A courageous fisherman

Simon Peter was a simple fisherman. He probably had that hard working, weathered skin look about him from hours on the water trying to earn money to live. He was just a common man living day to day.

There was a particular night that he was out and did not catch a thing. Think about it, he spent the whole night trying to catch one fish, and it never happened. After a very disappointing night at work, Simon portages his boat, takes out his nets, and leaves his boat to clean the nets.

He comes back to find Jesus in his boat; the man that healed his mother-in-law, healed the sick and made the blind see. I wonder what was going through Simon's head. After Jesus asked Simon to push the boat out from the shore, Jesus starts teaching crowds of people that have gathered to hear His truth. After who knows how long of sitting in the boat listening to Jesus teach, Jesus tells Simon to take the boat to deeper water and let down his nets. What?! Simon just spent hours trying to do this and now Jesus wants him to do it again and in the middle of the day to boot? Hmmmm.

What would I do at this point? Simon looks at Jesus and clarifies to Him that they had fished all night and had not caught a thing. What he says next took a lot of courage. He told Jesus, "But because you say so, I will let down the nets." (Luke 5:1-5)

Is that how we, that know Christ, respond when He tells us to do things that we think don't make sense?

Think about it...

A common man had such great courage to obey Christ when it seemed a little crazy.

The rest of the story:

Simon Peter did what Christ said, cast out his nets and caught so much fish, it filled his boat and his partners boat until they were sinking. (That's a lot of fish!) "When the men brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus." (Luke 5:6-11)