The lake of Gennesaret is quiet at dawn. The wind that can whip it into a storm by afternoon has usually dropped by first light, and the water lies flat and grey under a pale sky. On one particular morning, two fishing boats were drawn up on the shore, and the men who owned them were kneeling at the water’s edge, washing their nets.
Washing nets was the last job of a fishing trip. It meant the work was over. That morning it must have felt more tedious than usual, because there was nothing else in the boats. No fish to sort, no catch to carry up to the market at Magdala. Simon and his partners had been out all night, casting and hauling in the dark, moving from one spot to another, trying everything their years of experience had taught them. They had caught nothing.
Then a crowd came along the shore, pressing around a teacher from Nazareth. Jesus stepped into Simon’s boat and asked him to push out a little from the land, so that He could speak to the people from the water. Simon did it. He sat in his own boat, tired and unpaid, while Jesus taught.
When the teaching was finished, Jesus turned to him and said something that no fisherman would have said. Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets.
Every instinct Simon had must have objected. You fish that lake at night, not in the bright morning. You fish the shallows near the shore, not the deep water. The nets had just been washed. He was exhausted. And this was a carpenter’s son giving instructions to a professional fisherman about his own trade.
Simon’s answer has been preached in a thousand sermons, and it still deserves our attention. “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5).
There, in one sentence, are the two ways of living that this teaching is about. We have toiled all the night. And at thy word.
Two kinds of effort
Luke records what happened when Simon responded:
Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it , he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
It would be easy to read this story as though the night of toil were bad and the morning of response were effortless. That is not what happened. The morning involved effort too. The boat had to be rowed out into deep water. The heavy nets had to be let down again. When the catch came, the nets began to tear, the partners had to be called over, and both boats were filled so full they began to sink. Nobody was lounging on the deck. If anything, the morning was more strenuous than the night.
So the difference between striving and responding has nothing to do with the amount of effort. It lies in the source. The night’s labour began with Simon. It was driven by his skill, his experience, his judgement and his need. He was the one deciding where to cast and how long to keep trying. The morning’s labour began with a word from Jesus. Simon did not decide to go out into the deep. He was told. His effort was a response to what had been spoken.
That is the heart of this teaching. Striving is effort that tries to make itself the source. It attempts to produce, by human intensity, what only God can give. Response is effort that begins with God. It hears what He has said and gives that word practical weight. Both may make you sweat. Only one of them brings you to your knees in wonder.
Look at where the story ends. Simon does not shout in triumph or start calculating the price of the catch. He falls at Jesus’ knees and says, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” The miracle has shown him who Jesus is, and in that light he sees himself truly. And Jesus answers with grace and a call: “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men” (Luke 5:10). The catch was never the point. It served a relationship and a mission. Within a few verses, Simon and his partners had left the boats and the fish on the shore and followed Him.
We are always tempted to turn this story into a formula for business success. But the purpose of the morning was to reveal Jesus and to draw Simon into following Him. Faith that responds is first of all a response to a Person.
Faith begins with hearing
If faith is a response, then it must be a response to something. You cannot respond to silence. Paul makes this very clear in Romans 10, where he traces the chain of events by which people come to believe the gospel:
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Follow the chain backwards. People call on the Lord because they believe. They believe because they have heard. They hear because someone has preached. And the preacher preaches because he has been sent. Then Paul sums it up: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Faith does not begin inside us. It is not a force we work up by concentration, or a feeling we manufacture by repetition and volume. It comes. It arrives through hearing what God has said, supremely the message concerning Christ. The word Paul uses for “word” in that final verse often refers to a spoken utterance, and in this chapter it points to the preached gospel, “the word of faith, which we preach” (Romans 10:8). Faith is born when the heart receives what God has announced.
Much of our religious striving comes from trying to produce faith without listening. We repeat a phrase over and over. We work ourselves into a state of certainty about something God may never have said. And when it does not happen, we conclude that our faith was too weak, and we try harder next time.
But faith is only as strong as the word it rests on. Simon’s faith on the lake that morning was not impressive in itself. It was tired and reluctant. It came with a list of objections. What made it powerful was what it was responding to. “At thy word.” The authority lay in the word, and the man who obeyed simply leaned his weight on it.
So when you find yourself straining to generate a stronger feeling of faith, stop and go back to what God has actually said. Consider who Jesus is and what He has done. Read the promise in its context. Let the word provide the ground for your response, instead of searching yourself for some inner spiritual force to squeeze out.
That calls for honesty about what we are responding to. Before a major decision, ask: is this a clear truth of Scripture, a reasonable conclusion from it, or a desire of my own? You can obey a plain command firmly, hold a reasonable conclusion humbly and bring a desire honestly to your Father. Trouble starts when we give our desires the authority of a command and then strive to make them happen.
The son of striving and the son of promise
Abraham is held up in Scripture as the father of all who believe, and his story shows both ways of living side by side. Here is how the writer to the Hebrews describes the beginning of his journey:
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
“When he was called ... obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” The call came first. The obedience followed. Abraham did not draw up a plan, research the destination and then ask God to bless it. He heard and went. His going was costly. He left his country, his father’s household and everything familiar. He lived in tents for the rest of his life. But all of that effort was a response. He was walking toward something God had spoken.
Yet Abraham’s story also contains a painful chapter of striving. God had promised him a son. Years passed, and nothing happened. Sarah was barren and growing old. Eventually she made a suggestion that was perfectly acceptable in their culture: “I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her” (Genesis 16:2). And Abraham agreed. Ishmael was born to Hagar.
Notice what happened there. The promise was God’s, but the plan was theirs. They took a word from God and tried to fulfil it by their own arrangement. Paul later puts it this way: “he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise” (Galatians 4:23). Ishmael was the son of striving. Isaac was the son of promise. One came from Abraham’s effort to help God keep His word. The other came when God did what He had said, at a time when Abraham’s own ability to produce anything was gone.
Paul describes that moment in Romans 4. Abraham “considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb” (Romans 4:19). He looked at the facts honestly. He was not pretending. But he “staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief,” and was “fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:20-21).
The striving had produced heartache that echoed for generations. The responding produced the child through whom the promise would run all the way to Christ. Many of us have an Ishmael somewhere in our past, a thing we tried to make happen because we thought God was too slow. The good news is that God did not abandon Abraham because of Ishmael. He still kept His word. And He has not abandoned you.
PunchlineStriving tries to produce what God has promised. Faith hears what God has said and responds to Him, leaving the producing to the One who promised.
Naaman wanted something great to do
One of the most revealing stories about striving and responding involves a proud army commander. Naaman was the captain of the host of the king of Syria, a great man and highly honoured, and he had leprosy. A captured Israelite girl who served his wife told him about the prophet in Samaria. So Naaman travelled south with letters from his king, a fortune in silver and gold, and ten changes of clothing. He arrived at Elisha’s house with his horses and chariot. And then:
And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it ? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
Elisha did not even come to the door. He sent a messenger with a simple instruction. Naaman was furious. Listen to his complaint: “Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.” He had a picture in his mind of how his healing ought to happen. It involved ceremony, drama and personal attention fitting for a man of his rank.
His servants saw the problem clearly. “My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?” Naaman would gladly have strived. He would have paid any price, travelled any distance, endured any ordeal. What offended him was the simplicity of the response that was asked of him. Wash in the Jordan. That is all.
Striving often prefers the great thing, because the great thing leaves room for us to contribute something impressive. A difficult fast, a heroic sacrifice, a costly pilgrimage: these appeal to the part of us that wants to have earned the answer. The simple word humbles us, because it leaves nothing for us to boast about.
The gospel is like that. When people asked Jesus, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” He gave them a surprising answer: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:28-29). The work God asks is to trust the One He sent. Like Naaman, many people would rather do some great thing.
When Naaman finally went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, “according to the saying of the man of God,” his flesh came back “like unto the flesh of a little child.” His response was not effortless. He had to get down from his chariot, take off his armour and his fine clothes in front of his servants, and walk into a muddy river seven times. That took more humility than any great deed would have required. But it was a response to a word, and the word did what it said.
Fill the waterpots
At a wedding in Cana, early in Jesus’ ministry, the wine ran out. In that culture this was a serious embarrassment for the family. Mary came to Jesus with the problem, and then she turned to the servants and gave them the best advice anyone has ever been given:
His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it . And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it .
Nugget“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” That is the posture of responsive faith in a single sentence.
Look at what the servants actually did. They filled six stone waterpots, each holding two or three firkins, perhaps twenty or thirty gallons apiece. There was no tap. That water had to be drawn from a well and carried, jar by jar, until every pot was full. It was heavy, ordinary labour. And they filled them “up to the brim.” They did not do the minimum. They responded fully to what they had been told, even though it must have seemed pointless. The problem was wine, and they were being asked to fetch water.
Then Jesus told them to draw some out and take it to the governor of the feast. That was the moment of real risk. If nothing had changed, they would be the ones carrying a cup of water to the master of ceremonies at a wedding that had run dry. But they did it, and somewhere between the jar and the governor’s lips, the water had become wine.
Notice the division of labour. The servants filled and carried. Jesus turned water into wine. They did not attempt His part, and He did not do theirs. And John adds a lovely detail: the governor did not know where the wine had come from, “but the servants which drew the water knew” (John 2:9). The ones who responded were the ones who saw what He had done.
This is what faith looks like in ordinary life. Most of the time, the response God asks for looks like filling the waterpots. It is returning to an unfinished task, making the phone call, telling the truth, showing up for work and doing it well, forgiving the person you have been avoiding. Each is a way of responding to the One who produces the miracle.
Faith becomes visible
Someone may ask whether all this talk of responding instead of striving will make believers passive. James answers that concern directly:
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
James is confronting a claim to faith that never does anything. A brother or sister has no clothes and no food, and a fellow believer says, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,” and walks away. James says that kind of faith is dead. It is a set of words with no life in them.
How does this fit with Paul, who insists that we are justified by faith apart from works? Paul and James are fighting on different fronts. Paul is opposing the idea that we can earn our standing before God by our performance. James is opposing the idea that we can claim to trust God while our lives show no sign of it. Paul rejects works as wages. James rejects faith as mere words. Both agree that genuine faith is alive, and living things move.
James mentions Abraham too, and asks, “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?” (James 2:22). The word for “wrought with” describes faith working alongside his actions. Abraham’s faith found its expression in what he did. He believed God, and because he believed, he acted.
That is exactly what we mean by response. Faith that responds will always become visible. If I believe the Father cares for people, I will care for someone. If I confess that Jesus is Lord, there will be a dishonest shortcut I refuse to take. If I believe I am forgiven, I will be able to forgive. None of these earn anything. They are what trust looks like when it gets out of bed in the morning.
A man I will call Aminu learned this the hard way. He ran a small logistics business in Kano and had been waiting for months on a large contract. He told me he had done everything he could think of spiritually. He had fasted for twenty-one days. He had prayed at midnight. He had declared the contract his every morning in the car. Nothing moved. One evening, in frustration, he asked an older brother in his church what else he should do. The older man asked him a question he did not expect. “What has God already told you to do that you have not done?”
Aminu went quiet. There was an invoice he had inflated for a previous client, a year earlier. He had felt uneasy about it ever since and had pushed the feeling away. There was also a partner he had spoken to harshly and never apologised to. He had been striving to move God toward a contract while ignoring the two things God had actually been saying to him.
He corrected the invoice and refunded the difference. It cost him money he did not really have. He called his partner and apologised. Then, he said, for the first time in months, he slept through the night. The contract did eventually come, from a different company altogether, but he was careful to tell me that was not the point of the story. The point was that he had stopped trying to make something happen and started responding to what he had heard.
Responding without owning the outcome
There is one more thing we need to say, because responsive faith can easily be turned into a new kind of formula. If I respond correctly, the result I want is guaranteed. Scripture will not let us think that way.
Hebrews 11, the great chapter of faith, describes some who “through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions” (Hebrews 11:33). And then, in the same breath, it describes others who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance,” who “had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings,” who were stoned and sawn asunder and wandered about “destitute, afflicted, tormented” (Hebrews 11:35-37). Then it says of all of them together: “these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise” in their lifetime (Hebrews 11:39). Both groups responded to God. Both are commended for faith. The results were very different.
So responding to God does not mean we get to own the outcome. We obey because He is worthy of trust, and the results remain in His hands. A worker who refuses a bribe may be promoted for his integrity, or he may lose an opportunity. Either way, his refusal was an act of faith. A family may respond faithfully to God’s leading and still walk through a hard season. We should not measure the faithfulness of a person’s life by how easy the results have been.
This is actually what makes responsive faith restful. The striver carries the weight of the outcome on his own shoulders. If he does not push hard enough, he thinks, it will not happen. The one who responds carries only the weight of obedience. He does what he has been told, and he leaves the result with the One who spoke. If the outcome disappoints him, he can examine whether there was something to learn, and he can endure where endurance is called for. But he does not have to conclude that God has failed, or that his faith was a fraud.
PunchlineYou were never meant to be the power behind God’s promises. You are called to hear Him, and to give His word weight in the decision in front of you.
There is a postscript to Simon’s story. Years later, after the crucifixion and resurrection, Peter and some of the other disciples were back at the same lake. Perhaps they did not know what else to do. Peter said, “I go a fishing,” and the others went with him. And John tells us, “that night they caught nothing” (John 21:3).
It was the same lake, the same men, the same empty nets after a night of effort. At dawn a figure stood on the shore and called out to them, “Children, have ye any meat?” They had to admit they had none. Then He said, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find” (John 21:6). They did not recognise Him yet. But they responded to the word, and the net was suddenly so full they could not draw it in.
It was John who said it first: “It is the Lord.” And Peter, the man who had once fallen at Jesus’ knees and begged Him to depart, threw himself into the sea to get to Him faster.
That is where responding faith leads. It begins with a word you might be too tired to want to hear. It may ask you to do something that seems pointless, like casting a net in the wrong place or filling jars with water when the problem is wine. But it leads you to recognise the Lord. And once you have seen Him, the fish matter much less than the One standing on the shore.
Perhaps you have toiled all night. You have done everything you know how to do, and your nets are empty. Listen for His word. Then, whatever it costs, let down the net.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Where in your life are you “toiling all night,” trying to produce by your own effort something only God can give?
- Can you identify an “Ishmael” in your past, something you tried to make happen because God seemed slow? How has God been faithful since then?
- Naaman was offended by the simplicity of what he was asked to do. Is there a simple instruction from God that you have been resisting because it seems too small?
- What has God already said to you that you have not yet responded to?
- How does knowing that you do not own the outcome change the way you obey?
This Week
Read Luke 5:1-11 and John 2:1-11 this week. Then take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write the things you are currently straining to make happen. On the other side, write what you clearly know God has said, from Scripture or from His leading in your life, about those same areas. Choose one thing from the second column and respond to it this week, in a concrete, practical way, and deliberately leave the outcome with Him.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, I confess that I have often toiled all night on my own strength, trying to produce what only You can give. I have treated my desires as though they were Your commands, and I have strained to make things happen instead of listening to You. Teach me to hear Your word and to respond to it. Give me the humility of Naaman’s servants and the obedience of the servants at Cana. Where You have spoken clearly, let me obey without delay. Where I do not understand, give me patience to wait and listen. I let go of the outcome and place it in Your hands. At Your word, I will let down the net. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.