01/08/2026
Throw your nets into deeper waters
God put these words in my heart some days ago, and I believe there is so much depth in them that I decided to share them with you. Let us look at one of the incidents at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, found in Luke 5:1–8.
Peter was a seasoned fisherman, well acquainted with the sea, its conditions, and the different weather patterns that were essential to his trade. He made a living out of fishing - and more than that, he had a family that depended on him. This one night, he’d spent the whole night fishing and caught absolutely nothing. I do not think it was unusual for him to have spent the night out at the sea fishing. But perhaps they almost always caught something. Nevertheless, this particular night they caught nothing. The following day, he was by the shore with his partners, James and John, who were brothers, washing their nets. It was then that Jesus came and sat in Peter’s boat and asked him to push it out a little from the land. Peter did as Jesus requested, and Jesus began teaching the people from the boat. After He was done teaching, He turned to Peter and told him, ‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ Peter began to tell him how they’d been fishing all night and caught nothing. But then he said, ‘nevertheless at Your Word, I will let down the net.’
Often we also, when we’ve been working hard and yet keep failing or whatever mountain in life we are facing that never seems to move, it is easy to despair at the mention of ‘try again.’ What if Peter had stopped at the first of his two sentences, ‘we caught nothing’ and dismissed Jesus’ invitation to increase?
I’ve been thinking about Peter this morning, marveling at how spontaneous he was. While in some instances he was a bit too decisive, he also had a childlike kind of faith and was not hesitant to act on it.
However although he did obey Jesus, he threw in only one net. Jesus had specifically said ‘let down your nets for a catch’, and Peter replied, ‘I will let down the net’ - his own net.
There’s an old hymn I often think of, written by Joseph Medlicott Scriven in 1855, ‘What a Friend we have in Jesus.’ One of the lines in the lyrics says ‘Oh what peace we often forfeit, Oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.’ When I think of this song, I wonder why we’d choose to hold on to some of the pains we suffer, some of the stress - when we can give it ALL to Jesus? Yet we do, many times, without knowing that we are holding back. This is exactly what Peter did. I don’t think even for a second that Peter thought ‘I don’t need all that much fish - one net is sufficient.’ The reason he’d been out all night was to get as much fish as he could - or just five or two, if that's all there was! You know what held him back? His own knowledge. According to Peter’s knowledge as a fisherman, that sea produced a maximum of his net full of fish. That’s probably the most he’d ever fished in a go, or the most he expected to fish at a go, the night after a fish-failure.
The thing between us and the entire blessing of God, is what Peter himself was to later write in 2 Peter 1:3, ‘As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to glory and virtue.’ Through Jesus, this grace has been given to us in its entirety. Everything you and I will ever need - that concerns our lives here on earth, including living godly lives, comes by the knowledge of God. Not by our own knowledge.
Paul wrote about the same thing in Ephesians 1:3, ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.’ The words of Paul reveal two things: one, the blessing we have through the grace of God is not in material form. In Galatians 3:14 Pauls says that the blessing of Abraham comes upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive that blessing through faith. It was the blessing of Abraham that made Abraham rich - and that blessing was the spoken Word of God to Abraham in Genesis 12-22. Our inheritance as children of Abraham through faith is the spoken Word of God - not the material blessing that Abraham had; those material things were a by-product of the blessing of God in his life, because he acted on the Word by faith. The second thing Paul reveals is that the blessing of God is existing in the heavenly places. It is spiritual. Jesus said that the Word He spoke was ‘Spirit and life’, John 6:63. The Word of God is the blessing to us - and it is Spirit and Life. It will produce for you whatever it is that you need.
If Peter had done exactly as Jesus had said - to let down nets - he could have borrowed as many nets from all the fishermen sitting on that beach that day and they’d all have had the biggest catch of their lives. All the same, once he was out in the deep and realised his net was beginning to break, he called his partners and together they filled their boats until the boats were beginning to sink for the number of fish they contained!
Friend, Jesus doesn’t give you a sample of His blessing. He has given to you His entire grace! If you will receive this Word today, you should go out, get as many containers as you can, call in your friends and family for dinner and expect the Lord of increase to fill your containers!
To throw our nets into the deep water takes pushing the boat back in to the water, getting in and going to the deep waters. It requires an action of faith.
Finally, about Peter. This incident happened before he became a disciple of Jesus. When he saw what the Lord had done for him, he recognised Him. He didn’t go home into a closet to give Him thanks. He went right before Him in public before all those that had been listening to the teaching or that were sitting at the beach for any other reason and called Him Lord! ‘When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!’
My prayer for us today is that we would recognise Jesus at the hour of our visitation. Give God the glory whenever things improve - and even when they do not, praise Him that you are alive and that things are as good as they are!