When Nothing is Working

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:09] Welcome back to another edition of the weekday podcast. It's Monday. We're so glad you're here. Thanks for starting your week with us. Our hope is that every single day this week, that you be part of these podcasts to give you a little bit of encouragement as you start your day. Today, I want to talk about this idea of when nothing is working. And today's scripture is John 21, verse 3. It says, Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing. They said to him, we will also come with you. They went out, they got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing. [00:00:38] Now, have you ever gone back to what you know, only to find it doesn't work anymore? And that's exactly where Peter found himself. Jesus had died on the cross. He'd risen from the dead. But the disciples were still spinning. They're still trying to make sense of everything that had happened. So Peter, he did the most natural thing in the world. He went back to fishing, back to the familiar, back to the thing he was good at, back to the life that he understood. And he talked to the other guys, and they bought into it. He said, I'm going fishing. And they said, we'll come, too. And so off they went. Professional fishermen. The Sea of Tiberius. The right nets, the right spots, the right techniques. These guys weren't the ones you watch on YouTube and then figured that they were qualified. This was their livelihood. Like, this is their identity, the one thing they knew that they could do. And yet that night, they caught nothing. Not a little, not a small haul, absolutely nothing. They came up empty every single time they pulled those nets in. [00:01:32] Now, you can just imagine how frustrating that felt. Like I think about moments like that in my own life when I went back to the thing that used to work, the old pattern, the old strategy, the old coping mechanism. And it just. Well, it just didn't. The nets kept coming up empty. And somewhere in the middle of that, the question starts to form, where is God in all of this? Here's what I want you to hold on to today. [00:01:53] Sometimes God lets the old thing stop working so you'll be ready for the new thing he's about to do. Let me say that again. Sometimes God lets the old things stop working so that you'll be ready for the new thing he's about to do. Because here's what John 21 tells us. But before the disciples ever noticed, Jesus had already shown up. He was already on the shore. He was already there. He was already present in the middle of their exhausting, unproductive night. [00:02:20] Empty nets. They don't mean God has forgotten you. They might actually mean that he's repositioning you. He's clearing the way for something you couldn't receive if the old thing was still working. So don't quit in the night. Morning is coming and someone. [00:02:35] Someone's already waiting on the shore. Those empty nets, they're not the end of the story. They're often the setup. Have a great day. We'll see you back here, Sam.