Faith & Love: A One Year Bible Reading Plan - Part 8Sample

Does Jesus care about my everyday life? Is He concerned about my job, and does He notice when I am fighting an uphill battle?

Hello. I am Christo Fourie, and I am the ministry leader for our morning service at Doxa Deo Fichardt Park in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

In Luke 5, we read about something that often occurs in everyday life – someone is having a bad day at work.

Simon Peter and his colleagues James and John had struggled the whole night to make a catch. They were experienced fishermen, and so I can imagine that they were feeling quite defeated and worried about this. Failing to catch their quota meant a loss in income, and fisherman usually didn’t have a pool of reserves to back them up when business was down.

Jesus knew this.

I am amazed at the capacity Jesus had to care. Despite His hectic preaching and healing schedule, He was always finely tuned to people’s most basic needs and biggest worries.

And so, after He finished His sermon, Jesus directs these skilled fishermen to the exact spot where there were plenty of fish, and in a moment their loss is turned into profit! Problem solved! They could pack up and go home for the day!

But there was more to this miraculous moment than meets the eye. Jesus was actively recruiting men who would follow Him. Somewhere in one of the Gospels, we read that prior to this occasion, He had gone up a mountain to pray about the men He wanted to hand-pick to minister with Him and, eventually, carry on His work when He was no longer with them in person.

In Luke 5:10 we read:

“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus told Simon. “From now on you will be catching people.”

Jesus is always concerned with our personal lives. That much is clear in the miracle He performed. But He is also concerned with the Kingdom impact that your job makes. It’s more than about profit and loss; bad and good days. He wants your entire existence to touch and impact people. That way, we are all “catching people” for Jesus.