April 11, 2016
“Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee.[a] It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus[b]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.” John 21:1 – 3
Letting Go – Part I
Can you imagine what the disciples felt like after losing Jesus in the capacity of their human leader? Here they are, they’ve followed Jesus for three years and their actions after his resurrection showed either they believe Jesus or they didn’t understand what he was talking about when he was telling them what was going to happen to the Son of Man.
They didn’t know how to carry on the ministry of Jesus Christ without Jesus leading them so they were ready to abandon the life they had led for three years and go back to what they had done before; fish for fish.
Jesus had spent three years teaching them to be fishers of men but here they were, going to back what they done before because they hadn’t really let go of their old lives. They had simply put them on hold.
The disciples are just like many of us. How many of us have just put our old lives on hold rather than letting them go? How many of us pretend to understand what God, through Christ, has been teaching us while we’ve been walking in with him? How many of us are afraid to let our real-self show because we know we are really faking our faith?
If the disciples had really let go of their past while they were walking with Jesus, they couldn’t have gone back to what they were before Jesus. The same is true for us. To say we have allowed Jesus to change us and make us new in him means we must to be willing to let go of the past and not return to it.
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” Proverbs 26:11
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