronts our egos. And I want to talk about this aspect. Why does Peter react this way? I want to talk about Isaiah 6 to try to understand this moment. Look with me at Isaiah 6. If you don't, I have it up on the screen. Okay? So to try to understand this moment, I want to go to the Old Testament. Because Peter is not having just an ordinary experience with an ordinary guy who's an ordinary teacher.

Listen to this. In Isaiah 6, it says this. In the year that King Uzziah died, I, Isaiah, saw the Lord. High and exalted, seated on a throne. And the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, which are angelic beings. Each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their faces. With two, they covered their feet. And with two, they were flying.

And they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. Now watch how Isaiah responds. Okay? Check this out. At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and the thresholds shook. And the temple was filled with smoke. And Isaiah shouted, home run. No, he doesn't do that. Okay? Watch his reaction.

Verse 5. Woe to me, I cried. I'm ruined. For I'm a man of unclean lips. And I live among a people of unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. What is it about our encounters with God that create this kind of reaction? Now, let's pause for a minute. Here's the idea. That the bigness of God, when we talk about God getting bigger, Jesus getting bigger in our life, it's about God's glory.

And that's why I took us to this passage. The word glory that's used here in Isaiah 6, the whole earth is full of his glory. In the Hebrew, it's the word kavod. Okay? Now, I'm not an Old Testament scripture, you know, language scholar, but I know enough to look up in the dictionary and see this. The word kavod in the Hebrew, it means, it refers to the weight or heaviness of something.

Okay? So, when you glorify someone, you recognize their importance or the weight of some desirable uniqueness that they possess. Okay? Another way of putting this is it's the beauty, the majesty, and splendor of the one that the glory is referring to. So, when Isaiah sees God's glory, he is overwhelmed with the beauty of God, his holiness, his power.

There's just something so completely unique about God that we have a reaction that's an immediate affront to our ego. In Peter's encounter with Jesus, he's having an experience like Isaiah because he's experiencing God's glory through Jesus. It says in Hebrews 1.3, the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Okay? This is what this means. In our life, not just when we become Christians or not just at a church service, but in our life, as we continue to allow Jesus to get bigger in our life, it means to experience greater measures of his glory in our life. And what happens when we experience greater measures of God's glory? You know you're experiencing greater measures of his glory because we are filled with a sense of unworthiness.

We get this feeling like, oh my gosh, God, I look at you and you are just so pure. God, you are more beautiful, more pure, more generous and kind than I could have ever imagined. And the reaction that Peter's having is, it's not a reaction of self-hatred. It's not a reaction like, oh, you are so awesome, I'm a stink. I'm awful. I'm the worst. It's not self-hatred.

It's called humility. And when we have an experience of humility, it can feel unnerving. It can feel, at first, maybe kind of yucky. Like, what is this feeling I'm having? I don't feel in control. I don't feel like I'm the center of the universe. I don't feel as good about myself as I did before I had this experience with God. And that's because when we see God, our reference points are blown out of the water.

And we see, wow, I'm not as kind or as pure or as generous or as patient as he is. I'm not as kind as I thought I was. Now I see what real kindness is. I look at God and I see his beauty. I see his purity. Man, it puts things in perspective. Humility allows our egos to get smaller. It's a gift. And it allows us to see God's importance and his majesty above our own.

And it creates proper perspective. And that's what we see with Peter. He's just like looking at Jesus do this miracle. It's like he won the lottery, right? And you don't see anybody win the lottery and go, oh my gosh, the lottery, take the money. I don't want it. No one would say that. Have you ever seen anyone win a lottery or, you know, you see those things on videos or on TV?

No one goes, no, I don't want it. Take it away. People are like, oh yeah, I'll take that. They may cry. You know, they may be in awe, but they still, oh yeah, I'll take that. Thank you. Peter says, get away from me. And this is this reaction of humility allows us to see God in his proper place. And what's happening in that moment is our sense of self-importance is being supplanted by the significance and the greatness of God.

And that's an important thing. Humility means accepting that our lives work best when we revolve around God versus trying to live our life and make God and everyone else around us revolve around us. And we all kind of do that once in a while, right? You know, when you're about to go to college, you're going to have a roommate, right? You're going to have your own place.

You're going to have one roommate. Just sharing, you know, a place with one roommate can be a bit of a rude awakening. Anyone here go to college and get a roommate? Raise your hands. What a sick and twisted system we have that we have to room up with a complete stranger, you know, and try to find a way to share this little room that's the size of a walk-in closet with a total stranger.

Others of us know what this feels like in depth because we're married and we deal with it every day. And there's that constant tug of war around whose way is going to be the right way, whose way is going to be the way in which everyone else's ways revolve around. So my wife and I would have these secret wars. We have a coffee table. It would be first a coffee table.

And I would have the magazines. You know, I would see the magazines and somehow they were in the middle of the table. And I'm like, that's weird. I just like them over here. And I would push them up to the corner. And then I would walk away and come back the next day and I would see them back in the middle again. And I'd go, that's weird. And I'd push it back to the corner.

And then I'd come back a day later and I'd see them back in the middle of the coffee table. And I would, that's so weird. And I would push it back. Now, this is my first year of marriage. It's just me and my wife living in this apartment. And yet, it never dawned on me that my wife, the only other person in the apartment, was probably the one moving it back there.

And I didn't realize it until she said, are we having a secret war? And I go, what do you mean, sweetie? She's like, are you moving the magazines to the corner of the coffee table? And I go, yes. Of course I am. What did you, you're the one. Yeah, it's like, of course. So then we had some arguments about that, where the rug goes by the window, the sliding glass window in the back.

I mean, think about all the little ways in which we have quarrels and arguments with each other about whose way is going to be at the center. We struggle like that with God. And that's what's happening with Peter. Humility allows us to say, God, my life needs to revolve around you. And every moment we let God's glory get bigger in our life, we have to allow God's way and God himself to become to the center and allow our life to be removed from the center.

And for some of us, we live like we're at the center. We live with a geocentric view of the solar system. Back in 1543, Copernicus put out the idea, this pamphlet, that actually it's not the earth that's at the center of our solar system. It's the sun. And people are like, you've got to be kidding me. And people were blown away. Actually, it was first postulated back in the third century, but it took 1300 years for someone to say it with enough credence.

Copernicus, okay? But up until that, people believed that the whole solar system revolved around us, the earth, at the center. What we know about gravity now, I mean, it's just like, what? How do people think that? But thank God for Copernicus, Kepler and his mathematics, Galileo and his telescope and his observations firmly established. No, no. I know it's hard, guys.

We're not at the center. The sun is. But for some of us and for many of us, we are still living in a geocentric view spiritually. We are living like we are at the center of our life. We're living in medieval spirituality where we really believe, I am at the center of my life and my will, my wisdom, my choices should be at the center. And the idea of letting God have control is not a 20, 30, or 40-foot cliff jump.

It's a skydive. And it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. Now, when we let Jesus get bigger, a second thing happens. That's number one. Our egos get smaller. The second thing, and this is the only other point I want to make, is in verse 10. Then 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.

The second point is this. When we get closer to Jesus and we allow him to get bigger, we have to, number one, allow our egos to get smaller in some way. And number two, when we let our egos get smaller, our life gets bigger. When we let Jesus get bigger, our life gets bigger. Isn't that kind of an upside-down thing? You would think that by letting our ego get smaller, our life is going to get smaller.

That's the fear. If I let God have control of my life, my marriage, my identity, my sexuality, my career, my money, my time, my life is going to get small, and you can feel the walls closing in. No, God, you can't have access here because you're just going to take away from me. You're going to bring in the walls. And for some of us, our relationship with God has felt like a room with closing walls.

We think of God and all the things he wants to take from us, and it feels like following Jesus. To follow Jesus means to let your life shrink up into like a little shrink-a-dink, to lose all the best parts of our life. Handing over that particular area of our life means, God, it means letting you have control here scares me because then I have to just let it get smaller and shirvel away.

And that's our biggest fear of letting God have control and be at the center. Now, pay attention to this. The incredible and amazing thing is in this moment, in verse 10 that we see, Jesus says to Peter, from now on you will fish for people. And even though Peter's ego is shriveling like a shrink-a-dink, Jesus doesn't leave Peter in his fear. And look at what he says.

He doesn't say, yeah, you know what, Peter, you should be afraid. Yeah, you should get real afraid because I'm Jesus and I'm going to rock your world. I'm going to blow your mind. Jesus is such a sweet and tender person. And so that's the heart of God. And he says to him, don't be afraid. Jesus uses the fishing experience as an illustration. It's like this.

It's like if Peter had just won the lottery and Jesus is like, yeah, Peter, I know this is the moment you've been waiting for your whole life. This is like a moment that you only, you dream about and then wake up. Ever have those dreams where it's just so amazing. You wake up and you're a little bit down, a little bit depressed, like, oh gosh. You know, like when I was in high school, you know, you have a crush on a person or when, you know, you have some job, some, you know, some dream about a promotion in your life or something and you wake up, you're like, oh.

This is that dream for Peter. It's like winning the lottery and Jesus gives it to him. Here you go, Peter. What you've always wanted. You just had the catch of a lifetime. And of all times, this is the moment where Jesus says, you know what now? I want you to leave it all behind and come follow me. Because if you think this is great, you haven't seen anything yet.

That says a lot about the heart of God. He gives Peter everything he's ever wanted and then he says, okay, now let it go. Because if you think this is awesome, you think this is as big as your life gets, I'm going to blow your mind. Let me take you to the 40-foot jump and show you how big I am. And so Jesus, and so Peter follows him. Jesus calls Peter to come closer and discover a bigger purpose for his life.

And for me, that was, I've had many of those experiences. One of those experiences for me was in college when my whole life from second grade up to college, I wanted to be a doctor. But I realized in college, I'd never asked God what he made me to do. I never asked God because I wasn't a Christian for most of that period. And I decided to say, you know, God, what did you make me to be?

I want to do what you made me to do. I'd never asked God. And as I started to ask God, I started to experience confliction with the path that I had made for myself. Now let me ask you, any physicians in the room? Any physicians? Okay, yes. Anyone else? Any physicians? Okay, yeah. Being a doctor is awesome. What parent wouldn't be thrilled to find out their child wants to be a doctor?

That's a great thing. That's a noble profession, helping people. Nothing wrong with it. It just wasn't what God had made me to do. And as I sat there and started asking God, what did you make me to do? What did you make me to do? God started to mess with things. He started to play with my life. And before he gave me the answer, like what I was made to do, he started confronting my need for security.

And I got this image when I would pray, God would give me this image of this beautiful two-story white house with a picket fence. And I would just see Jesus saying, Ryan, will you give this up to follow me? I'm like, what's that all about? I'm not asking about that, Jesus. I'm not asking about my house. I'm just in college. I'm asking about, what did you make me to do, God?

I want to do what you made me to do. And this image kept coming back, and I kept seeing Jesus say, let it go. Let it go. Finally, I had a night where I had panic attack, cold sweats. I was up all night just having a panic attack about this confrontation with God and letting go of this future. I didn't know what it meant, but I just said, you know, God, I'll do anything.

And I said these words to Jesus. I will do anything you want, no matter what, as long as it's what you've made me to do. Then I said this. I want to do what I was born to do, no matter the cost. You can have the house. I said those words to God. Have you ever said that to God? Have you ever told God, Jesus, I will give up anything and everything. I just want to do what you made me to do.

And if I am not doing right now what you made me to do, show me what I can do to be right where you want me to be. And there's nothing in my life that's off limits. I want to do what I was born to do, God. Have you ever prayed that simple prayer? I want to do what I was born to do, and I'll give up anything to do it. I prayed that prayer. I gave up that house.

And within a few weeks, God gave me the call to full-time ministry. And I left behind that self-made dream of going into medicine and heard the call to go into full-time ministry. What might that be for you? It says in John 10, 10, I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. I think the fear for us is that if I let Jesus have total control of my life, he's going to take away the things that I love the most.

And my life's going to get small. It's going to be miserable and awful. Can you imagine that right now? Just think for a minute. If right now Jesus was sitting here with you, if right now Jesus was here, okay, standing here, and he was going to meet with every single one of you, and he wanted to have a five-minute conversation, and in that conversation, he was going to ask you to give him everything, what would you fear giving him the most?

What would you fear letting him have control of in your life the most? Can you think of anything? Does anything come to mind? What would that be? Let me just pray for us for a minute. Lord, in this passage, you ask Peter to give up his nets, to give up his livelihood, to give up his family, to leave his father behind, to leave everything he'd known, to leave this big catch, and to come follow you.

Holy Spirit, would you show us, is there something in our life that keeps us from going further and higher up with you that we're afraid to let go of? Is there something in our life that holds us back from allowing you to have more control of our life? Would you show us what that is? In Jesus' name. Amen. God doesn't want to shrink your life. He wants to expand it.

But why should you let God get bigger in your life? I want us to read the scripture as I bring this message to a close. Listen to this. Why should you let God have this control? Listen to these words. Psalm 139. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down.

You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. Why should you let God have control over every single aspect of your life? Your physical health, your romantic life, everything. Because he knows you inside and out. He knows your fears. He knows your hidden talents. He knows what you were made to do. He knows what makes you happy.

He knows what scares you. He knows your weaknesses. He knows your limitations. He knows your deepest desires. He knows you inside and out. He knows your past. He knows your present. He knows your future. And right now, God sees you 20 years from now. He can see you right now. He can look and go, I see you right here in this church. I can see you out there 20 years, 50, 100, and 1,000.

He sees your life. But we don't. We have a hard time because we don't have that perspective. So, I want to just do a quick illustration. Can I use you too? Kai, Bev, come here. Come here. Come here, real quick. Okay. Kai right here. And Bev. Okay, Bev, you stand right here. Okay. You can just stand right here with this gentleman right here. Okay. And Kai right here.

See, God sees it all. That's why we can trust him. He knows it's inside and out. He knows Peter. He knows how it's all going to go. And here we are in our life and we come up with our own plans. And my plan is Kai. Kai represents my plans. The best that I can do with my intellect, my courage, my creativity. Kai represents my plan for my life and my career, my dating life, my financial life.

Man, Kai is like the representation of all the best counsel on how to best secure financial security in my life, my career. And you know what? I've worked hard to develop this. I've gone to school. I've gotten a lot of good counsel. I've done the best I can and there it is. And in my life, I can only see Kai. So now turn around and face me. All I can do in my life is see him.

I can't see Bev at all. I just see him. As we follow Jesus, letting him get bigger, take you higher up the cliff is like this. You and Jesus are walking along. Come up here, Chris. Chris is my Jesus. Here's Jesus. Come on. Grab my hand here. Here's me and Jesus. And all right. And me and Jesus are walking along as we walk. I go, oh man, here we come. Jesus to my Kai.

You gave this to me. I'm so excited. And all of a sudden, Jesus does this weird thing. Jesus goes, oh, yeah. And then keeps walking. No, keep walking, Jesus. And I'm walking with Jesus and I'm like, wait, wait a minute. I'm not looking ahead. I'm looking back. Jesus. Jesus. Now we're in a tug of war. Come on, Jesus. You missed it. Jesus, Jesus. I know you're kind of old and your eyes are going bad, but you kind of miss what I got back here.

Jesus, Jesus, man. You know, you were around wearing a toga in sandals. You know, you're not a 2015 guy. You probably don't know what Twitter is, but look, this plan I got here, it's going to work. Come on back here with me, buddy. And Jesus doesn't want to go back there. Here we are at a crossroads. Here you are. Right here. You're right here. But we get so stuck looking back at our Kai, we can't see Bev.

And you know why? Because you can't see it. You don't know the future. But Jesus does. And some of you right now in your life, you will not let Jesus get any bigger because you are stuck on your little plan that you made for yourself. because it's big. It's Kai. But it's not Bev. It's not what the Lord has for you. Amen. Thanks, guys. So they pulled their boats in verse 11 up on shore and they left everything and they followed him.

I want to invite the worship team to come on up. As the worship team comes up, I want to give you something to reflect about. Allowing Jesus to get bigger in our life always means leaving something behind. For me, I stood on the edge of that cliff, I took a deep breath, I stopped overthinking it, and I just jumped. What is so exciting about a cliff jump? The same thing that's terrifying.

Do you know that? What makes a cliff jump so thrilling is the same thing that makes you not want to jump to begin with. It is the surrendering of control. When you give up that control to gravity and you let gravity control you, it's exhilarating and it's terrifying. Some of us, our walk with God is boring. It's shallow. It doesn't leap off the pages of scripture into your life because you are stuck on that cliff and you won't give up control and jump.

But when you jump, you will never be disappointed. When you surrender yourself into his control and you let him get bigger and take control of your destiny, you will never regret what he does with your life. If I go into this song, I want to ask you, what do you need to let go of in order to follow Jesus up to the higher cliff? For me, I had to let go of my fear to go higher up.

For others of us, forgiving someone means letting go of our bitterness. For others of us, going higher up with Jesus means obeying Jesus in some way, which means letting go of our own way. For others, it might mean trusting Jesus. We have to let go of our fear of the what if. If I obey him here, what are my parents going to think? What's my spouse going to think?

What will happen to my children? Following Jesus means there's something always that we'll have to let go of in order for him to get bigger. What is that for you? Give us a chance to reflect in this song and I'll come up and lead us to respond. I want to give us a chance to respond to God. Jesus doesn't ask Peter just to go out in the water and listen to what he has to say.

He asks him to respond. He actually expects Peter to do something with what he's heard and I want to give you a chance to do that. I feel that God gets bigger in our life with every decision we make to surrender control to him. And those decisions are small ones, there's big ones, but they happen throughout the whole course of our life. decisions to humble ourselves and admit our need and dependence on him and the decision to allow him to give us a bigger life than we could create for ourselves, a bigger marriage, a bigger capacity as a father, as a mother, a bigger capacity to do what we were born to do and live into our destiny and to put on display the greatness and the goodness of God for all the seas so that others might believe in him through our life.

But it does require something. It requires that for Peter, he has to leave something behind. And like I had to leave the comfort of the cliff to make the jump, we all have something we've got to leave behind throughout our life. There's little things, little by little, that we let go of. And what is that for you? Where is God inviting you up the cliff? Where is he inviting you to follow him and allow him to get bigger in your life?

And is there something that you're holding on to that you're having a hard time letting go of? And I want to begin first with maybe for those of us who don't know Jesus personally. You're here because a friend invited you. You've been looking into who Jesus is and you've never accepted him as the leader and the savior of your life. Well, I can tell you right now, the thing you need to let go of is you need to let go of control of your life and surrender yourself to Jesus.

You need to surrender your unbelief, your doubt, your fear and say, Jesus, I don't want to resist you any longer but I want to let you have control of my life. I want to accept you as the leader and savior of my life. I want to let you have control and you can do that by doing something right now. It says in the scripture if you believe in your heart and confess with your lips, Romans, it says in Romans that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved and I want to give you an opportunity to do that.

For Peter, it was leaving his nets. For you, I'm going to ask you to do a simple thing and I'm going to ask you just to stand up where you're sitting. And that standing is a sign. It's a step of faith that A, you've never accepted Jesus and you want to take that step this morning and accept him as the leader of your life or B, you've wandered away from God. You've backslidden.

You've kind of forgotten about God and he's no longer the center of your life. You've come to church this morning and you're realizing you want to rededicate your life to following Jesus. And if that's you, I want to give you a chance to respond. I just want to invite you to stand up wherever you're sitting right now. Wherever you're sitting, just go ahead and stand up and this is between you and God.

I did this about 20 years ago. I sat in a room of a thousand people. My friend Dan, among others here, had been sharing the gospel with me and sharing the love of Jesus with me. As the preacher gave the invitation, he said, go ahead and come down to the front. I chickened out. I couldn't do it. But something in me wanted to respond and all week, I was like, oh, I wish I had done it.

Standing up is a way of admitting before everybody, you can't do it on your own that you need God. And if that's you, and you're ready to show your life to him, I just want you to stand as a sign of faith, as an act of faith. Jesus, I give you control. Is there anybody else that would like to make that choice? I know it feels like a big, maybe personal thing, and it is personal, but our spirituality is not private.

I sit in a room of about 300 people when I dedicated my life to my wife. What a personal moment. But it wasn't private. I shared it with all these people because I wasn't ashamed to dedicate my life to this woman. 2,000 years ago, Jesus stood for you on the cross by giving his life because it says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That all who believe in him will have eternal life and not perish.

And if you'd like to stand with Jesus this morning and join him and receive what he did for you as your savior, stand with him right now. And accept what he has done for you, that Jesus has done for you what you could never do for yourself. That's humility. Humility is believing that Jesus died for the forgiveness of your sins that you could never, ever do on your own.

You cannot be the person you dream and long to be on your own strength. You cannot create the life that you long for by your own wisdom or creativity. You need God's help. And by standing this morning, you're surrendering control of your life to Jesus to make you the person he made you to be and to lead you into the life, his eternal living that he created you to have.

If you're sitting next to someone who's saying, would you stand with them and put your hand on their shoulder? And as they put their hand on your shoulder, go ahead, do you see him right behind you? Right there? Yeah, there you go. As we put our hand on your shoulder, it represents the hand of God in your life. The hand of God is now on your life. And when you commit your life to Jesus, whether it's the first time or rededication, we don't you're not alone.

I want you to pray this simple prayer with me out loud. If you stood up, please pray this prayer with me. Repeat after me. Lord Jesus, all right, you got to say it with, you got to say that name. Lord Jesus, I surrender control of my life to you right now. Come into the center of my life and take over. I accept and believe that you died on the cross for my sin, for my failures, and for the sins committed against me so that I could be wiped clean.

I believe that you rose from the dead, conquering everything that could hold me back for my destiny in knowing you. Come Holy Spirit and fill my heart. In Jesus name, amen. If you stood up and prayed that simple prayer, what I want you to do today is I want you before you leave this church or maybe go get some lunch, talk to somebody that you trust, and I want you just to explain, hey, what does standing up mean for you?

And if you know someone who stood up, I just want you to ask a very simple question. Hey, I saw you stand up, what did that mean for you? And give them the space to process what that decision meant. what do do? In this day, that are going to over and do this thing.