Listen Again
Fresh direction for weary hearts
I know you can relate. Every so often we find ourselves in situations that didn’t work out in the way we expected. We’d done all the right things, pray, think, seek advice, adjust the plan and then, just to make sure - pray again.
We actually knew what to do and how to do it. Experience was not lacking. Discipline was present. And yet the outcome refused to turn out as it should. If you are there this Friday morning, I think you’ll find the scene in John 21 encouraging, fill your coffee cup and join me.
It’s the end of John masterful account of the closing moments of the gospel before the drama of Acts. The disciples, no longer with Jesus setting the agenda for the day had returned like scattered sheep to what they knew. Fishing. Fishing was not new territory for them. The text tells us they laboured through the night and caught… nothing. These were not amateurs fumbling in the dark. They were seasoned, trained, experienced men on familiar waters. The unexpected emptiness of the net was not a lesson in effort but a confrontation with limitation.
What on earth was going on? Nothing, just a clean net.
Some of you on my Substack know this in the context of church planting. You have stepped out with faith and conviction. You’ve gathered a core team. You’ve preached Christ faithfully. You’ve sowed in prayer and served with integrity. Perhaps you expected swift growth. Instead, you find yourself in what feels like hibernation. A lull. Not dead. Not disobedient. Just quiet. Slow. Hidden. Other readers feel it today in different arenas. Family pressures. Financial strain. Lingering illness. Private battles no one else sees. You have not abandoned the Lord. You are simply tired of empty nets and it shouldn’t be like this?
We turn back to John 21 here, watching as the gospel eagerly rushes in; at daybreak, (your daybreak) Jesus stands on the shore and says to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” In the face of things, that sounds remarkably simple? After a fruitless night, who wants fresh instruction? Yet they obey. And the net that had hung limp hours earlier now strains with abundance.
Do not give up. Keep trusting the Lord. The empty net is not proof of His absence. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Even when circumstances seem to resist interpretation, He is at work, weaving all things together for our good, though it may not look that way as you look at the outcome in front of you.
The instruction to throw the net on the other side is rarely about changing location. It is about renewed responsiveness. It may feel difficult to adjust when you are already weary. It may require humility to listen again. But intimacy in prayer is where we hear the fresh direction that brings new shoots of life and courage. In hiddenness, roots deepen. In stillness, clarity forms. Your biggest difficult is one that only prayer can answer, if you are to ‘cast the net’ on the other side, how does that look? What or where, is the other side? God will make that clear.
God will come through for you. Not always in the timing or manner you would script. But the risen Christ still speaks from the shore. So take up the net again. Place your experience, your disappointment, your hope under His lordship.
Throw it on the other side. And be ready to be astonished at what obedience, anchored in His presence, can draw from waters that once seemed empty.