Fresh direction for weary hearts

I know you can relate. Every so often we find ourselves in situations that didn’t work out in the way we expected. We’d done all the right things, pray, think, seek advice, adjust the plan and then, just to make sure – pray again.

We actually knew what to do and how to do it. Experience was not lacking. Discipline was present. And yet the outcome refused to turn out as it should. If you are there this Friday morning, I think you’ll find the scene in John 21 encouraging, fill your coffee cup and join me.

It’s the end of John masterful account of the closing moments of the gospel before the drama of Acts. The disciples, no longer with Jesus setting the agenda for the day had returned like scattered sheep to what they knew. Fishing. Fishing was not new territory for them. The text tells us they laboured through the night and caught… nothing. These were not amateurs fumbling in the dark. They were seasoned, trained, experienced men on familiar waters. The unexpected emptiness of the net was not a lesson in effort but a confrontation with limitation.

What on earth was going on? Nothing, just a clean net.

Some of you on my Substack know this in the context of church planting. You have stepped out with faith and conviction. You’ve gathered a core team. You’ve preached Christ faithfully. You’ve sowed in prayer and served with integrity. Perhaps you expected swift growth. Instead, you find yourself in what feels like hibernation. A lull. Not dead. Not disobedient. Just quiet. Slow. Hidden. Other readers feel it today in different arenas. Family pressures. Financial strain. Lingering illness. Private battles no one else sees. You have not abandoned the Lord. You are simply tired of empty nets and it shouldn’t be like this?

We turn back to John 21 here, watching as the gospel eagerly rushes in; at daybreak, (your daybreak) Jesus stands on the shore and says to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” In the face of things, that sounds remarkably simple? After a fruitless night, who wants fresh instruction? Yet they obey. And the net that had hung limp hours earlier now strains with abundance.

Do not give up. Keep trusting the Lord. The empty net is not proof of His absence. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Even when circumstances seem to resist interpretation, He is at work, weaving all things together for our good, though it may not look that way as you look at the outcome in front of you.

The instruction to throw the net on the other side is rarely about changing location. It is about renewed responsiveness. It may feel difficult to adjust when you are already weary. It may require humility to listen again. But intimacy in prayer is where we hear the fresh direction that brings new shoots of life and courage. In hiddenness, roots deepen. In stillness, clarity forms. Your biggest difficult is one that only prayer can answer, if you are to ‘cast the net’ on the other side, how does that look? What or where, is the other side? God will make that clear.

God will come through for you. Not always in the timing or manner you would script. But the risen Christ still speaks from the shore. So take up the net again. Place your experience, your disappointment, your hope under His lordship.

Throw it on the other side. And be ready to be astonished at what obedience, anchored in His presence, can draw from waters that once seemed empty.

Leaders know that room.

It’s a new day and as far as last night is concerned, God watched over you. And as the old Jewish prayer says, your spirit has been returned to your body. Another day. Another long day.

Before your feet touched the floor, the world is already pressing in. Ukraine. Gaza. Earthquakes carving fault lines through cities and certainty alike. Headlines circling names like Mendelson, Epstein, and the royal formerly known as prince. Political theatre masquerading as leadership.

You scroll, half-awake, mobile Sky News glowing in the dim light, click bait screaming for attention, spam email promising urgency, more digital-storage space and vast wealth you never asked for, Instagram insisting you do not miss pictures of angry ducks and other outrage. You try to piece together what is true, what is click-bait, what might unravel next. It is not just information overload. It is the quiet ache of not knowing what is really going on.

Imagine that locked room in John 20 like it is now – the door locked from the inside, carpet worn and frayed from where the anxious have walked nervously back and forth wondering…. Lights flicker and stutter irritatingly, whilst outside, lorries and Amazon vans drive past in the rumbling traffic. The world outside carries on as if nothing cosmic has taken place. Meanwhile, inside, hearts are racing. Conversations hushed. Coffee cups empty. Outside, life continues as normal, but here… Time. Suddenly. Pauses

And who is in that room? None of the movers and stirrers like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Xi Jinping, or Mark Zuckerberg and definitely not theology heavyweights at the peak of long careers. It’s young men, many likely in their twenties. Fishermen. A former tax collector. Ordinary labourers. John perhaps still in his early twenties. Peter not much older. Thomas with questions he cannot silence. These are not men with decades of leadership behind them. They are young, shaken, painfully aware of how they failed. The future of the church, humanly speaking, looks very fragile.

And into that room, the risen Christ comes.

Not with a whiteboard, an iPad or a stack of books. Not even with a reprimand, instead, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” No tightening of expectations. No subtle rebuke for their failure. He breathes.

Leaders know that room. Whether you are in your twenties or your sixties, you know what it is to feel underqualified for the moment – where imposter syndrome brings on the cold sweats. You gather and encourage people who are weary from headlines and from their own warzone. You feel the pressure to steady everyone, to offer clarity where there is fog, to project confidence even when your own heart is wrestling.

The temptation is to manufacture momentum, to answer uncertainty with activity. An example is that over the past ten years Catalyst has planted more than 300 new churches in different parts of the world and is now looking to plant 1000 more. That kind of vision is weighty. It stretches faith. It exposes the limits of human strength.

But Jesus does not manufacture anything. He creates. As in Genesis, when the Lord breathed into dust and made a living man, so here the second Adam breathes life into fearful disciples and forms a new humanity. Resurrection is not a concept to defend. It is life to receive. The church is not sustained by adrenaline or eloquence. She lives because the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ indwells her.

Notice who breathes. The scars remain. The hands extended over them were pierced. The Spirit is given from wounded flesh. This is not triumphalism. It is cross-shaped authority. The power entrusted to you is not detached from suffering. It flows from it. That keeps you humble. That keeps you near to grace.

There is no passive legalism here. Jesus does not say, “Try harder.” He commands them to receive. Grace arrives as gift, not wage. It has provision within it. He knows their fear, and He meets it with himself.

Before you go on Facebook, scroll through Instagram, open your next email or step into the next moment of life, do yourself a favour and remind yourself; the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. Not as abstraction. Not as ornament. As breath.

In a world that feels unstable, in rooms thick with uncertainty, Christ still comes through locked doors. He still stands among his people. He still breathes. Let Him breathe fresh life on you in your worst moment. Today.