Thursday, January 14, 2010

Thur.'s Devo - Let's Get on God's Side

Read: John 21:1-6
The next time Jesus showed himself to his disciples they were out fishing. It makes me wonder who else he was appearing to when he wasn't with the disciples. I know he walked with the two men on the way to Emaeus. I wish we knew who else got to spend time with him during this earthly stay. Back to the story... The disciples had been fishing all night without catching a thing. Morning is dawning and Jesus calls out to them from the shore asking them if they had caught anything. When they say, "No", he tells them to cast their net on the right side of the ship and they will find fish. I've been to the sea of Galilee and I've been in one of those boats like the one they were in and the distance between one side of the boat and the other is only about 15 feet. Jesus was trying to teach them a principle. "Right" in the Greek means "receive". He wanted them to have faith to receive. It was a picture he was painting them of their future. Right now disciples (fish) were hard to find. Everyone had scattered and lost faith when Jesus was crucified. But now they needed to be ready to receive because God was going to give them so many fish that they wouldn't know what to do with them. The difference between the left side of the boat and the right was the Holy Spirit that he was about to give them. It was going to make the difference in their fishing for men. It did because on the day of Pentecost when God did send his Holy Spirit, three thousand were saved in one day. That was a pretty good haul!
God is about to do that same multiplication in our lifetime. I have never seen hearts so hungry and ready to receive hope and good news. We carry that good news so open your mouth and share it. Throw your nets on the right side of the boat and get ready to receive the harvest of souls because it is surely coming.

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