Surrender Your Boat to God to Receive a Great Harvest

The passage known as the Miraculous Catch—Luke chapter 5 says: “Now it happened that while Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the crowd pressed in around Him to hear the Word of God. And He saw two boats near the shore of the lake, and the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.

And getting into one of those boats, which belonged to Simon, He asked him to put out a little from the land; and sitting down, He taught the crowd from the boat. When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon: Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Simon answered Him: Master, we have been working all night and have caught nothing; nevertheless, at Your Word I will let down the net. And when they had done so, they enclosed a great number of fish, and their net was breaking.

Then they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; and they came and filled both boats so full that they were sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell on his knees before Jesus, saying: Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man; for amazement at the catch they had made had seized him and all who were with him, as well as James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners.

But Jesus said to Simon: Do not be afraid; from now on you will be a fisher of men. And when they had brought the boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.” May the Lord bless His Word. Father, give us wisdom to present Your message tonight, Lord, and may it be a seed of life falling upon the spirits of Your sons and daughters. Father, we present to our congregation the plans we have for this coming year; we place them before You and ask that You send Your light, Father, Your life-giving gaze upon the vision You have given us for the coming year, and that You crown it with great success, Father—a miraculous harvest, Father, as we see reflected here in this passage. In Jesus’ name we ask it, amen and amen.

You know, the Lord has been working in my heart these past few weeks concerning what He has for us in this coming year—and not only this coming year, but in the years ahead. Last year, as you will recall, God placed in my heart a Word about taking a stand, and we used the passage in which Elijah spoke to the people of Israel and called them to stop wavering between two opinions, faltering and struggling over whether they would serve Jehovah or Baal; and in that Word, the Lord was calling us to define ourselves as a church.

And we have spent this year reflecting and speaking in different ways about how we, as a church, ought to define ourselves—and how each one of us ought to do so as individuals as well. God was calling us, and is calling us, to enter into a deeper level of clarity, of definition concerning who we are. The Christian life is a life of commitment and clarity. Many people go to church, and it is simply a religious thing. Sometimes they believe that merely by fulfilling the ritual obligation of showing up at the church building and doing what the leaders tell them to do, they have somehow punched their time card and can go home; they have fulfilled their duty to God and do not have to do anything else.

But I always say that the Christian life is a profound life; it is a life of surrender, a life of personal commitment. We cannot depend on the pastor or the leaders, or on my grandmother who was a Christian. Rather, each one of us must make a firm commitment to the Lord: to serve the Lord, to give to the Lord, to bear fruit for the Lord, to die and be crucified in our inner being so that Christ may be formed within us, amen? It is a life of commitment and surrender.

And this year God has placed in my heart the desire to go beyond that and to see that surrender, that defining of ourselves, as simply a prelude, a preamble to something deeper that God wants to do through us—and that is to share the message of the Gospel with our community, to evangelize our community. To become an evangelistic church, a church that eats and lives each day on the bread of evangelizing souls, bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Can you grasp that vision tonight? Can you receive it in your heart? Can we receive it as a church?

God wants our church, not only during this coming year but throughout the years ahead, to devote itself fully to seeking how to learn to be effective in evangelism. God has given us great opportunities and great ways to carry the Gospel. God has enabled us to grow considerably as a congregation, but this is merely a beginning; we cannot remain there. Brothers and sisters, I believe the potential God has placed in this church is extraordinary.

As pastor, and together with our leaders, one of the things we have been doing is racking our brains over how we can make the most of all the talent and all the gifts God has placed among us, among you. There are people here who are truly gifted in many ways for Christian service, and this is a congregation that God has been preparing. We have people of great caliber here, and it is a diverse congregation, with every Latin American nationality; and every day, more and more people from every country in the world are arriving. There is tremendous cultural, spiritual, intellectual, and multifaceted potential here.

The foundation is there for an extraordinary work in this city of Boston, and probably far beyond Boston. We also believe that God has caused His Spirit to dwell in very beautiful ways in this congregation. I always hasten to say that this is not so anyone may feel proud of it in the flesh, but so that we may always give the Lord the glory and honor, and so that we may feel tremendously committed to that God who, as He did with Mary, a simple and humble woman, has chosen to cause His Spirit to descend upon us.

The fact is that God delights in using what is humble, small, and insignificant in the world to carry out His purposes, and we must see ourselves in that way: God’s life has descended upon us, is being formed within us, and wants to give birth to something extraordinary, something transformative for the benefit and blessing of this city—and He wants to use our congregation. And I see everything that has been happening over these years as merely beginnings, preludes. God brought us from Cambridge seventeen years ago and placed us here in Boston. He allowed us to begin work on this building and transform it completely; then He gave us the building next door, and we were able to do the same. I always saw that move from Cambridge to Boston as crossing the river and entering into our maturity as a congregation, into the calling God had for us.

Cambridge was preparation; it was the womb God used to raise up a church and then bring us here to Boston and begin using us. But I believe that we are now at another stage of crossing the river once again and truly entering into what God has prepared for this congregation. We are on the verge of something extraordinary. God is a God of processes; God takes time to prepare His leaders, to prepare His congregations, to prepare His ministries. He is not in a hurry. He takes time to break us, shatter us, crucify us, humble us, prepare us, and cause His gifts to continue growing within us.

And a moment comes when He then says what? “Now you have been faithful in a little; I will put you in charge of much.” We have been faithful; we have served the Lord. We have not done it perfectly; we have made mistakes along the way. But if we did not make them, we would not be biblical, because God always uses people after breaking them, after showing that they are incompetent and inadequate. Then He can use His people.

So I believe we are in a very special moment in which God wants to take us to another level and lead us deeply into that Promised Land of effectiveness, of miracles, of using His Word in a powerful way, of bringing this community to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. God placed this passage in my heart. I had many different passages I could have chosen as the basis for this meditation I want to give and this prophetic Word I want to release over our spirits.

But we see Peter at a key moment in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus finds Himself before a great multitude that is hungry and in need. They press in around Him; they are desperate; they want to hear the Word that only the Lord can give them. And the Lord feels hemmed in by so many people, and within the human limitations He Himself had chosen, He cannot find a way to project His voice to that multitude pressed right up against Him.

And then He sees Peter’s boat there, and He sees Peter cleaning the nets from his boat. Later in the passage, we see that Peter had been fishing during the previous night; he had not caught a single fish; he had failed, he had been unsuccessful. And I imagine that Peter was facing a crisis in his fishing business. But this entire setting was part of a drama that the Lord Himself was coordinating and arranging, because God had a purpose for Peter. And God had chosen that very moment, when Peter had reached the limit of his human resources as a man and of his own human career as a fisherman, to call him into another dimension, into another level of life with Him, and to show him certain lessons—and, of course, to show them to us as well, by extension, as we read this passage today.

Why did God put them there? Because they are passages that will edify us and teach us spiritual principles that we can put into practice. So the Word says that the Lord looked out at that pressing multitude, because, brothers and sisters, there is a great need in this world today. People are in need, just as they were then, and they are desperate. The Word says that in the last days people will have itching ears. We are living in times of crisis for humanity.

Right now, as Brother Samuel was saying, in Washington they are wrestling with very serious financial matters. This nation is in financial danger; it has still not emerged from its crisis. And let me tell you: many prophetic words and even secular economists say that this nation still stands on the edge of a very serious financial precipice. The nations of Europe likewise find themselves in very, very difficult situations. Even countries such as China, whose economies for a time were growing in astonishing ways, have slowed considerably.

I believe that humanity is also reaching a point of great decision. The things we have seen in recent times here in this nation—tragedies such as the one in Connecticut not long ago—show us that this nation, which has been a leader and a beacon to the world in terms of the Christian faith, is now drifting farther and farther away from the Word of God, and God is sending His judgment upon this nation. That covering of protection which this nation always had has been removed.

I believe that since 2001, when 9/11 happened, it was as though a covering of protection and grace over this nation was removed. Even Pearl Harbor in the 1940s took place outside the mainland, outside the main territory of the United States. That was when the Japanese attacked that small area and destroyed many American ships, but it happened outside the land of the United States itself.

But today that sea of terrorism has already entered this nation. This nation has also experienced major weather events, and many things are happening right now. And I believe we also see a terrible crisis among young people. Schools do not know what to do with their youth; there is a crisis in the family; there are crises in many parts of this nation right now—terrible crises. And I believe this is part of a shaking of the very womb of humanity, of nature itself; humanity is in turmoil. Nature itself is in turmoil as well, and it will grow worse with the passage of time.

I do not consider myself a prophet of doom, as they say, of cataclysms and destruction, but I sense in my spirit that it is time to sound the trumpet and prepare the people of God for the things that are to come. We must understand that humanity needs a Word that only Christ has, that only the Gospel has. This nation and so many other nations have reached the limit of their capabilities. They possess great technological, scientific, and intellectual capabilities, but they do not have the ability to heal the heart of man, the spirit of man, because only God can heal that.

Man can manipulate technology; he can manipulate machines; he can provide himself with many comforts. But what he cannot do is intervene in the spirit, intervene in the soul. Only God can do that; Jesus Christ can do it. And I believe that at this key moment for humanity, God is calling His Church to adopt a posture of urgency. Humanity needs the Gospel. The multitudes are searching for something.

And today there is more spiritual hunger than ever; the statistics and surveys conducted today say so. There is hunger; there is spiritual need. The problem is that many people do not want the structures provided by the Christian faith. They want an ethereal, generic, general spirituality that places no restraints on them concerning their behavior, preferences, and appetites. They do not want to submit to the authority of the Church; they do not want to submit to the authority of an institution, or of men and women whom God has chosen, imperfect though they are. They do not want to submit to the structure of the Gospel.

They want the beautiful parts of faith, but they do not want the duties, the responsibilities, the limitations that faith imposes. But the Church of Jesus Christ has to tell them: you do not have to swallow everything. You have to seek life, but you also have to seek the structure that the Gospel provides. So God is looking for a Church that will proclaim the Gospel creatively. One that will invite people to enter into the ways of God.

And one of the things I believe we need to tell people in this coming season—God has laid it on my heart—is that when we proclaim the Gospel and call people to come to Jesus Christ, we should do so in terms of the urgency that humanity is experiencing. They should seek refuge in Jesus Christ. They should see Christ not only as a Savior in general, but as that fortress in which a person takes refuge when the enemy is pursuing them: they enter a place and shut themselves inside it, and the enemy cannot break in.

They should see the Gospel as something that heals, as medicine for the afflictions plaguing humanity in this time. We should proclaim the Gospel as medicine, as healing, as a refuge, as hope for our children, for our families, for how we live our lives, for our communities, for our neighborhoods. For the African American community, for the Latino community, where the devil is devouring our children, our youth, and our families with a multitude of things that are destroying them.

And we should say, look: come to Christ, come to the Gospel, seek in the words of the Gospel the healing you need. So we have to present Christ to that city out there, to these neighborhoods, as salvation in a time of crisis—the healing our people need. We have to invite them to take refuge in the Word of the Lord. And those people will listen, because when God gives an anointing, He gives it; when a people finds grace and God gives them a calling, when that people sounds the trumpet, people hear it.

So I believe that if God has called us and given us an evangelistic Word, He will honor that Word. If we cast the net in the name of Jesus, the fish will come. That is what we see in this passage, isn't it? There is a great need. God has a man named Peter, but Peter is simply a symbol of the many people He has wanted to use throughout the centuries. And He says to Peter: Peter, lend Me your boat so that I may get into it, move away from the crowd, and proclaim the Gospel.

And I believe the same thing is happening with us. Right now there is a great multitude out there waiting for us to preach the Gospel to them, to proclaim the Word of the Lord to them. And the Lord is saying to Congregation Lion of Judah—I am going to speak about my church because perhaps He is saying this to other churches and other congregations as well—let us talk about ourselves.

The Lord is saying to us: Congregation Lion of Judah, He is saying to you, you have your job, your family, your profession, and different things in which you are involved, just as Peter was involved in his trade, in his profession as a fisherman. He is saying to you: lend Me your life, lend Me your resources, lend Me your gifts, lend Me your energy, lend Me your money, lend Me your commitment, and let Me enter into you as I wanted to enter into that boat, because the boat is a symbol of the gifts, property, and resources that a person has. And the Lord says: let Me enter your boat, let Me enter into you, and let Me use you as a platform from which to proclaim My Gospel.

And we have to ask ourselves: am I willing to listen to that message from the Lord? Am I willing to say to Him: okay, Lord, take my boat, take my life, and use me for Your Glory? I believe this is also part of defining ourselves, because we have to define whom we live for and what we are. We do not live for this world. We do not live to make money and attain personal greatness; we live to serve the Kingdom of God, to serve the Lord. We want God to use us.

The great significance of a man or a woman comes from being used by God, you know? That is the only thing that gives meaning to life; you may attain everything in the world that you want, but if you are not used as an instrument for the glory of God, your life is of no use, because this world will end in a dead end. Everything will be destroyed, everything will burn, and the only thing that will remain is what we invested in the Kingdom of God. And we have to decide whether we are going to surrender our lives to the Lord so that He may use us.

I have had to make that decision in my life. Many of us who serve the Lord full-time have had to decide: am I going to pursue my own appetites and desires for personal glory and personal achievement—money, two cars, a Mercedes, a big house, people's praise—or am I going to invest my life in serving the Lord and giving the Lord my resources and my life?

Peter had that moment of crisis: do I lend my boat to the Lord or not? God is saying to us: do you want to devote yourselves to preaching My Word? Do you truly want to become a congregation radically committed to the Kingdom of God, as our mission/vision says? Do you want to become a man or a woman who says to Him: Lord, everything I have, everything I am, everything I can do, everything I may ever become, I lay at Your feet and dedicate to Your Glory. Use me to bring lives to the knowledge of Jesus, to help You bring Your message to this world that needs it so desperately.

And Peter said to Him: yes, Lord, take my boat. The Lord got into the boat, preached His message to the crowd, and then called Peter and said to him: Peter, now put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch. And Peter says: but Lord, we have been fishing all night and have not caught even a single fish under ideal conditions. How can You now ask me to let down the net? But if You say so in Your Word, I will let down the net in Your name. And when Peter let down the net, it says—you already know the story—that he caught a multitude of fish, so many that he had to call other fishermen to come and share them with him.

And one day God will give us so many fish that we will have to call other churches and other workers to come and share them with us. God will use us to bless other congregations, inspire other congregations, and train other pastors so that they too may be part of that great miraculous catch God wants to bring.

And that is the difference. When God's anointing is upon a people, when the Holy Spirit is moving among us, we will give the Word, and that Word, which under other circumstances has borne no fruit, when it is cast out in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit, many fish will come to know the Lord. We have to believe that. And we have to say: Lord, if we perish, let us perish, but we are going to do what You tell us to do.

I am trembling just like any of you right now because of this commitment I am making before the Lord and before you: to become a truly evangelistic Church, a Church that eats, drinks, and dreams evangelism and bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus in times of crisis and need. We are going to see the glory of God. We are going to see miracles, we are going to see signs, we are going to see God's prophetic Word descending upon us, but we have to commit ourselves, amen?

Let us say to Him: Father, visit us with Your anointing. Descend upon us. Let us stand, and let us take two or three minutes to cry out to the Lord; let every voice be raised right now. Ask God to bring down His anointing upon us, an evangelistic anointing. We are going to fill this sanctuary until there is no room for another soul, not only once but several times a week, in the name of Jesus. This platform will be full too. These buildings will not be enough to contain the harvest of souls God is going to give us, amen?