Where will you see Jesus this week?

Raul Garcia III
5th Sunday After Epiphany

February 10, 2019

Let us Pray:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing to you my Lord my rock and redeemer.

Amen.

The story of Jesus and calling of the first disciples reminds us that we most often encounter God

in the regular places we visit or things we do.

For example, Moses was tending his sheep until he saw a burning bush,

Paul had his encounter with God when he was traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus

in order to persecute some Christians,

and Luther encountered God traveling during a stormy night.

We all have a different event, place or thing in which we have encountered God.

Be it a cancer walk, baking food for a neighbor because they were hospitalized,

sending someone a card to say you are thinking of them during a difficult time in their life,

or bible camp or on a mission trip.

For the disciples they were cleaning their nets when Jesus came upon them.

Jesus steps onto Simon’s boat and teaches the crowd from the deck.

Then he tells Simon Peter to set off near deep and cast your nets one more time.

If you think about this the guys were already tending their nets for the day because

they have been fishing and probably didn’t catch much.

This is how these guys made a living. They had to catch fish. They were tired.

But you know what the first important thing happened. Simon Peter listened.

Simon could have said No!! We are not going out there.

Get off our boat and go along and bother someone else. But he didn’t.

He let Jesus on his boat to teach and then listened again when Jesus told him

to set out a bit and cast your nets and they caught a lot of fish.

So many fish that they had to have other fishermen help them.

This was Simon Peter’s moment of him encountering Jesus as Lord.

When they caught all those fish Simon Peter had that moment of clarity and

realized I am with the Lord so he fell to his knees and said I am a sinful man!!

Simon Peter saw the light and divinity of Christ. Just like Isiah in the old testament

reading when he said,

“For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of

unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Moments of clarity.

I have a question for everyone here:

Where have you seen Jesus this past week?

So we are going to do something right now I do with our senior high youth

and middle school youth on mission trips.

We do this every night for devotions at the end of the day. It is called Yeah Gods.

I ask them this question: Where did you see God today?

So, now it’s your turn. Where have you seen God this past week?

When someone says something we all together say Yeah God.

We are going to hear a few Yeah Gods this morning...

Simon Peter had his Yeah God moment and so did the disciples that got up and

left their nets right away. Now think about this that they left their nets right away.

This was their livelihood.

This is how they put bread on the table.

I have talked about this before so if they were fishermen and this is what their livelihood

was they didn’t make the cut.

Back then everyone wanted to be a Rabbi.

Rabbi’s were the Lebron’s, Curry’s, Bono’s or whomever you think is the

ultimate rock star nowadays. Rabbi’s were it!! These guys didn’t make the cut.

They were not good enough.

Most of you know this about me and those who are visitors I am a coach.

Besides being called to serve here at Family of God,

I coach club soccer and I also coach collegiate soccer.

Sometimes I get to travel to different places in the United States and evaluate players.

I feel bad because I have to be the one to tell them they are not good enough.

When I get an email from a player who would like to play for us,

we do our due diligence and see if they are good enough.

Sometimes we have to let them know that they should look at another program.

Coaching at the club level where I coach younger girls, they have dreams of playing for

North Carolina, the most storied NCAA soccer school in women’s soccer history.

They have won 21 of the last 36 years of women’s soccer. They are good.

I don’t want to be a dream killer but sometimes I have to let them know the reality.

I dislike having to tell players that they are not good enough.

I love training them, lifting their spirits, seeing them succeed on and off the field,

plus telling them they are good enough.

I am reminded.

What is great! We all make the cut. We don’t choose Jesus, Jesus chooses us.

When we see Jesus like Simon Peter did, we might realize that we haven’t been living in

a relationship with him, and chose to accept his forgiveness and his offer of a

new relationship with him.

We may have experienced God and become aware of the other gods - the gods

of this world - in which we have put our trust and faith.

Encountering Jesus may make us aware that we have refused to take up our cross

and follow him or our decision to only love a select few and be harsh in our judgement of others.

In all this craziness in our lives and us being like Simon Peter.

We fall to our knees and tell Jesus we are sinful and we feel we are not worthy.

This is where Jesus grabs us by the hand lifts us from our knees and says that's okay.

Don’t be afraid, I need you to help spread the Gospel for me and show my compassion and love.

Even though our life is sometimes chaotic Jesus wants us to cast our nets and cast

them wide to help others.

Jesus wants us to show his compassion and love, to feed the hungry,

clothe the naked, speak for the unspoken, and love with your all.

Our God is not a distant God.

The God whom we worship is here among us, now.