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Well, Summit family at all of our campus locations, and again, those of you that are joining us at home. It's great for us to be able to start out with some good news this weekend. That good news is over the last two weekends, we have had 99 people profess faith in Christ at this church.

99. Isn't that fantastic? What an awesome thing to be able to celebrate. Luke chapter five, if you got your Bible. Before we jump into the passage for this weekend, I want to throw out a picture for you. If you want to go back to the Bible. You'll give me just a few minutes leading into the passage, a picture of who our church is and where we are going. Because I think Luke chapter five explains beautifully why we do this and why this church strives to be what it strives to be. Our mission statement and perhaps your campus pastor shared this with you. But our mission statement at the summit church is following the Holy Spirit. We want to create a movement of disciple making disciples in Raleigh Durham and RDU and then around the world, a movement of disciple making disciples.

We believe that that is more important than simply growing a big audience. You know, sometimes I think we think of the Book of Acts as the good old days of the church. We think, you know, small groups regularly prayed through the night. Those got struck dead in the offering, and we think, man, that would have been awesome to be alive during that time. The church must have felt like this unstoppable, powerful movement. The only problem church historians say is that had you been alive during this time, it would not have felt to you like an unstoppable movement.

Here's what I mean. The best estimates, the best estimates that historians can come up with to the total number of believers, followers of Jesus, that were alive in 99 AD, that were at the end of the first century, total number was 7,530, which I know is oddly specific, but that's what they say. About 7,530 total.

I want you to let that sink in. Every weekend at the summit church, we have nearly twice that many that dial in every weekend. In fact, the early church father, Origen, who was born late in the second century, described the Christian movement in his day, which would have been a couple hundred years after Jesus lived.

He described it as still just a few scattered communities, geographically broad, but numerically insignificant. And yet, and yet, by 312 AD, Christians had become so numerous in the Roman Empire that the Emperor Constantine felt like he needed to convert to Christianity for political reasons. Over half of the Roman Empire had converted to Christianity in favor with the people Constantine had to follow suit. So here's the question. How do you go from less than 10,000 in 100 AD to over half the Roman Empire by 312 AD?

I mean, think about it. The early church had very little compared to what we have today. They didn't have big budgets. They didn't have grand auditoriums like the one that I'm standing in. They didn't have publishing presses or TV station.

They had no representation in the Senate. But what they did have, church historians say, one thing they did have that we don't is an ingrained sense that the Great Commission belonged to everybody. They believe that every single Christian and every single church, every follower of Jesus was called to multiply.

They believe what I'm going to show you today from Luke chapter five, and that made Christianity take off. Y'all remember that annoying math riddle from middle school? Remember this?

Hopefully. Where you were given a choice between receiving one penny and doubling it every single day or getting $10,000 a day. By the way, this is not $10,000. I can only get our CFO to give me $1,000. So it tells you a little bit about my trustworthiness.

He's like, I'm not sure you'll come back with all of it. But here it is. Okay, so this is $1,000. So let's just pretend this is $10,000. Kids, if you get a choice between you get $10,000 today and then $10,000 every single day for 30 days. Option one. Or you get one penny today and then we double it tomorrow and then double it the third day and then keep doubling it for 30 days. Which of those two would you choose? Well, like most middle school students, I chose the $10,000 a day.

And then my math teacher explains to me that that was a foolish choice because it's true. After 30 days, I'd have $300,000. And I was like, I could buy so many pairs of Air Jordans with $300,000.

Every video game available on the Atari 2600 and even get one of those DeLoreans like Michael J. Fox drove him back to the future. So it seemed like a no brainer. But my math teacher explained that had I started with the penny, sure, after the first week, I would have only had a couple of bucks. But by the end of the month, I would have $10,737,418.23.

I asked our CFO if I could bring that amount up here and he definitely said no. But that's a whole fleet of DeLoreans, right? That's the power of multiplication. And that was what was going on in Luke five. Did you know today, today there are more Southern Baptist churches in America than there are the number of Starbucks, subways and McDonald's combined. The question is, what if every single one of those churches saw that it was their responsibility to multiply? What if every believer in these churches saw the Great Commission as their responsibility? What if just a handful of people in each of those churches saw that?

What if they just did? Might not our great grandchildren look back on this time period and see these as the good old days? What this means for us, if that's true, is that we've got to have a change of emphasis in the mission of the church. It means that we're not just going to be focused on church expansion. We're going to be focused on church multiplication. We're not going to be focused primarily on growing a massive audience. We're going to be focused on creating a movement of disciple making disciples. We're going to be focused on functions in practice, like an ACC football game. At an ACC football game, you got 22 guys in desperate need of rest, surrounded by 22,000 cutouts of people in desperate need of exercise.

No, that's just 2020, but 22,000 people in desperate need of exercise. Or I've described it like this to you before. Say you were watching Super Bowl, the most recent Super Bowl and Tom Brady. You know, by the way, could we just stop for a minute and just acknowledge that's a 43 year old man. That has won his seventh Super Bowl. Okay.

That gives a lot of us mid 40 guys, a lot of hope. Alright, so here we go. Tom Brady, you're watching the Super Bowl and you watch him get, you know, his team out there. I don't know who it's going to be next year, but he gets everybody out there and he calls this play. And you don't know what the play is, but you watch all the players stand up and be like, wow, that was an amazing play. We have never heard a play caller like Tom Brady.

Is he not the greatest of all time? They sit down on the bench. And then after a couple minutes, they run back out the field, they get back in the huddle. He obviously calls another play. And this time they're like, whoa, that was amazing. Literally, this is the greatest play caller of all time.

I got chills when he was calling that play. And they call their friends and they podcast the play and they pass it around to all their friends. So you got to listen to this guy called the play.

And they keep doing this over and over and over again. At some point, you're going to look at this team and going to say, guys, run the play. The point is not how well Tom Brady calls the play. The point is running the play. What I think we've got in a lot of churches like ours is you got a lot of people who were like, man, I love hearing the pastor call the play. The point is not me calling play, the point is you running the play. And the play is not what takes place here on the weekend. The play is what you do in being a disciple making disciple in the world.

So it's time for us to run the play. I think our dream for what our church should look like was summarized by a guy named Francis Chan, who maybe wrote this statement, I thought it was fantastic. Listen, long gone are the days when we should be content with a bunch of people who sing out loud, don't divorce and give to missions. I want to know that I can drop off any member of my church in a new city, and that person could grow in Jesus, make disciples and help start a church.

That's the vision. All this leads to Luke five, and something I want to call you to here in a couple weeks. In a couple weeks, I'm going to ask you, you've heard about this to renew your commitment to being a disciple and to making disciples. One of the things we've talked about as we emerge here from lockdown is that we ought to look at this season like a church relaunch. When we come back, we're going to ask what new ministry should we be starting back?

Which ministry should we stop? Well, part of this relaunch is I want you to recommit to being more than just a spectator here. I want you to commit to being part of the mission. I want you to commit to not just hearing the play, but running the play and not just gathering together weekly in a huddle. During our final weekend in February, I'm going to ask everybody who calls this church home to make a commitment to being a disciple making disciple. We are calling this my discipleship commitment. This week, this coming week, if we got your email or your mailing address, you're going to get something in the mail that gives you more information about this commitment.

It's going to look like this. It's going to explain what it means to commit here to be a disciple. If we do not have your information, you can just go to our website and find it there. By the way, we would love to get your information to allow us to connect with you on things like this, but this is not for you to simply check a few boxes and then feel good about yourself. It's about renewing a commitment to not just being a spectator here, but to being an actual disciple. And I would say that whether or not you make this commitment will reveal a lot about where your heart actually is on that.

Okay? For Jesus, there was no such thing as a follower who wasn't actively engaged in the mission. Let me show you Luke chapter five.

Jesus to hear God's word. He was standing by Lake Gennesaret, which was another name for the Sea of Galilee, which name you might have heard. He saw two boats at the edge of the lake.

The fishermen had left those boats and were washing their nets after a day of work. First, three, he got into one of the boats, which belongs to Simon, which was another name for Peter. And he asked Simon Peter to put out a little from the land. Then he sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat that served two purposes. First, it gave Jesus a little distance from the crowd and those who were wanting to touch him or get his autograph or take a selfie with him or whatever. Secondly, water, of course, serves as a natural amplifier.

If you've ever stood on a boat on a quiet lake and yelled at somebody across the water, the amplification is amazing. And so pushing back a little bit gave Jesus both benefits, a little distance and natural amplification. Verse four, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon Peter, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Now, here's what a New Testament fishing net actually looked like.

This is not an actual, you know, ancient Jewish one. This one comes from Dick's Sporting Goods, but it'll give you the picture. All right, you've got these weights all around it. And what the fisherman would do is he would just cast it out, goes out into the thing, he pulls up the string, pulls up the fish.

And it was quite a bit bigger than this, but they would do this over and over again. Cast and pull, cast and pull, cast and pull. Peter has been out the entire night casting and pulling. Casting this net, drawing in fish, and he has caught nothing. So Jesus tells him, go out a little deeper and try again.

Here's the problem. That's what Peter has been doing all night, casting and picking up, casting and picking up. Peter is a professional, and he knows when the fish aren't biting, and Jesus telling him to give it just one more toss, frankly, is a little insulting. Plus, we know that Jesus was not a fisherman professionally. He was a carpenter, and Peter was probably like, listen, man, I'll probably chair, I'll call you, but don't be giving me any advice about fishing. Verse five. Master, Simon Peter replied, respectfully, but I'm sure with a little irritation. We've worked hard all night long and caught nothing.

But if you say so, I'll let down the net. Y'all, sometimes I like to think about how much Peter's life changed in that pause. I call this the pause of eternal significance. Your heart was filled with doubt, but you decide to obey anyway. How much did Peter's life change because of that pause? Can you look back on your life and see places where your heart was filled with doubt, but you decided to obey anyway?

That pause of faith can make an eternal difference in your life. Verse six. When they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.

They came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When they did this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, get away from me because I'm a sinful man, Lord. Verse 10.

Don't be afraid, Jesus told Simon. From now on, you're going to be catching people. This net, Peter, this net that you should just bring in fish that will only work a few pennies.

From now on, you're going to cast that out. It's going to come back, not with fish that's just worth enough money to get you through the day. It's going to be worth, it's going to be filled with the souls of people. It's going to have eternal significance.

It's going to be meaningful and meaningful that lasts even longer than you're alive. And so they brought the boats to land. They left everything, their nets and all, and they followed him. Let me give you, use this passage to give you three qualities that are necessary for you to be a disciple. All right, number one, verse one's the longest.

Number one, awe. Chapter five, verse eight, a sense of awe. In Luke, chapter five, Peter got overwhelmed by a glimpse of Jesus' power.

Verse eight, that he fell at Jesus' knees and said, get away from me because I'm a sinful man, Lord. Now that might seem like an odd reaction to you until you really think about it. You see, when you're in the presence of true greatness, you ever notice that your heart is mixed, is filled with a weird mixture of attraction and repulsion at the same time?

You're not sure if you want to draw close or run away. If you've ever been in the presence of true greatness, you've never seen those conflicting feelings. I've told you before, when I was in middle school, I got to meet Michael Jordan. I don't know if you could actually call it meeting Michael Jordan, but that's how I see it. It was, he came to a golf tournament. And this was, by the way, when I was in middle school, he was in the height of his fame. You know, everything was just getting going with him. And so he was the hottest thing around. And so I found out it was going to be this golf tournament. I go to this golf tournament. My best friend and I looked all day long for Michael Jordan.

We could not find him. The first security detail had successfully hit him from people like me. So the whole day felt like a waste.

I'm waiting on my mom and dad to come pick me up at the end of the day. And I'm standing there along the road, and I see coming down the road this purple Porsche Carrera that I knew was like, that's Michael Jordan's car. So I turned and yelled at my best friend who was getting something from the concession stand. I was like, hey, it's Michael Jordan.

So a group of people heard me. They all come running up. Michael Jordan comes right, starts good, gets really slow. He lowers the window down, that dark tinted window.

He's obviously looking for somebody, not me. And he lowers the window down. He's going about five miles an hour. So I'm walking on the side of the car. My best friend takes me from behind, shoves me into the car.

So I'm now like waist up, you know, leaning through the passenger window. I was this close to that man's face. I could have licked him.

And one of my lifelong regrets is that I did not. I just wanted to say to Michael Jordan, and in that moment, I couldn't say any of them. I just like, and I remember he's driving his car. He looks over at me, and he says, get out of my car. And I said, yes, sir, Mr. Jordan. And I pushed back out of that car, and I turned around in that crowd, and I was like, he talked to me. We had a conversation, right? Attraction, I just overwhelmed at his greatness, but there's also something about their greatness that just makes you feel really, really strong.

Right? In the presence of true greatness, you're both attracted, and you also want to run away. That's what happens to Peter. When Jesus calls people to follow him, he often begins with this overwhelming vision of terror.

I mean, think about it. Think about the stories in the Bible that you might remember. God called the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to be his messenger. And what was the first thing he gave to him? Isaiah six, a glimpse of his glory. So much so that Isaiah cries out, woe is me.

Which means, let me be cursed, let me be damned, because I'm a man of unspeakable filth, and I've got a dirty mouth. When Jesus called the apostle John, Revelation one, to prepare his church for what was ahead, he gave to John a glimpse of his glory. And so that John, who had been a friend of his, a friend of Jesus' in his earthly life, John was so overwhelmed at what he saw that he fell on his face, just positive that he was gonna die. And I will tell you that when God called me, he did it by first giving to me a glimpse of his awesome glory. And just his awesome power, how long eternity was, how terrible it would be to go into eternity as his enemy.

And as a teenager, that kept me up late many a night, scared to death of dying and meeting God and being under his judgment. Question is, why does Jesus do this? Why does he obey you before he calls you?

Here's the reason. It's because only awe compels obedience. Until God is big to you, you'll never have the strength to obey him.

In fact, for some of you, I would say that's your problem. You don't obey God. You don't seek God. It's not because you're not self-disciplined enough. It's because God is distant to you. He's small.

He's almost unreal. When I got invited a few years ago by a group of fraternity guys that went to the Summit Church from UNC Chapel Hill, they invited me to come into their fraternity and do a Bible study. Well, I definitely want to take that opportunity, so I went in and I was doing this Bible study, and the subject they had chosen was sexual temptation. And I know this is all ironic, but I'm in there doing a Bible study on sexual temptation, and I made a comment, just kind of offhandedly, that you could turn off your sexual desire.

You could turn it on and off like a light switch. I'll never forget the look in these 19-year-old guys' faces when I made that statement. One of them actually shook his head. He said, bro, that's crazy talk. And I was like, no, no, that's true. He said, we knew that your body changed when you got older, but we had no idea that when you were 40 years old, you would say something that dumb. And I said, no, even for you at 19 years old, you could turn your sexual desire on and off like a light switch. I said, that's crazy. I said, no, it's not.

Here, let me prove it to you. Say you're with your girlfriend, and you're at her apartment, you're by yourselves, and lights are down low, and one thing's leading to another. I don't know what y'all call it anymore, but when I was in college, it had something to do with a baseball diamond. And so you're working your way around the baseball diamond, and you get to that point, the point of no return. They're all nodding their heads. I'm like, you feel like at this point, there's no pulling back. They're all nodding their heads like, that's what we're talking about right there. I was like, okay, there you are in the apartment, right? You're at the height of your passion. And all of a sudden, in that moment, into the room, burst this girl's Navy Seal father who's just gotten back from Afghanistan, off like a light switch.

And the guy was like, oh yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I was like, no, what happened in that moment? Is it that you just lost all your sexual desire?

No. The problem in that moment, or the solution, was your sexual desire got outweighed by a larger desire, the desire to stay alive, right? To keep all the limbs of your body attached to your body, whatever. And I told them, I said, the problem with you guys is not that your sexual desires are so big. The problem is that your God is so small. When God becomes big to you, when you have a sense of awe over God, then you'll have the strength to obey. It's why I tell you, if you've got an obedience problem this weekend, it begins as an awe problem.

God's just simply not big enough to you. Awe, it's the first quality of the disciple. Now, before we leave this point, I actually feel like I would not be serving you well if I left you here, because this whole discussion of awe doesn't end in Luke 5. You see, the awe that Peter experienced here was not sufficient. Peter, even after seeing Jesus this way, is still going to struggle with pride. He's still going to deny Jesus. He's going to, after his denial and failure and shame, he's going to flee away from Jesus, and so Jesus repeats this exact same miracle to Peter at the end of Peter's life, or at the end of Jesus' life.

And it's got a whole different effect. John 21, you stay there in Luke 5, but at the end of the Gospels, right after the cross and the resurrection, after Peter's denied Jesus, Jesus does this whole miracle again. Peter's out fishing again. This time, Jesus appears to him on the shore, and he calls out to Peter, who has again been out fishing all night and caught nothing. He tells him again to cast his net on the other side.

It starts with the exact same problem, y'all. Peter's been fishing all night and caught nothing, right? In both stories, Peter doesn't initially recognize Jesus. In both stories, Jesus gives the same odd instructions, go out into the deep and put the net out on the other side.

In both stories, the final cast pulls in a miraculous haul. It's the exact same miracle, but there's one humongous distinction. In both stories, Peter has got this really strong reaction to the miracle, but in the first story, our story here in Luke 5, Peter tells Jesus to get away from me.

But in John 21, after seeing the miracle, John 21, let me read it to you. Then Simon Peter tied his outer clothing around him, for he'd taken it off, and he plunged into the sea. Peter jumps out naked, except for his underwear, and swims to Jesus.

Talk about a different reaction. In the first one, Peter felt so unworthy that he just wanted to get away. In the second, he feels so comfortable that he swims back toward Jesus in just his underwear. And listen, I feel comfortable around many of my guy friends, but when I'm willing to run toward one in just my underwear, that's comfortable. What makes the difference?

What makes the difference in these two reactions? This last one happened on the other side of the cross, where Peter had seen just how much Jesus cared for him, and how committed he was to him, even after Peter had sinned. You see, Peter's first reaction makes him think, I've got to live up to Jesus. After the denial, Peter knows, I can't live up to Jesus. Yet Jesus still came for me. If anything, Jesus' love for Peter seemed stronger after Peter's failure than it had before. Peter had seen, after the cross, how Jesus felt about Peter, even during his failures.

Y'all see, this glorious Jesus who calls you to follow is not some Navy Seal father who is coming to threaten you. He is a tender father that is coming to comfort you. He loves you just the same when you're wounded as when you struggle. He loves you as much when you fall as when you succeed. Here's my question for you. When you think about how Jesus feels about you right now, what do you think?

When you think about Jesus before you, if he were standing before you in all of his glory, what emotion comes over you? When I was little, my dad took me out fishing, and he always baited the hook for me. He just baited the hook. That one day came where he wanted me to do it on my own. I was 19 years old.

No, I'm kidding. I was like 10 years old or something. But it was like a coming-of-age moment. A lot of guys maybe had this. You have that experience. Remember, the worm is dirty, and it's wiggling, and you're trying to poke it, and you poke it, and it starts writhing, and this gross stuff starts coming out.

It's kind of this feeling of revulsion. That's how we think Jesus is with sinners. But I'm telling you, that's not how he is. Everywhere we see Jesus in the Gospels interacting with broken people, he moves toward them rapidly. When the prodigal son returns from traveling in the far country, the father is waiting and watching and picks up his robe to run to him. When Jesus looks out over a rebellious Jerusalem, he's not filled with seething anger. He breaks down, and he weeps over them. When Jesus hangs on a cross next to a thief whose sin and stupid decisions have ruined his whole life, and that thief utters the slightest prayer for mercy, Jesus, who is barely able to speak himself, what's he do?

He hoists himself up to assure that repentant thief that that very day, he's going to welcome him into paradise. When Jesus looks at the lives of those of us who have messed up, messed up our lives with sin, what emotion does he feel? Anger? Disgust? Righteous wrath?

No. His first emotion is compassion, a compassion that makes him draw near, a compassion that makes him weep right alongside of us, of you, in your pain. Now, yes, if you resist him and you shut him out, you will face his wrath, of course, but the point is the first emotion that he feels is mercy and tenderness toward you. Seeing this is what changed Peter's heart. All of Jesus' awesome power in Luke 5 may have commandeered Peter's will, but wonder over Jesus' mercy in John 21 is what captured his heart.

So here's my question. Has your heart had that revelation? Here's your test. When you've messed up, when you feel at your lowest, you're most embarrassed, when you've failed, what does your heart tend to do? Does it run from Jesus, or in that moment, does it pull toward Jesus?

Are you the first Peter or the second Peter? Do you sense Jesus looking at you with the disgust that I had for that worm, or at best, he's merely tolerating you with this low-grade kind of annoyance? I'm here to tell you this morning, that is not how he feels. What he feels is tenderness, even when you failed him. What a friend, what a friend we have in Jesus.

Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything, the good, the bad, our failures, our embarrassments, everything to him in prayer. It's all that compels obedience. Number two, number two, it's a commitment to multiply.

Let me hit these next two pretty quickly. Verse 10, don't be afraid, Jesus told Simon. From now on, you're going to be catching people. Jesus not only commanded Peter to follow, he commanded him to go. Around the summit, we say that Jesus is like a spiritual tornado.

He never pulls you in without also hurling you back out. If you know Jesus, he's got a plan for you. He wants to take whatever nets, whatever nets, we don't have many professional fishermen in this church, but whatever nets you have, he wants to take them and use them for eternal purposes.

It's an image for you. He wants to take a life of subsistence. A life where you just get up, make money, take care of your kids, leave some to your grandkids and die. He wants to take that life and he wants to fill it with eternal significance, a life of value. What do you think the purpose of your life is? You think it's just to make lots of money, to retire wealthy, have a few kids, play with your grandkids, leave them some money? I'm telling you, Jesus intends for you, not just me, but for you to have a life that impacts eternity. He wants to take the net that you've been fishing with and he wants to fill it with things of eternal value.

You say, well, how could I do that? I've not been to seminary, I'm not a pastor. Neither was Peter.

In fact, Peter was as blue collar as they come. He's just willing to follow Jesus. Just willing to follow Jesus and learn from him. All Jesus wants from you is your willingness to follow. Around the Summit Church, we say he doesn't need your ability.

Peter didn't have any of that. What he wants is your availability. In fact, here's how Jesus would explain it a few chapters later in Luke. Luke chapter 12. He says that when we're in that moment where we need to testify, we're in that moment where we need to be, we're in that moment he wants to use us for something eternally significant. Don't worry in that moment about what you should say. You don't need to have gone to seminary. Seminary's great. You should go if you have a chance, but you don't need to go there to be witnessed. You don't need to go there to be used by God, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour.

What must be said? What a great promise. The lesson God has taught me over and over again throughout my life is that if I'm just willing to obey, he will do the impossible through me. Obedience often isn't some huge, dramatic event that takes place in my life.

It's just the small, seemingly mundane acts of following Jesus step by step. I was taking an early morning flight about seven years ago. Early morning flight, somewhere, I can't remember where, but you always go through Atlanta if you leave Raleigh, you fly Delta. In fact, when Jesus raptures us, I'm pretty sure I will route through Atlanta to go up to heaven, but I was going somewhere, and so I get into the gate area at the Raleigh airport, and I see a girl, mid-20s or so, reading a book that was written by an atheist. And I don't know.

I know you feel like I probably do this everywhere. I don't everywhere, but I just sense the Holy Spirit in my heart saying, you need to go ask her about that book. All right? Let me just let her tell you the story, okay?

Check this out. So I happened to be coming off a night shift and was traveling to meet some friends, and we were in the RDU airport, and I had brought along some reading materials. I had been exploring religious outlets of all natures, because you're not a Christian at this point. I was not a Christian at this point.

I was very lost. But a gentleman who happened to be you was sitting a couple seats down and looked over and tapped me on the shoulder, and you're just like, huh, interesting choice of titles there. And you asked if I'd been invited to a church, and I said, actually, yeah. I have a great co-worker who I love who's a Christian and has invited me numerous times to a church in the area. I don't remember the name, but it's one of those big mega churches.

There's some mountains in the background of the emblem, I think. But other than that, I don't remember much. And you were like, oh, interesting. Well, have you thought about going? And I went on probably a two to three-minute rant about mega churches and how awful they are.

At this point, I don't remember. And you just looked at me pretty expressionless and said, I'm sorry you've had that experience with churches or that impression. And you just said, I encourage you to continue to talk to your friend and others in your life and really make sure you're exploring Christianity as one of your searches here. And I was kind of like, okay, and went on about my life for the next several weeks. And my friend actually invited me to the summit again. The words resonated with, well, I encourage you to just try one more time before you make your final call. And so I went, and then they introduced Pastor J.D.

Greer to start the sermon. And you walk out in front. And I have never wanted to be less seen. I definitely had that. I really inserted my foot in my mouth that day. And then what happened after that? Because you didn't become a Christian that weekend. I did not become a Christian that weekend. What had started several years prior was family praying for me, with me, over me, and me thinking it was ridiculous.

Started really just softening my heart. It's things like that that make you understand and believe in God's pursuit of you. He was looking for you before you were looking for Him.

Exactly. And it's so clear to me now, looking back, that He put so many people in my life along the way that just stepped out of their own comfort zones and approached me when, again, I just was so hurt and broken. They saw past that, and they saw that He loved me, and they loved on me through that. So one thing I am curious about through the moments of tapping, grumpy-looking me in the morning on the shoulder, I feel like in my day-to-day life sometimes crossing those lines and reaching out to people in that way can be really scary and nerve-wracking. How have you gotten to where you're so comfortable doing that?

Well, I don't know if I would say that. I would say that I understand, I read this thing years ago, that essentially walking with God means that every day you get up and join Him in what He is already doing. So one of the things I pray in the morning is, God, take me to people that you're already working in so that I can play a part of that. And I'm not sure what it was that, man, it was probably the book you were reading, and it all had something to do with atheism and thought, that's not a good direction to go, so let me ask her about it. For every one conversation that turns out like this one, there's probably a dozen that don't really go anywhere. But it's an exciting thing to think that the Spirit of God is doing.

He is seeking people, and I get a chance to be a small part of that. By the way, the first I heard anything about that story, literally knew anything about it, was when Stacy stood in my kitchen, and she was my daughter's small group leader. And on her way out after a small group meeting, she stopped and she said, I need to tell you a story that you probably don't know. And she tells me that story. Now, I know you hear that and you think, well, that's just the life of a pastor.

That is not true, okay? In fact, being a pastor in that story actually was a liability, not an asset there. There's a couple things in that story that she didn't actually reveal. And one of them was she said, when we got on the plane, she said, I was already a little annoyed. We'd had this conversation. She said, I sat a couple rows behind you. And she said, you're seated next to the guy on the plane. And she said the entire way to Atlanta, you're telling him about Jesus and sharing your testimony. She said, you know you don't have an inside voice, right?

And I said, yes. She said, so everyone could hear. And so I just had to sit there and listen for 40 minutes as you shared the gospel with him. She said, then when we landed at Atlanta, she said, there was only one thing I wanted to do.

And that was to get to Atlanta Bread Company and have my morning bagel. She says, so I put my headphones in and I just went. She says, I walked, I stood in line. She says, I look up.

Sure enough, you're standing right in front of me in line. She said, but the woman in front of you, she had two kids and her credit card was not functioning or something. So she said, you just volunteered to pick up the check of the person in front of you. Now, I don't do that everywhere. But in that moment, it was just the Holy Spirit saying, hey, I didn't even know the squirrel was behind me.

I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just giving you context for what's happening. What I'm trying to tell you is that morning before I left the house at 0 dark 30, it was like, Lord, I don't know what you're doing out there today. But I know you've called me to be a disciple-making disciple, and here am I, send me. That same thing is available to you. The same Holy Spirit I got is the one you got. And that Holy Spirit wants to lead you to do something eternally significant if you'll just obey.

It's not about abilities. He's calling fishermen. He's saying, just present your net to me. Let me fill it with eternal value, which leads me to the last quality of a disciple.

Total surrender, total surrender. Look at verse 11. Verse 11, he says, then they brought their boats to the land. They left everything, and they followed him. Y'all, that's a recurring theme in Luke, isn't it, that you've seen?

I'm not gonna spend long on it because we discovered it a few weeks ago. But the requirement to be used by Jesus, the requirement to be a follower of Jesus is total surrender. You gotta let it all go. And I would say that's where many of you falter. You're religious. You try to do the right thing. Religion is important to you.

It's an important part of your life. But have you ever taken your hands fully off of your life and just said, you just spread out a net before Jesus? And they said, this net represents everything that I have in life. I'm just gonna spread it out before you and say, why don't you put in it what you wanna put in it? God, let it represent my talents, my dreams, my hopes, my future. What do you want from it? I'm gonna put it right there on the ground before you. Fill it with what you want.

I promise you, whether you're the most talented in this room or the least talented person listening, I promise you he's gonna fill it with things of eternal significance. Isn't that what you want from life? Don't you want a life that matters? Don't you want a life that makes a difference?

There's more to life than making money and having kids and retiring with a beach house. That's a bold move to put out this net before God. I realize that, but I want you to think of it in light of what you've learned today and how tender and trustworthy Jesus is. Why would you not trust him with the net of your life? Why would you trust Jesus to save your soul and not take care of your needs?

Why would you think that he'd be loving enough to die for your sins, but not loving enough to guide you into green pastures of happiness and besides still waters of fulfillment? This weekend, why not let your nets down as an act of surrender and just say, Jesus, put in what you want. It's my schedule, my finances, my heart, my relationships, everything is yours.

You ready to do that? That's the requirement to be a disciple-making disciple. Why don't you bow your heads? Bow your heads. The decision to follow Jesus responds just like Peter's. You leave control of your life and you start to follow. You ready to do that?

You can do it right now. Hey, good news, he's got forgiveness for you. Like Peter saw, he died for your failures.

He was hung up for your hang-ups, I've heard someone say. Right now, you can receive his forgiveness, accept him as savior and follow him as Lord. If you've already made this decision, you might renew a decision just to obey him. Make a decision that every day, you're gonna get up and say, Jesus, today, I'm gonna follow you, today.

I'm gonna join you in what you're doing. And hey, in a week or so, when you get this card, this discipleship commitment card, you make that commitment. You'll be ready to follow him. Father, I pray, I pray, God, for those who are saying yes to you for the first time, God, may this make a moment of eternal demarcation. I pray for those who are renewing, God, I pray that this would be a moment, God, where their life begins to take on eternal value by saying yes to you and being used by you. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.