SPEAKER_00: You can take a seat.
SPEAKER_00: So today's a big Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: You probably don't realize that, and maybe you haven't been with us a long time.
SPEAKER_00: For those of us that have been here for uh 13 months, it's a big Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Is anybody realizing what this morning is?
SPEAKER_00: It is the 47th sermon, the final sermon of the book of John that we have been going through for 13 months.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the final chapter, the final story, the final sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you thought it would never end.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of you thought we were going to be in that upper room around that table forever because I took eight sermons or something just there.
SPEAKER_00: But we are at the end of this, and so Jesus has died, Jesus has resurrected, he has shown himself to disciples, and then this group of disciples, they head from Jerusalem and they head back north to Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And they're around the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: So if you picture a very dry area, a big don't picture a sea, picture a big lake, is what you should picture.
SPEAKER_00: A huge lake and mountains all around it.
SPEAKER_00: And don't you just wonder what these guys were talking about about the journey up there?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine the emotional volatility that has occurred in the past couple weeks of these guys.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're thinking at one point that Jesus is sort of going to take over the country.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to take over Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And then that kind of is devastated, and then they see their friend, they see their teacher beaten, and they see him crucified, and then they're on the run because they're scared and they bail on him, and then they're locked, they're locking themselves in a room, and then he shows up, and then he's alive, and he was dead.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you imagine all that's going on inside of them?
SPEAKER_00: And is anybody voicing that on the on the journey up to the galley?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anybody's like willing to go there and talk about any of this.
SPEAKER_00: But they're up there and then at some point they decide they're going to go out fishing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we don't know if they decide to go out fishing for economic reasons.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if they just went out fishing because they're hungry.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if they they went out fishing because they're returning to their old way of life.
SPEAKER_00: But what we do know from this story is we get this sense of aimlessness.
SPEAKER_00: We get this feeling of they're just kind of lacking purpose here.
SPEAKER_00: And they really shouldn't be.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they in Matthew, we read, Jesus was very clear with them.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you should be making disciples and baptizing, going into all nations.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he called them and said, You're gonna be fishers of men.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he told them what to do, you know, to carry this story to the next town and the next town, the next tribe, the next language, and the next culture.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here they are in their fishing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, mind you, there's nothing wrong with fishing where I'm from, it's fishing, so we'll just call it fishing from the rest of the way out.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go all the way and say fishing, it's fishing.
SPEAKER_00: And so they were fishing.
SPEAKER_00: But we get this sense that it's a lot more than fishing.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's this question going on inside of them, like, how are we supposed to do what he asked us to do?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe for us it's this question of sort of like, what are we supposed to do with our lives?
SPEAKER_00: What is it we're supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: And so in John 21, we read that they have been out fishing all night.
SPEAKER_00: I once went fishing with my friend Tyler.
SPEAKER_00: We went fishing behind Regina Conway's house.
SPEAKER_00: Regina's daddy was the sheriff, and we went fishing in the pond behind her house in a little John boat, and I think Josh Thomas was there.
SPEAKER_00: We fished for like an hour and a half, and I caught nothing, and I was so frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: An hour and a half of fishing.
SPEAKER_00: I think I fished like twice in my life, and that was one of them, behind Regina's house for an hour and a half, caught nothing, so frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: These guys have been out there all night.
SPEAKER_00: And this was the thing they're supposed to be good at.
SPEAKER_00: Like, if I can't do anything else, at least I can fish.
SPEAKER_00: And they're coming up empty, nothing, sitting, hoping, waiting, nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're here, you know this feeling, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, at least I should be good at this, and even that's kind of falling apart on you.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're so desperate, they take a word from a guy on a beach and they don't even know who it is about what they should be doing, and they're the professional fishermen.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's just jump into the story in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He called out to them, Friends, haven't you any fish?
SPEAKER_00: No, they answered.
SPEAKER_00: Humiliating answer, right?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Jesus said, Throw your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.
SPEAKER_00: And when they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
SPEAKER_00: They're just covered in fish.
SPEAKER_00: And like a lot of relief, right?
SPEAKER_00: Finally.
SPEAKER_00: It's been all night.
SPEAKER_00: And they've been trying to provide by their own means on that left side of the boat for so long, and finally a word from outside came, and they cast the net on the right side, and finally some relief.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have two sides of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: We have this left side, which is by we're going to look at the rest of the sermon, is identity and purpose by means of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Like self-realization, self-creation.
SPEAKER_00: It is a way of demand.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have this right side of the boat, which comes from a word from outside from Jesus, from God's grace to you.
SPEAKER_00: And it is identity and purpose by way of Jesus' word spoken to you, and this is the way of grace and the way of God's provision for you for identity and for purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, It is the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's interesting because for us, when we swim, we take clothes off, but he's put it on and jumped into the water.
SPEAKER_00: The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards, and when they landed, they saw a fire burning, co fire-burning coals there with fish on it and some bread.
SPEAKER_00: Peter just goes for it.
SPEAKER_00: Like so I mean, that's pretty desperate.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a pretty desperate place where you just so much don't know what to do that you just you just go overboard to s to swim, and you gotta get there as soon as you possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so Peter, this is just a feeling that Peter's been so scattered and feeling aimless and just needing um needing Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody been there?
SPEAKER_00: Right, where you feel so feel so scattered or kind of broken or fragmented inside of yourself, um with your your grades or what degree you're gonna get or your job or your family or children, you're so fragmented, you're so scattered, and so inept in some degree, and you just you need him, you need that outside word.
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter is making his way straight to Jesus, and then Jesus said to them, they get up on the shore, bring some fish you have just caught.
SPEAKER_00: So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and he dragged the net ashore.
SPEAKER_00: It was full of large fish, 153.
SPEAKER_00: But even with so many that the net was not torn.
SPEAKER_00: So ultimately, these patches about purpose.
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about this all week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, earlier this week, I went and visited my grandmother, Granny.
SPEAKER_00: Granny's been here a few times.
SPEAKER_00: You've you've probably seen her.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so she had a heart issue of maybe six weeks ago, and so she went from her sister living into a nursing home.
SPEAKER_00: So she's been at the nursing home for the last six weeks or two months, somewhere around there.
SPEAKER_00: So I went to visit her.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I went to visit her, uh so fantastic of an experience because she wasn't up in her room.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, she wasn't like there's a lot of people you get there, and most of them are in wheelchairs, and they're just they're sitting in the wheelchair and they just sort of shuffle their feet to maneuver around and they're going up and down the halls and they're like hanging out, talking to each other, or a relative's there, and they sit outside and chat.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Granny was in the beauty salon, and so I walk in and she's under the helmet dryer.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it's called, maybe it's just called a dryer, but it's a helmet, the thing that comes down, and she's under she has her rollers in and then she's getting her nails done.
SPEAKER_00: And I sit in there with her and we talk for a while, you know, and just being there and talking to her for an hour or so, and we walked around, I pushed her around, and we went, sat outside, and you're watching everybody kind of meander around.
SPEAKER_00: And it just started thinking about purpose, and I started thinking about, you know, it was probably about a year ago we went through her condo, and and we had to clean the place out.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, everything that she had worked so hard to accumulate was now being sold and given away.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot, a lot given away.
SPEAKER_00: Every person there, almost all their stuff's been given away.
SPEAKER_00: There's probably bank accounts, and the number goes up and down, and all of that will be given away.
SPEAKER_00: And probably some of them still have homes somewhere else or something like that, and that house will be given away.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we know it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like no no hearse has a U-Haul behind it.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: I I will leave everything, everything I'm working so hard to accumulate and to have, I will leave it all behind.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that, but I mean you get somewhere like that, and and these people are so close and they've already given away pretty much everything, and it's just so clear.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my point.
SPEAKER_00: You should you should make money.
SPEAKER_00: You should build businesses, you should make art, you should, you should earn a degree, you should have a nice house.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you should be a raging success for the glory of the one who gave you abilities.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: Do it.
SPEAKER_00: Please, do it.
SPEAKER_00: For the kingdom, you know, do it.
SPEAKER_00: Um but the accumulation, all of that cannot be your purpose.
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's like fishing off of the left side of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: But when we fish from the word spoken to us and we begin to cast nets on the right side of the boat, and I'll begin to kind of break that down here as we go through the passage, everything changes.
SPEAKER_00: That's point number one.
SPEAKER_00: Point number one is our purpose is about our identity.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to think of it the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that we try to think about it as well, our purpose is about what we do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, our purpose is not really about what we do.
SPEAKER_00: A purpose is what we do, but that is rooted in our identity.
SPEAKER_00: Our purpose is about our identity.
SPEAKER_00: That's where it comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Because understanding who you are births what you do.
SPEAKER_00: It births at what you want to do, it bursts what you want to do with your life.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we jump back to that beach and the disciples are there and they're gathered around that fire, and Peter's probably, he's probably looking in that fire.
SPEAKER_00: And in the book of John, there's two fires over coals.
SPEAKER_00: This one, and then the one, there was another one.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus had just gotten taken captive.
SPEAKER_00: And they're questioning him, and he's about to be persecuted and beaten and crucified, and Peter's there, and hey, hey, hey, aren't you one of his followers?
SPEAKER_00: And he's warming himself around this fire, and hey, and he's looking into those coals.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you one of his followers?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not, I'm not one of his followers.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, aren't you one of his followers?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, aren't you one of his followers?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: And now he's around another fire.
SPEAKER_00: And here Jesus is with him, sitting with the most volatile screw-ups of the disciples who denied him, who bailed on him at the most crucial moment, and we begin to get this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter being aimless, not sure what to do with purpose, and the conversation doesn't go straight into like, let me give you the list of things to do.
SPEAKER_00: The conversation is about what he should do, but there's this underlying stuff going on about who he is.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Feed my lambs.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
SPEAKER_00: He answered, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Take care of my sheep.
SPEAKER_00: So clearly there's a connection here between loving Jesus and loving people.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is clearly communicating this.
SPEAKER_00: Third time.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
SPEAKER_00: Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him this third time.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe he was hurt because he remembered those three denials.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you know all things.
SPEAKER_00: You know that I love you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Feed my sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Very truly I tell you, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted.
SPEAKER_00: But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to him, Follow me.
SPEAKER_00: So the first part was our purpose is about our identity.
SPEAKER_00: That's where it's rooted.
SPEAKER_00: Our second is this, and this is a long point.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't whittle it down, so I'll just read it twice.
SPEAKER_00: It's this Jesus doesn't create purpose in Peter by demanding change in him before loving him, but rather by loving him and then leading him into change.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty important to realize.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read it again.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't create purpose in Peter by demanding change in him before loving him, but rather by loving him and then leading him into change.
SPEAKER_00: This is the difference between the message of the gospel and the message of religion.
SPEAKER_00: Like moralistic do better religion is about this imprisoning, and it is about if you do enough, if you can climb up this hill to this temple of God, if you can do that and get yourself pretty righteous on your own, then we will welcome you in.
SPEAKER_00: Christian faith is that Jesus is down on the shore waiting for this beaten-up, aimless Peter, the one who denied him to swim and struggle ashore so he can have a conversation with him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus kept calling Peter Simon.
SPEAKER_00: In John 1, uh Jesus is the one who gave Simon this nickname, Peter, which means the rock.
SPEAKER_00: Which is kind of ironic, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he gave a nickname to the kind of the wimpy disciple who keeps screwing up.
SPEAKER_00: He gave him this nickname of the rock.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus would call Simon, he would call him Peter, like sort of calling him like, like, I know you're so much more than what you are right now, and sort of declaring this word over him.
SPEAKER_00: It is powerful to receive a name over you that you did not deserve.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've here you're here, you've never had anybody whisper a name over you.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like with my little girls, I love to, I'll tell them like I have a secret for them, say, come here, I have a secret for you.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll come up and I'll just whisper in their ear, like, you know, I'll say, You are you are lovely, you are clever, you are brave.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you didn't grow up with that.
SPEAKER_00: It is powerful to receive that.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're here and you're just trying to like kind of like shed and shake off the names you were called.
SPEAKER_00: And you're trying to replace the name you were called by fishing off that left side of the boat, and it's not, nothing's coming in.
SPEAKER_00: See, the name you receive's gotta come from the shore.
SPEAKER_00: It's gotta come from Jesus declaring it over you.
SPEAKER_00: And that is powerful because the one who created you has the ability to proclaim over you a name that you are even before you become it.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't it good news to know we are beloved to God before we deserve to be beloved?
SPEAKER_00: Because our sin was put on Jesus and his righteousness was put on us.
SPEAKER_00: So we are righteous before we are righteous, we are perfect before we are perfect.
SPEAKER_00: This is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get Jesus on this beach, sort of calling Peter out, like he's he's he's saying, like, feed my lambs, like here's what I want you to do with your life.
SPEAKER_00: So he's giving them purpose, but at the same time, he's rem he's reminding him of his identity.
SPEAKER_00: And every time he calls him Simon, Peter's going, God, would he call me Peter?
SPEAKER_00: I wish he would call me Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just Jesus kind of slightly saying, Man, you're you're being your old self.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it amazing?
SPEAKER_00: This is the turning point for Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, uh he becomes this bold force in the rest of the New Testament story where he preaches and he builds churches and he writes books, and all of a sudden you're going, is how is that that guy?
SPEAKER_00: Like how how can it be the same guy?
SPEAKER_00: And it's because Jesus loved him and led him into change.
SPEAKER_00: Unto the point of what this is talking about here in verses uh 18, where it talks about, see, Peter went on to die a death of crucifixion in Rome under Nero in AD 64.
SPEAKER_00: The one who denied.
SPEAKER_00: Point number three.
SPEAKER_00: This has to do with Peter, it has to do with me, it has to do with you.
SPEAKER_00: When the toil of identity begins to be at rest in the grace of God, you are free to fish with a new purpose.
SPEAKER_00: See, if you're not at rest in the grace of God, you will continue to fish to build your own identity, and it taints all sorts of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But when your identity is at rest in who you are as God's child, it frees you then to go into work and to have schoolwork and to have friends and athletics and art and whatever your pursuit is, it frees you to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you say, What you don't know me, like I'm an accountant, I'm a teacher, I change oil down at Poppy's car wash, and you say, I'm not really good in anything, I don't, I don't know what I could have to contribute, and and maybe you'd say, Um, you know, I'm not true at Cathy, I'm not Billy Graham, I don't have some platform.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you say I'm not Lecrae.
SPEAKER_00: Is anybody keeping up with Lecrae at this point?
SPEAKER_00: Anyone?
SPEAKER_00: Like four of us?
SPEAKER_00: He was on Tonight's show two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even into hip hop, and I'm excited about this.
SPEAKER_00: So he's I'll fill you in.
SPEAKER_00: So Lecrae, uh, he's a Christian rapper, or maybe better said, he's a rapper who is a Christian, and he hit number one on billboard and Christian music at the same time, the first time in history this was done.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you look at that and you go, well, I I don't have I don't have that.
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't have some fame to be some force of influence in my culture, to be you know, some fisher of men like that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not on, I'm not with Jimmy Fallon, you know, I'm not on the stage with him.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't have any of that.
SPEAKER_00: This week uh in The Atlantic, they wrote an article about Lacrae, in case you were hoping it's not an intellectual subject, it is.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and here's what Lacrae said in The Atlantic.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's job, everyone's vocation is an extension of their faith and how they see the world.
SPEAKER_00: Every job is an act of service.
SPEAKER_00: If I was working at a call center collecting debts from people, I would call and try to help them and try to serve them.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is about having a greater purpose in the midst of ordinary life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about all of a sudden you become some radical success or some radical platformer.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows your name.
SPEAKER_00: It is about that the grace of God has been radical to you in your ordinary life.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what might happen with a story where the grace of God has become radical?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what happened to that family?
SPEAKER_00: What happened to that person?
SPEAKER_00: What happened to that couple?
SPEAKER_00: What happened to that neighborhood?
SPEAKER_00: What happened to Marietta?
SPEAKER_00: What happened there?
SPEAKER_00: So fine, you're fine, you're ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very ordinary as well.
SPEAKER_00: But the grace of God to you is not.
SPEAKER_00: Last Friday night we were at my friend John's house, and uh there's a whole bunch of friends that I grew up with in high school and college, and a lot of us married uh like kind of our friends as we grew up.
SPEAKER_00: Like Christy and I went to high school, and several other friends we married, we kind of married friends.
SPEAKER_00: So we all know each other, even the spouses know each other, and there's about 15 little kids running around.
SPEAKER_00: And we got finally sat down for the meal, and the kids are off running around, and we sit around or sit around this dining room table, and the conversation got a little teary.
SPEAKER_00: I think I've talked about my friend David maybe once before in the last year or so, and David was so pivotal to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know if he ever knew it.
SPEAKER_00: And I just said, I said, David, you probably don't remember this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, when I was in ninth grade, do you do you remember I hurt my back, I hurt a bone in my back playing basketball, and he had hurt his knee, and we were at the same rehabilitation place.
SPEAKER_00: And he started to drive me as he was a year older from school to the rehab place, and what he befriended me.
SPEAKER_00: What he didn't know is he that I was at a crossroads in my life.
SPEAKER_00: A breaking point.
SPEAKER_00: He had no idea.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't have some great agenda.
SPEAKER_00: He just was being a friend to a new guy.
SPEAKER_00: But for me, it was huge.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even around that table, I'm getting kind of emotional about saying it, and he's like, man, no problem.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he didn't even think of it.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even a big deal to him.
SPEAKER_00: And then my friend Parker said, he said, Maya, it's in Maya, Mary David, it's a close circle.
SPEAKER_00: And then my friend Parker, he looks across the table to Maya and he says, Maya, you probably don't remember this.
SPEAKER_00: But when I was a junior, I was very confused in kind of my faith and where it what it meant.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, You had a Bible study at your house, and I couldn't believe, like you were involved in all these clubs, and you're a cheerleader, and you're so busy.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't believe that you would take the time to host and lead a Bible study at your house.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I just remember coming away thinking, like, man, why would she do that?
SPEAKER_00: And I really didn't think that much about it.
SPEAKER_00: I was kind of ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: And it just sort of like went around the table.
SPEAKER_00: Comments about what was life-changing to us in the midst of ordinary life, and not from the platforms of fame.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when I hear a preacher talk about being a fisher of men, I hear about maybe we'd even voice it as evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when I hear about this, I hear about what I'm not doing well, everything I should be doing in the world, and I feel extremely guilty because I'm not doing most of it.
SPEAKER_00: That's how usually I come, that's how usually I go home.
SPEAKER_00: Because usually I feel like how Peter must have felt walking up on that shore.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Peter's just got to wonder like what's he gonna say?
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus gonna say to me?
SPEAKER_00: Like, am I still usable to him as a broken, very self-consumed person?
SPEAKER_00: Am I usable to him as a very ordinary person with an ordinary job?
SPEAKER_00: Am I usable?
SPEAKER_00: Can he love me?
SPEAKER_00: You ever wonder this?
SPEAKER_00: Can he love me if he really knew the desires of my heart for my future?
SPEAKER_00: And John ends his book, 21 chapters, 47 sermons.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody else is probably preaching it in 20 sermons because they're better than I am.
SPEAKER_00: And but 21 chapters.
SPEAKER_00: He ends his book, his story about Jesus, not with a hero for us to look at and go, man, I'm gonna try to be that and I'll never be that, but I'm gonna keep trying to be that.
SPEAKER_00: He ends with Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And before that, he ended with Thomas, right?
SPEAKER_00: The doubter, and now he ends with Peter.
SPEAKER_00: He's just so desperate and so weary that he jumps out of a boat and he struggles through the water and he stumbles up on the shore.
SPEAKER_00: And he finds out, Peter finds out what the entire book of John is about, what the entire Christian faith is about, and it's that Jesus is standing there and he's waiting to care for you and to feed you and to talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's Jesus saying, come on, have some fish on the fire.
SPEAKER_00: Let's sit down.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about who you are.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about what you should be doing with your life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's sit down.
SPEAKER_00: You can get warm and we can talk.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, thank you that you call us to lives bigger than ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But you do not demand this without radically proclaiming a name over us that we are your beloved always and forever.
SPEAKER_00: God, we are lacking in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to being fishers of men, when it comes to feeding lambs, when it comes to being about people other than ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so thank you that we can rest in you and we can begin to learn what it means to have our identity at rest in you, so that we can fish off the right side of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you shine your light into the parts of our hearts that have still not relinquished control and self realization over to you so that we might be able to receive from you your provision for us, that we are valued and we are righteous in Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.