When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. (Luke 5:4-6)

Peter and his partners are exhausted from toiling all night–casting the nets but catching no fish. When Jesus shows up, they are washing the nets, which means they are putting everything away for the day.

What they need the most right now is time to get rested up, refreshed and ready to hit the high seas again the next night.

Jesus tells them to get back out there again, exhaustion and all. Not just to cast the nets a few feet away from shore. He wants them to go deep.

How does Peter, a professional fisherman with a commercial fishing boat and industrial strength nets respond to this recommendation from a professional carpenter who has absolutely no experience in fishing?

If you were a dentist, would you take advice on how to do a root canal from the Roto-Rooter guy?

Duh!

Peter could’ve pooh-poohed Jesus’ directive. Instead he says:

“Nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.”

Nevertheless. That is the key word in this narrative.

It doesn’t make sense in the natural.

No sensible professional fisherman would do what you’re suggesting, Jesus.

Nevertheless.

Ever find yourself in Peter’s crocs?

It makes no sense to forgive considering the hurt they have caused us. Seems like they’re getting off the hook easy.

Nevertheless at Your word, I will forgive.

It makes no sense to tithe considering we can’t make ends meet on 100%. How are we going to do it on 90%?

Nevertheless at Your word, I will tithe.

No sensible person would give up a good-paying job and head off to some godforsaken jungle mission field in a godless nation in the name of God.

Nevertheless at Your word, I will go.

No sensible church would re-locate from an affluent neighbourhood to the downtown core just so they could serve the least of these.

Nevertheless at Your Word, we will move.

Now it’s your turn to fill in the blanks. Here, let me get you started.

It makes no sense to …………………. considering ………………………

Nevertheless at Your word, I will …………………………..

No sensible person would ……………………………………………………………………………………..

Nevertheless at Your word, I will……………………………

Peter would concur. And Jesus will smile.

I heard Jack Taylor quote part of this poem at the recent Pastors and Leaders Conference in Toronto and am being led to share it with you.
Upon researching its origins, I have discovered that it was penned by that mysterious and ubiquitous author whose pseudonym is “Anonymous.”
You may find the language a bit dated and jarring at times, but please stay with it…it is intended to be a blessing to all–male and female.

When God wants to drill a man and thrill a man and skill a man…
When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart to create
So great and bold a man that all the world shall praise…
Watch His methods;
Watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects…
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into frail shapes of clay that only God understands.
How his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands…
How he bends but never breaks when His good he undertakes.
How He uses whom He chooses…with every purpose fuses him;
By every art induces him to try His splendor out…
God knows what He’s about!

When God wants to take a man and shake a man and wake a man…
When God wants to make a man to do the future’s will;
He tries with all His skill…
When He yearns with all His soul to create him large and whole…
With what cunning He prepares him…
How He goads and never spares him!
How He whets him and He frets him and in poverty begets him…
How often He disappoints whom He sacredly anoints!
With what wisdom He will hide him;
Never minding what betide him…
Though his genius sob with slighting and his pride may not forget;
Bids him struggle harder yet!
Makes him lonely so that only God’s high messages shall reach him…
So that He may surely teach him what the hierarchy planned;
And though he may not understand…
Gives him passions to command.
How remorselessly He spurs him…
With terrific ardor stirs him
When He poignantly prefers him.

When God wants to name a man and fame a man and tame a man…
When God wants to shame a man to do His Heavenly best;
When He tries the highest test that His reckoning may bring…
When He wants a [god] or king;
How He reins him and restrains him so his body scarce contains him…
While He fires him and inspires him…
Keeps him yearning, ever burning for that tantalizing goal.
Lures and lacerates his soul…
Sets a challenge for his spirit;
Draws it highest then he’s near it!
Makes a jungle that he clear it;
Makes a desert that he fear it…and subdue it, if he can –
So doth God make a man!

Then
To test his spirit’s wrath
Throw a mountain in his path;
Puts a bitter choice before him and relentlessly stands o’er him…
Climb or perish, so He says…
But, watch His purpose, watch His ways.
God’s plan is wondrous kind – could we understand His mind?
Fools are they who call His blind!

When his feet are torn and bleeding;
Yet his spirit mounts unheeding…
Blazing newer paths and finds;
When the Force that is Divine leaps to challenge every failure,
And His ardour still is sweet –
And love and hope are burning in the presence of defeat!

Lo the crisis, Lo the shouts that would call the leader out…
When the people need salvation doth he rise to lead the nation;
Then doth God show His plan…
And the world has found a man!

“Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” (Luke 5:17)

For the past five years, we have been offering a Healing Service on the third Sunday of every month at either Morgan’s Point or Forks Road East United—the two churches I pastor in Wainfleet Township in the South Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada.

We have seen the Lord set people free from all kinds of pain and illness at these gatherings.

We have witnessed deaf ears being opened up dramatically.

A number of people have testified to receiving emotional healing.

On several occasions, people have made or renewed a commitment to follow Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

In short, Jehovah Rapha has cemented His reputation as the One Who Heals over and over again.

Towards the end of last year, the Lord nudged me to change the name of our service.

After a time of seeking Him in prayer, I was led to Hebrews 2:4 where the writer speaks of “God also bearing witness (to salvation) both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus we held our inaugural SIGNS, WONDERS & MIRACLES MEETING on Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. at Morgan’s Point United Church.

The format of these services is fairly consistent from month to month. We begin with a time of praise and worship and then open up the microphones to anyone who wants to share a testimony of how they have experienced God lately in their lives, particularly in healing.

This is followed by the offering, a message and then ministry as the Holy Spirit leads.

As we started passing the microphone around, several testified about how they had experienced the goodness of God in their lives in recent times.

When Betty Summerhayes got her turn at the mike though, she did not talk about how God had brought her through serious cancer surgery in the past couple of months.

Instead she started sharing what had happened since she came to the meeting that evening.

Lately, Betty’s feet had swollen considerably. As a matter of fact, she had great difficulty getting her feet into her sneakers. They were so tight that it was painful to walk.

During the time of praise and worship, she began to experience a reduction in the swelling. As she held the microphone in her hands, she was able to move her feet around. She estimated a 50% improvement.

We all applauded the goodness of God in bringing about this change and prophesied a 100% change over her.

To make a long story short, by the time the meeting came to an end, her feet were so loose that she was worried they would pop out as she started walking…praise God!

Here is the incredible thing about Betty’s miracle.

When the change began to happen to her feet, no one had laid hands on her. No one had prayed over her. No one had made any declarations over her. She had not come into contact with any prayer cloth.

She simply came in faith, expecting to receive a miracle.

What happened?

As in a meeting that Luke recorded for us in his gospel, “the power of the Lord was present to heal.”

And as we pressed into His Presence in worship, He started releasing His power. Wow!

Have you experienced the power of His Presence in a similar way?

Would you please share your testimonies with the rest of your DWOD family? Thanks in advance.

For the past three days, Sulojana and I have been enjoying the blessings of the Pastors and Leaders Conference at Catch the Fire, Toronto.

One of my great delights over the years has been introducing ministry colleagues who are not all that familiar with the ways of the Holy Spirit to the atmosphere and the anointing that flows so freely here at CTF Toronto.

This year, I was delighted to discover that a minister whom I had encouraged to attend a few months back had indeed decided to come.

This was not Kimberly’s first time here. She had been here in 1996 and experienced the Father’s Love in an incredible way (as she explains in this video).

So, she knew that she was not coming to a mainline denominational Conference 🙂

But even when you come prepared for something entirely different, it can still be a rather unsettling experience for someone who has not been exposed to Holy Spirit joy, healing and other manifestations firsthand with the frequency and intensity that is common at such events.

This afternoon, we had a choice of two workshops.

One was led by the Senior Pastor of CTF Toronto, Steve Long, on how to establish and grow multiple campuses of the same ministry (as they have done).

The other, offered by Carol Arnott, who along with husband John is one of the Founding Pastors, was about experiencing the Holy Spirit.

The précis of Steve’s presentation gave the impression that his workshop would be more logical, loaded with practical steps and strategies.

Carol made it clear that her workshop would include a time for participants to encounter God in a personal way that was sure to impact them powerfully.

Kimberly chose the former, as did I.

As expected, Steve went through a methodical presentation, weaving illustrations from real life, answering questions patiently and demonstrating once again that he is a teacher extraordinaire.

Once the presentation ended, he offered those who so desired an opportunity to receive prayer ministry. He would ask the Holy Spirit to impart the grace everyone needed to follow through with the teaching.

I saw Kimberly standing on the prayer line, along with just about everyone else who was at the workshop. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her gently falling to the ground as Steve prayed for her—a very common sight at this Conference!

As a member of the Prayer Ministry Team, I was ministering to those who were already doing “carpet” time, when I suddenly heard sobbing and weeping coming from behind.

Yes, it was Kimberly who was responsible for these sounds. As I moved closer to her, it was evident that she was experiencing a powerful encounter with the Father that resulted in the expression of strong emotions.

I blessed what the Holy Spirit was doing in her and moved on.

Later on that afternoon, Kimberly explained that she had chosen Steve’s workshop as she simply wanted to be in a place where she could listen, learn and take copious notes of practical solutions. This way she would not have to subject herself to the emotional expressions that would surely be stirred up by receiving prayer ministry in Carol’s workshop 🙂

Aha! God had other plans for Kimberly, though!

She discovered that the God who has been described by various titles such as Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Rapha and Jehovah Nisi, is also known to show up as Jehovah Sneaky!

Can you relate?

We would love to have you share your experiences with the rest of your DWOD family

It was one of the shortest prayers I’ve ever heard anyone offer at our Saturday morning men’s Bible study session, but it caught my attention.

Perhaps it was my propensity to pray in paragraphs that prompted me to take note of this single-sentence offering to the Almighty.

Or it could’ve been the stark contrast to prayers that are normally laden with requests for oneself and for others.

Maybe it was the sincere simplicity…you be the judge.

In a voice that quivered with emotion, he said: “Lord, there is a lot I can pray about this morning…but for now, all I want to say is ‘I love you’ and ‘Thank you.’ Amen.”

You may have heard elsewhere that these are two of the three most important phrases that could be uttered in marriage by one partner to the other (the third one being, ‘I am sorry’).

We all have this need to be loved and to be appreciated. Chances are the relationships we value the most are those in which we are able to give and receive both love and appreciation.

Is that not true of our relationship with God as well?

The pages of the Bible contain numerous reminders of a God who repeatedly reassures His children that they are loved.  e.g. “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

These words are addressed collectively to the people of Israel, while the following declaration is directed to one individual, Jesus: “You are my Son, whom I love.” (Luke 3:22).

We are also urged to express love and appreciation to God, as in Deuteronomy 6:5:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

The words “I love you” always elicit a response, don’t they?

Psalm 18:1 is one example of how the recipients of God’s declaration of love reciprocate with their own recitation: “I love you, O LORD, my strength.”

Similarly the encouragement to “give thanks”, i.e. to express appreciation, is found in verses such as this: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever” (I Chronicles 16:34).

Responses abound, such as this one from Psalm 75:1—“We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; we tell of your wonderful deeds.”

Perhaps the main reason this prayer caught my attention was because it had captured the essence of worship in two simple phrases.

The word “worship” comes from “Worth-ship”, which simply means to give God worth.

Worship is not a time for “gimme” prayers or a time to “get” something.

It is a time to celebrate and cement our relationship to Jesus, which the apostle Paul described as that between a bride and a bridegroom. (Ephesians 5:22-33)

What better way to do this than to simply say: “I love you” and “Thank you?”

Perhaps it will not surprise you to learn that Ches Staley offered this prayer on the very same day that he and Grace celebrated the 40^th anniversary of their marriage.

Would you pray with him this way?

“Lord, there is a lot I can pray about this morning…but for now, all I want to say is ‘I love you’ and ‘Thank you.’ Amen.”

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:22-23)

In this passage Jesus is talking about a group of people who profess to be his followers, as evidenced by their addressing him as “Lord.”

They were able to do what most onlookers would label as being extraordinary actions.

Yet Jesus deals quite harshly with these superstars who manifest the supernatural in his name.

Why?

Because they were content with WHAT they knew, not WHO they knew.

Look at what happens in Acts 19, where seven sons of Sceva invoked the name of Jesus to drive out evil spirits from a man. Here is Luke’s account:

“One day the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?’ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.”

Why such horrific results?

They thought that deliverance was about WHAT they knew, but discovered much to their horror that it was really about WHO they knew.

Obviously they did not know Jesus!

The word “know” in the Bible has a broader scope than mere head knowledge. The Hebrew word “yada” as well as the Greek word “ginosko” refer to the kind of knowing that one has by experiencing a relationship with another.

When you read in the King James Bible that “Adam knew Eve and she conceived”, you know that her pregnancy did not come about by the two of them exchanging phone numbers and gaining more information about each other from facebook profiles  🙂

The word “know” refers to an intimate knowledge.

Jesus states that he is more interested in his followers knowing him intimately, and not just being informed about him.

To simply learn how to follow him and adhere to his teachings without growing in an intimate relationship with him is simply not acceptable to Jesus.

After all, is this not how Jesus himself lived in relationship with his Father? He often took time to simply be with Him as he went away by himself into the desert places.

Sure he knew how to prophesy, drive out demons and perform many miracles, but it was all done from a place of intimacy with the Father.

Yes, it is important for us to know (in our heads) what it takes to live our lives as followers of Jesus.

However, as Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 7:22-23, what really matters is for us to know Him (in our hearts) intimately.

How about you? Would you say that your relationship with Jesus is more about WHO you know than WHAT you know?

Do I hear a loud “Amen?”

“For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” (Psalm 36:9)

The debate started the moment I came home with the newly-purchased pair of corduroy pants.

I bought them because they looked black, even though the label stated very clearly that the colour was navy.

This is not the first time we’ve had issues with colours when purchasing cords for yours truly.

The most recent incident happened in August 2011, when I bought a pair of what I thought were black cords, well, because they were labelled “black”.

Upon laying her beautiful eyes on them, the appropriately named Sulojana (a word that means beautiful eyes!) suggested that the colour was more like a chocolate mocha brown than black.

As much as I protested that they were indeed black because the label said so, I had to admit that they were no more black than I am white J

This time though, the keen-eyed missus actually agreed with me that these cords were indeed black. We had a good laugh over this company that mislabels colours, ha, ha, ha!

Just to be on the safe side, I decided to get the expert opinion of our excellent seamstress Heather (also a DWOD subscriber…she obviously has good taste in spiritual matters too…lol!) when I took them in to reduce the inseam by an inch.

Is it Black or is it Navy?

Heather proceeded to do the thread test. She took a spool of navy thread and a spool of black thread and compared them to the colour of the cords.

It certainly looked blacker than navy-ish.

I thanked Heather for confirming my suspicion and Sulojana’s conclusion with this scientific test which had a 95% chance of being accurate 19 times out of 20!

This morning was the first opportunity I had to go outside wearing them. Needless to say I made sure I wore black socks and the shirt you see in the accompanying picture with lots of black nestled among the other colours.

A quick check in the mirror revealed that the shirt and cords were indeed perfectly matched as you would expect from a guy with a keen eye for fashion (even if he says so himself!)

After running errands all over town, it was now time to head home. As I lifted up my foot to get back into the car, my eyes spied something shocking.

Horror of horrors, my socks and cords did not match. In the light of the sun, it was pretty obvious that the cords were navy and the socks black.

The manufacturer’s label had been right all along (this time anyway). In the artificial lighting of the store and the dim lighting of our closet, it had appeared black. Appearances can be deceiving though, can they not?

The Lord started to speak to me through this experience.

He pointed out how the light in which we view ourselves and others can radically alter our perception.

It could be an artificial light, a human filter that prevents us from seeing as we ought to.

Our standards of comparison are not entirely reliable either, are they? In comparison to another we may look OK even when we are not.

It is only when we see ourselves in the light of the Son that we truly see ourselves as who we really are.

And, in the end, His is the only light that really matters, amen?