What a Catch!

‘I will make you fishers of men if you follow me.”


We have all heard this scripture at some stage or another. At face value, it sounds straight forward. Understand though, that Jesus was not so straight forward. When he told parables his own disciples sometimes struggled to understand the meaning of his stories. Therefore, as we read scriptures in the bible, we really need to broaden our horizon and think, meditate, dwell and contemplate on the scriptures. This will give you a much deeper understanding.

These men had spent most of their life in boats fishing for fish. They were the “experts” in their field. Jesus came over to the shore, stood in Simon’s boat and taught the people that were on the shore about the kingdom of God.
Simon realised from what he heard, that Jesus was a teacher.
Even with all their experience and knowledge, when Jesus told them to go out again, despite their reservations they went out.
It is important to understand that they did have reservations. They had fished all night without catching one fish.

How amazed were these men when Jesus told them to drop the nets, and after a short time, the nets became so full that their boats were almost sinking.

It was at this point that Jesus told Simon that he would be catching men.

In this story, Jesus was highlighting two very important aspects of His ministry.
The first aspect was that there are things that are seen with the natural eyes and secondly there are things that take place that are unseen.

The fishermen, had spent the night fishing and had not seen with their eyes any fish. Because they had not seen any fish, they immediately came to the conclusion, that there were no fish around. Jesus worked the opposite. He said that there were fish out their. When the fishermen went out and caught probably the biggest catch they had ever had, they were astonished. Here we have a different kind of reality. Jesus saw the fish out there in the water before they were caught. It took faith to believe that the fish were there even though no one had even seen a fish. It then took faith in action to go out and get those fish.
Jesus is teaching a profound truth.

We, as believers, need to ask God to open our eyes in the unseen realm which we call the spiritual realm so we can see where people are hurting and meet people where they are at. This will enable us to reach out to the hearts of people and win them into the kingdom of God.
Sometimes people’s needs are very obvious and we have both the ability and the authority in Jesus name to meet those obvious needs.

Jesus will make us fishers of men when we spend time in His word, praising Him and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, which will give us the advantage of seeing in both the seen and the unseen of this world.

Press into God so that you too can be an effective fisher of men.




- Peter Ferguson :)