God wants to work with you and with your resources

(Audio: Spanish)

SUMMARY: In this passage, Jesus is being crowded by people eager to hear his message and receive his healing. He sees Peter's boat nearby and asks to use it as a platform to address the crowd. This is a symbol of how God wants to work with us and our resources to reach a world in need. We must be willing to serve and surrender ourselves to God's purposes. This is part of a series of meditations on miraculous fishing and Peter's call to ministry.

Let's visualize this moment where the Lord Jesus Christ is harassed by a large crowd. These people are eager to hear more about Jesus Christ. Therefore they crowd around him wanting to receive his ministry, wanting to receive his healing, his Word of love and hope. The Lord is in a kind of dilemma, where the crowd is so close to Him, perhaps making noise, that He cannot address them as He would like.

And then, finding a solution, he sees very close some boats that have been put there to be cleaned by the fishermen who later we discover that they have been trying to fish all night, and they have not caught a single fish, and Pedro is there washing their fish. nets, maybe a little frustrated and disheartened because he hasn't been able to catch anything all night. And the Lord Jesus Christ sees Peter, approaches him, and very gently asks Peter to allow him to use his boat, to enter it, use it as a platform, take off a little from the beach, and then address the congregation that He has met there in a much more convenient and efficient way, and we see that Peter consents to the Lord using his boat at that time.

Later we will see that this is the beginning of a ministerial relationship between Peter and the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is the basis for a deeper and broader call that the Lord makes to Peter later. I have always seen this passage and that boat of Peter as a symbol of our own lives. God wants to approach a world deeply in need of his love. Christ wants to project his message, he wants to do his healing works in the life of this fallen humanity.

There are many people in need of the Word of hope and healing that only Christ can offer. God wants to work in collaboration with us and asks us for the resources that we have at our disposal. Just as Pedro had a boat, you maybe have a profession, maybe you have a musical talent, maybe you have human relationships that you can use to project the Gospel, money, many different things that are at your disposal as that boat was at Peter's disposal. , then the apostle Peter. So remember this: God wants to reach the crowd, there are people in this world in need of the Word of the Lord, and you are the solution to a limitation that God himself has imposed on himself.

God wants to work with you, God wants to use your gifts. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ there is no other option than to let yourself be used. The only legitimate way to live the Christian life is by giving ourselves an attitude and a practice of service to others. But above all, surrendering ourselves totally to God's disposal and to the needs of his Kingdom. The son of God is, above all, a servant of God, subject to his will, ready for whatever he requires, completely surrendered to his purposes. That is the source of happiness, the source of power, the only path to greatness. This meditation is part of a series of five short messages on miraculous fishing and the Apostle Peter's call to ministry. In them, Dr. Miranda discusses practical aspects of Christian growth and service: