“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19) is the first recorded sentence of Jesus to Simon Peter. It starts with the call, “Follow me,” and ends with the vocation, “fisher of men.” Jesus is the instrument of the vocational transformation.
The last recorded words of Jesus before his ascension repeat the calling, with the Spirit as the instrument, to Peter and the other disciples: “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
As with Peter, when we become followers of Jesus, God purposes to make us into something new. He gives us a calling, a vocation: “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come…Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ….” (2 Cor 5).
When I reflect on this calling, I am painfully aware of my own weaknesses and shortcomings. I relate to what Ashley Holleman said in Sent about helping grad students learn to share their faith with others, “I was able to effectively give our students the ‘how to’ of sharing their faith. However, I struggled in giving our students the ‘want to’ of sharing their faith.”
After denying Jesus, Peter may have lost the “want to” of his calling, too. He returned to his original job, fishing for fish. After a night of failure on the lake, Peter was met by the resurrected Jesus, who provided an enormous haul of fish and a warm breakfast. After breakfast, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (John 21:15). Were “these” the fish? Did Peter love Jesus more than he loved the fish?
The unsuccessful night of fishing demonstrated that what Peter pursued in his own strength would fail. The enormous haul and warm breakfast that Jesus provided showed that Jesus would meet his needs. But Jesus reminded Peter three times that if he loved Jesus more than he loved the fish, Peter needed to be true to his calling: to feed and care for Jesus’ lambs.
What does this mean for the “want to” of sharing my faith? I think the honest answer is that I don’t love others enough when I don’t seek to share the gospel with them. And if I don’t love others enough to share Christ with them, is there something — like fish — that I love more than I love Jesus?
Self-examination leads to refocusing on God. Jesus makes us fishers of men. The Holy Spirit empowers us to be witnesses. God’s love for us enables us to love him with our heart, soul, and strength, and to love others as ourselves. The “want to” of sharing Christ is the gift of a transformed heart from the God who provides. “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). To him be the glory!
Tim Cameron
Miami of Ohio