Empty Nets

At 8pm Wednesday night all of my meetings for Thursday canceled.

I woke up and made it to the office by 8am on a nice snowy day.  No traffic because of the snow; no meetings because of the snow.

So, I asked God what in the world am I supposed to do today and decided to make some phone calls and wrap up my day at about 9:45am.  I gave the day to God, for whatever he had in store and planned to keep no meetings, set a few meetings for the next week, and go home to our good dog Joey...but God had other plans.

Over the course of the day I ended up setting 7 meetings; keeping 4, and bringing on a new client.  It was a good day!

But that's not the point I want to make.  Because there have been plenty of days that turned out nil.  There have been days when I walked in our home after a 10 hour day at work, having nothing to show for the day's work.  Why?  Because God gives and God takes away.  And that's good.  Because it helps me learn to trust.  And I need a ton of help to learn to trust God.

Most of the time I start the day with a list of things I will be doing to keep control.  But the days when I give it all up to God and say, 'whatever may happen, may I honor You Lord', I live out of peace and contentment.  Some of those days I make no money, some are huge successes. But in my heart I am trusting God for whatever He has in store.

A while back, my wonderful bride, Kim, painted the scene out of John 21.  If you make it to my office you'll see it hanging above my desk.  It is a picture of a few disciples of Jesus' sitting in a boat fishing, yet hauling up empty nets.  And here's the point: I'm convinced it's easy to trust Jesus when the days are good and everything I touch brings success.  But I have to learn to trust Jesus when I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, but the results are empty nets.  I pray that you continue hanging onto Jesus even when your hard work yields empty nets.

And one day, when God knows the timing is best, he asks us to fish on the other side of the boat...we won't even be able to lift the nets because the catch will be too big!