Imma just trust Him and do what He says.
“When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.”
- Luke 5:4-6 (New International Version)
Has God ever Mr. Miyagi’d you? What I mean by using this Karate Kid reference is, has God ever told you to do something that made absolutely no sense, but then later it made all the sense in the world? He did that to me recently. I had just wrapped up the first cohort of my coaching program for authors and knew that, even though it was extremely impactful for my students and fulfilling for me, I didn’t feel settled about continuing to run it. But when I went to God about it, He told me to refine it.
Refiiiiiiiine!?!?!?!?
Why come I gotta refine something I don’t even want to keep doing?! It made ZERO sense to me and I had justification upon justification for why continuing the program wasn’t the right thing to do. But here’s the thing though -- He didn’t say “continue running the program”. He only said “refine it”.
Sometimes we put words in God’s mouth that He didn’t even speak. And in doing so, we slow down our progress.
If God tells you to do something, it’s natural to go ten steps ahead of that action in your mind and think to yourself, “well that’s not gonna work”. Like Peter did in this week’s passage, you may even be tempted to weigh it against your own expertise or experiences you’ve had thus far that have proven to you it’s not gonna work. But the truth is, God didn’t tell you to do those ten steps that you calculated. He just told you to do the one. And if you would just do that one thing, little do you know He’s got a blessing waiting for you around the corner.
God’s direction may seem irrational, but it’s always intentional.
I learned that real fast in this Mr. Miyagi situation. After spending a few days procrastinating on following God’s direction, I finally decided to just do it, even though I still didn’t want to. I came to terms with the fact that if He wants me to keep going with this program (which, again, He didn’t say but that’s where my head was), I was at least going to do the refined version of it. So I took the time to think through and write out all the changes I’d make to it and, in the process, landed on an improved product I’d be cool with putting back out there. Great.
But when I tell you the revelation that flowed to me during the next 24 hours after finally doing what He asked me to do?! No less than a day later I had a whole new program (my dream program!) outlined and an extreme amount of clarity about how to proceed with the old one. I felt like Peter in our passage, like I had just hit the fisherman’s powerball or something 😂!
Once again, God had shown me that He’s the God and I’m the human. PERIOD. The way He knew that refining the old program would unlock the dream program I had inside me is beyond me. You might not be able to see any connection between what He’s telling you to do and what you actually want to do, but He does. Trust Him and just do what He says!
Bottom line: if you’re struggling with obeying a direction from God right now, I implore you to just do it. And don’t spend any more time reading in to it or adding to what He said. Just do the specific thing He told you to do and I guarantee He’s going to connect the dots for you. And believe me, it will not be time wasted. Hashtag wax on wax off.
Still hungry? Eat some more //
John 2:1-11 → Imagine having to be the servant who had to bring the water to the dude?! He had to be having all kinds of doubts. But just doing what Jesus said to do yielded bomb results. It will for you too.