Movement and Success

Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." Luke 5:5

We all want to be successful at something. Whether it's raising a family, having a strong marriage, playing a sport, or developing a career, success is what we strive for.

However, we as Christians are called to more than just worldly success.

Take this story from the beginning of Jesus' ministry.  Although Simon is who we hear from, there is actually a group of fishermen near where Jesus is speaking. First, Jesus borrows Simon's boat, while he and the other fishermen are cleaning their nets. One Jesus is done speaking to the crowd, He tells Simon to go out to where the water is deeper and let down the nets.

Simon tells Jesus that they had been working all night, and failed to catch anything...but then he agrees to give it one more try, because "Jesus said so."

This act of obedience leads to the biggest catch the fishermen had ever experienced. "When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break."

Listening to Jesus' guidance resulted in success. But that is not where these men stopped.

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. Luke 5:10-11

After the biggest success they ever had, they left everything behind and followed Jesus.

I felt God speak two things into my heart through these verses:

• Even if we experience success while folliwng Jesus, He may ask us to move on to something greater. Just because your career is successful, it does not mean God will never call you to something else. For example, in our church leadership, we have a former personal trainer, banker, and school teacher, just to name a few. Imagine what they would have missed out on if they had decided to stay where they were, verses following God's invitation.
• We are not called to stand still. We are called to follow Jesus. If we stay where we are just because it's always worked, we will miss the greater things God wanted us to experience.We may be lead to go somewhere new, or stay where we are but go deeper into the connections that we have.  As God calls us to move, we should move to keep growing in Christ.

No matter what we do in life, we have a call to reach out to people.

Hospitality

I am currently reading A Life that Says Welcome by Karen Ehman, and I actually bought this book while yelling, "Help! I have no idea how to do this!"

This was brought on because of a verse that has convicted me for a while, and it just so happens to come right after my life verse. Here they are:

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." Romans 12:12-13.

Practice hospitality. How exactly do I do that? I pictured having a huge meal, with appetizers and nice music playing in the background, and having every inch of the house clean, all of the time. I always thought that entertaining and hospitality were the same thing. Since I was raised in a home where people hardly ever came over, you can imagine how the thought of having people come into our home overwhelms me. I was always the one going over to other friends' houses growing up, and when their parents would apologize for the mess, I would look around thinking, what mess?

The lesson that God taught Karen that she shared in her book is that there is a difference between "entertaining" and offering hospitality. As she says, "Entertaining puts the emphasis on you and how you can impress others. Offering hospitality puts the emphasis on others and strives to meet their physical and spiritual needs so that they feel refreshed, not impressed, when they leave your home."

Quite often, planning parties and preparing to have people in our home that aren't used to cat hair everywhere and bread crumbs on the counters sends me into a frantic cleaning spree. I feel like there are many times when I miss something that is out of place, and I notice it after people have already arrived.

So, you can imagine how relieved I felt when I read this particular quote in Karen's book:

...offering hospitality is much more about the condition of your heart than the condition of your home.

Everything doesn't have to be perfect. What matters more is how I embrace the people who enter my home. If I practice Biblical hospitality, when they leave my home they won't be thinking about the misplaced sock that was under the coffee table, or that there was a light bulb out in our ceiling light. What they will remember is the feeling of community, the feeling that someone has invested in them spiritually and emotionally, and they will be encouraged to share Christ's love with others.