Today when my alarm went off at 7am, I felt lousy.

Off and on the last few months I have been struggling with frustration and fear in about every area of Dan’s and my current situation.  I have prayed, fasted, asked for prayer, had breakthrough, grown, fallen back into it, and so on and so forth.

I instantly knew waking up this morning that I had fallen back into that fear and frustration yesterday.  I knew it had come between my husband and I, and mostly it had come between my Father and I.

I snoozed a time or two, then rolled out of bed and delayed my morning ritual of coffee and time with the Lord by unloading the dishwasher and trying to do some things that made me at least feel productive.

I finally got myself to sit down and focus on the Word.  I read Psalm 112, which of course reminded me of the kind of heart I want to have, and my journal was filled with desperate cries.  A lot of flat out, “Lord, help me.  I don’t even like who I am.  I don’t like my heart.  I don’t like how I keep falling into fear and control.  I know how I should be and how I could be, but I really don’t like who I am now!”

That continued for a while, and I started to trust He was going to change me and my heart grew more confident.  Then I was about to get up and take a shower, but I decided I was going to keep reading until my coffee was gone.  I opened up Luke 5, and started to read.  I only got to the 11th verse, and I feel my Father clearly spoke to me.

Luke 5 is where Jesus calls his first disciples.  He meets Peter (now Simon) who had just come in from sea with his crew, and tells him to go back out where it is deepest and cast his nets to catch some fish.  Peter replies that they had been out all night and didn’t catch a thing (which I’m sure they weren’t too happy about), but does it anyway.  They caught so many fish that their nets tore and it says, “soon their boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.”

What really got me is the next part.

“When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, ‘Oh, Lord, please leave me- I’m too much of a sinner to be around You.’  For he was awestruck by the number of fish they caught, as were the others with him.”

Jesus’ reply is, “Don’t be afraid!  From now on you’ll be fishing for people!”

“And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.”  They didn’t sell all those fish, they didn’t have a going away party, they just knew the Creator was so much more valuable than any of the creation here on earth.

Wow.  I’ve read that a lot before, but never related like today.  I feel EXACTLY like Peter.  I am too much of a sinner for You to be doing these miracles in my life.

Jesus’ response?  A call to mission, and a new identity.

The Sentralized conference, which is going to be a big pow wow of the mothers and fathers of the missional church movement, is starting tonight.  Our young, small, but zealous church gets to be part of it.  I know there are a lot of people in our community that are just like me.  When you walk in the gathering celebration service, it looks and feels like we have everything together because of our passion and fearless leaders, but talk to anyone and they will tell you the truth.  We follow Jesus, we have personal relationships with Jesus, we desire to be more like Him, we want our community to function as His body, and we really want our friends to know Christ– but our lives can be really messy.

Jesus doesn’t have a fluffy response to try to make Peter feel better, and He doesn’t say, “Oh, you’ll get there.”  Jesus simply calls out a new identity in Peter.  Even though Peter is a sinner, and Jesus knows that, Jesus tells him that from NOW on Peter will be following Him and bringing others along to do the same.  Peter won’t be working toward that, he has already begun.

That didn’t provoke a magical transformation of Peter being just like Jesus as you can see throughout the Gospel.  He was still messy, but his identity and purpose never changed.  He began walking in his identity and exercising those muscles.  He was physically following Christ.

You have given us this new identity- we aren’t trying to reach it- we’re just growing in it.

Of course, Jesus begins with, “Don’t be afraid!”, because fear is the enemy that attacks our identity and makes us delusional most often.  My prayer is that the gathering network as a family, and me as a member of that family, can walk confidently and fearlessly into this conference with people whose missional muscles are much more developed to grow in our missional identity, not just try to be missional.