When Jesus Shows Up, Things Change

There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes from working hard and having nothing to show for it. You send out every resume and hear nothing back. You try every treatment and still feel sick. You attend every seminar and your marriage only grows colder. Peter knew that tiredness. He had fished all night, dragged in empty nets by morning, and was washing them by the shore like everyone else who had given up. And then Jesus stepped into his boat. What happened next is the whole point of this passage: when Jesus shows up, things change.

Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.

Luke 5:5

Challenges Come Because You Are Alive

Sometimes we wonder why we face so many challenges. Ill health. Loss of a job. Crisis in the family. Betrayal, quarrels, in-fighting, all the things that stress us out. But here is a strange comfort. The one place with no crisis, no commotion, and no struggle at all is the cemetery, because everything there is dead. You are not experiencing pressure because something has gone wrong with you. You are experiencing pressure because you are alive.

That does not make the struggle small, but it does change how you carry it. The apostle Paul, writing to believers who were facing real danger, insisted that none of it could have the final word.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Romans 8:37

More than a conqueror. Not because you are strong enough, but because of the One who loved you. Neither death nor life, neither height nor depth, nothing present and nothing to come can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That is the ground you stand on before we ever talk about a single changed circumstance.

When He Shows Up, Everything Changes

Look at how often this pattern repeats in the Gospels. Lazarus had been in the grave four days, and when Jesus showed up, the dead man walked out. A man with a withered hand, a leper whose body was wasting with disease, and to each one Jesus spoke a word and things changed. A woman had bled for twelve years, had spent everything on doctors, and had only grown worse. When Jesus passed by, she said to herself, "If I may but touch the hem of his garment, I shall be made whole." And she touched him. The fountain of her suffering stopped.

Whatever has been trying to stop you, that sickness, that situation, that person at home or at work, the Lord is able to stop your stopper. He is not a respecter of persons. What He has done for others, He can do for you. All that is asked of you is to believe the way they believed.

Think of Moses at the Red Sea, caught with a nation behind him and deep water ahead. Pharaoh's army was closing in, and Moses cried out, "Lord, I thought I was following you. I thought I heard your voice when I moved, when I started, when I said yes to this." And God showed up. His word was not "sit down and weep." His word was, "Why are you crying? Go forward." There was no visible road, only sea, but when Moses moved, the water parted. Sometimes God waits for the step before He opens the way. Go forward, and the sea in front of you will part. The very thing that was going to drown you will drown what has been pursuing you instead.

Thrust Out a Little From the Land

Now come back to Peter. He and his partners had come to the end of themselves. They had caught nothing, and their nets were torn on top of it. No fish, no working nets, no income, and bills still waiting to be paid. So they did what everyone else on that shore was doing. They anchored their boats and mended their nets in quiet despair. Then Jesus climbed into Peter's boat and said, "Thrust out a little from the land."

Notice how small the first instruction is. Not "launch into the deep" yet. Just thrust out a little. Be a little different. Do not be anchored to nothing simply because everyone around you is anchored to nothing. When the whole shore is saying "we caught nothing, we caught nothing," it is easy to join the chorus. It is easy to talk and act and expect exactly like the world does, and then wonder why your life looks exactly like everyone else's.

When you change your position, God will change your situation.

We often want to leap from zero to a hundred, and it rarely works that way. God asks for the small move of faith first. Disconnect, so you can collect. Have a little more faith than the room around you. Because it is only when you have been faithful in the little thrust that you are ready to hear the greater word: "Launch out into the deep for a great catch."

And when Peter obeyed, the nets that had failed him all night enclosed such a multitude of fish that they began to break, and the boats began to sink. The same net. The same water. The same fisherman. The only new thing in the story was Jesus. So do not throw your net away. Do not throw your marriage away, your degree away, your faith away. You may not know the right people. You may feel out of place, unqualified, overlooked. But Jesus has shown up, and that is enough.

The Move That Matters Most

Here is the deepest thing that changes when Jesus shows up. It is not first your finances or your health. It is that small move of faith you make toward Him. And the greatest of all those small moves is to place the hope of your salvation entirely on the finished work of Jesus, and not on yourself.

So many of us have quietly tried to save ourselves. We have tried church, tried prayer, tried being good, tried giving, tried keeping our mouths shut so we would not say anything wrong, and still we come up empty. Jesus invites you to stop and simply hand it all over: my boat, my net, my life, even my sin and death, and let Him change it. The real sickness underneath every other sickness is sin, and He came to deal with it at the root. A person can look perfectly put together on the outside and be, as Jesus said, like a painted tomb, beautiful on the surface and lifeless within. But it does not matter to Him how hidden or how exposed your brokenness is.

When they dragged a woman caught in sin before Jesus, the crowd assumed it was over for her. They did not understand that bringing someone to Jesus is the one thing that can turn everything around. When He shows up, the sinner becomes a saint, the outcast becomes an example, and the one everyone had written off as dead is called by name and told to come forth. "Neither do I condemn you," He said to her. "Go and sin no more."

An Invitation to Come Forward

Maybe you are like the widow at Nain, walking behind everything you have lost, and Jesus meets you with the tender, almost impossible word, "Weep not." It is one of the hardest things in the world to stop crying when everything around you is telling you to cry. But the One speaking is the resurrection and the life, and He is not asking you to pretend the pain away. He is asking you to trust Him with it.

That same Jesus is alive today, and He is near you right now. To the marriage that feels dead, He says, Arise. To the work that has stalled, Arise. To the body that is weary, Arise. He has carried your sorrow, and by His wounds there is healing. If you would like Him to change you from the inside out, you can simply pray, in your own words, something like this: "Lord Jesus, when you show up, things change. Even the most broken things are made new. I come to you just as I am. Cleanse me, restore me, and I place my faith on the finished work you have already done for me."

You do not have to have it all figured out. You only have to make the small move toward Him. Thrust out a little from the land. He has shown up for you, and when Jesus shows up, things change.