BIBLE READING: John 21
3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.
I enjoy fishing. I do not get to fish very much now. There was a time in my life in high school that I was obsessed with it. Living in Florida, we used to do a lot of bass fishing. If you’ve ever done much fishing, you have experienced those fishing days or fishing trips were you really didn’t catch anything. You had all the equipment, did all the preparation, had all the High Hopes, only to come up empty.
Peter was going through a confusing time in his life. He was conflicted. There was inner turmoil. In a time of weakness, he decided to go back to the old life. He was supposed to now be a fisher of men, but Ministry can be difficult and hard. He probably missed that salty air, the motion of the boat in the waves, and the excitement of seeing the fish pulled into the boat. Things were simpler then. All he had to worry about was catching fish. When you start trying to catch men, you have a whole lot of stress to deal with.
The Problem is when Peter went back, some others went with him. That’s always the way it goes. Usually when a person begins to backslide, they always drag others down with them. It is ironic, however, that when they did, “they caught nothing”.
I implore you today, whenever you start drifting away from God, you always end up catching nothing. You always come up empty. I know there’s things from the old life that start to weigh on your mind. Everything always looks better than it was. Satan will tell you a lot of things when you’re down, frustrated, and confused. He will have you believing how wonderful things used to be before you started serving the Lord. How little stress there was, how people were not difficult. If you believe that, I have some waterfront property in Florida I’d like to sell you. (That is sarcastic). There’s a lot that Satan will leave out about that old worldly life. How quickly we can forget how empty life was. We forget how meaningless life was. We forget how unfulfilled life was.
Don’t be fooled by that. Just put that old fishing pole down and go back out to serving the Lord. A little bit later, Peter found out how abundantly God can fill your nets. Do you want a “full” life? Well, serving God is the only way!