God Invites Us to Partner with Him

He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land.
—-Luke 5:3

This week we are looking at practical principles from God’s Word that will help you discover your true calling in life.

One biblical principle is this: God invites us to partner with Him in ministry. In Luke 5, did Jesus need Peter’s boat to be able to preach to the crowd that had gathered to hear Him? Did He need Peter to row him out on the Sea of Galilee so He could address the throng on the beach? Of course not. If Jesus wanted to, He could have walked from the beach out onto the water, stood on the water, and addressed the crowd. Talk about a miracle! Jesus would have had a big response to His invitation that day had He done that. No, Jesus didn’t need Peter to help Him teach the people.

Did Jesus need Peter, Andrew, James, and John to haul all those fish into the boat? Did He need their hard work and effort and straining to bring up the nets that were full of fish? No, Jesus could have simply just pointed into the boat and the fish would have jumped into the boat at His command. Did Jesus need the apostles in order to catch people alive, to save them, and introduce them to God? For that matter, does He need you or me to help Him in the process of salvation? It is ridiculous even to suggest that He does. God can save anybody He wants without any help from you or me. No, God doesn’t need us–but in His grace, He allows us to partner with Him in this great kingdom enterprise.

That has always been God’s pattern. From the beginning pages of Genesis, the Bible says that God created the world without any help from any of us. He created a perfect garden and then told Adam “to cultivate it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Now, God could have cultivated the garden Himself. He didn’t need any help from Adam and Eve. But God knew He had created Adam and Eve in His image, and just as He existed forever to do something meaningful, God created Adam and Eve in His image to be a part of doing something that is meaningful.

God has created you and me for the same reason. We were created to do more than just eke out a living every day. God has created us to be a part of His eternal plan of rescuing people and seeing them come into the kingdom of God. And that is His grace, to fulfill our need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. God invites us to partner with Him in ministry.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “A Fish Tale” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2016.

Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.