Into the Deep

Speaker A: 00:00:08

The shallows tell you the deep is dangerous. Obedience says, I have to go anyway. The deep waters way. Where Scripture, theology, and transformation meet.

Welcome to the Deep Waters Way, where scripture, theology, and transformation meet. I'm your host, Ray Cooper, and I'm glad you're here with me today.

This is not only the inaugural episode for this podcast, it's my first entry into podcasting. So thank you for joining me on this journey.

In the series that we're starting today, we're setting out to explore God's grace, his transforming work in our lives, and the new beginnings that he brings us to. As we get started, let's talk about why we're here and what the Deep Waters Way means. The name comes from scripture, specifically Luke 5: 4-5.

Jesus had been teaching a crowd gathered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee from Peter's boat. And then he tells Peter, and this is from the English Standard Version, "Put out to the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

And Simon answered, master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word, I will let down the nets." Now, we're going to come back to this scripture in a moment and look at it in a little more depth.

But this kind of gives you the idea of what we're doing here. We're leaving the relative safety of the shallows and. And moving into the unknown depths of faith.

It's a journey to deepen our relationship with Jesus.

And if that's your desire, to experience the transforming grace of Jesus Christ in a new and a fresh way and to grow in your faith and understanding, then this is the place for you. So who am I and why am I doing this? Well, let me tell you a little bit about my background.

I have a bachelor's degree in Communication with an emphasis in broadcast production from Mississippi State University. I have a Master's of Divinity from Wesley Biblical Seminary. And my work background has been kind of diverse.

I have experience and am currently working as a restaurant manager. I've been a church pastor, a librarian, and even a charter school administrator.

Currently at the church that I'm a part of, I am the adult Sunday school teacher, I'm part of the worship team, and I occasionally preach on Sunday mornings. But there's more to the story.

And in order for you to really understand and grasp where we're headed, where I want us to head to, you have to understand where I've been. Know as well that I believe the road ahead, while shaped by the road behind, does not have to be defined by that road.

It's a very subtle distinction, but one that I hope you'll come to appreciate. And I'm not going to sugarcoat my story. I'm not going to try to justify it, but I feel like I have to share it because you need to know who I am, who I was.

As a preteen I was first exposed to pornography, and I allowed that exposure to turn into an obsession. It was an obsession that I pursued, I lived with, and actively hid for most of my life. I wrestled with it through college, through marriage, through the births of my children, through seminary, and yes, even in pastoral ministry.

While struggling with this as a pastor, there came a moment where I felt God clearly calling me to confess what was going on in my life, to be rid of that. I felt like he wanted me to experience the freedom that he could bring and then to use my story to help others. And I refused. I told God I couldn't. Quite frankly, what I really meant was I wouldn't. I was afraid of losing everything. My family, my ministry, my reputation.

And that refusal, my continued pursuit of that obsession, and the choices that I made shattered not just my life, but my family's life. I went from pornography to internet chat rooms and explicit conversations with adults. I was always searching for something I couldn't find. And yet I knew where the answer was.

My hidden desires, the choices to continue those conversations, eventually led to a conversation with an undercover officer and a conviction for online solicitation of a minor. I lost my ministry. I lost my reputation. I nearly lost my family. I gained jail time, parole, probation, mandatory therapy and counseling. And labels.

Now, I don't share this in order to gain sympathy. The ones who deserve that, the ones who really deserve sympathy are the ones that I hurt. My family, my friends, the members of my church.

They're the ones that I crushed. What I did was wrong. Period. End of discussion.

And while eventually the legal outcome changed, the reality and the depth of my sin did not. I truly regret the choices I made and the devastation that I caused. I hate the person that I had become. But I am eternally grateful for the person Jesus Christ is transforming me into.

By God's grace, I am no longer that person. That time was the absolute worst time in my life. And yet in it, God met me in ways that I could never imagine.

It's amazing what God can begin to do in you when he gets you into a place where you can't get away from Him. Most of my time in jail was spent in solitary confinement due to medical issues.

And that meant most of my days were spent alone, just me, my Bible, whatever books I could have brought to me.

And as a result, I spent a lot of my time reading my Bible, praying, reflecting and meditating on what God was showing me and learning to truly hear and respond obediently to his voice. Because of Christ's work on the cross and the indwelling, transforming work of the Holy Spirit, I experienced true change.

I experienced genuine deliverance and began a process of deep transformation and renewal. That's why I say the road ahead doesn't have to be defined by the road behind. It's also why I'm here, doing this podcast.

Remember earlier when I said I felt like God wanted me to help others with my experience? I still believe that. And that calling was clarified and renewed and expanded for me during that time of brokenness.

Echoing Jesus words to Peter in Luke 22, 31 and 32, where he says, Simon, Simon, pay attention. Satan has demanded to have you all to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.

And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. This is my calling now, to strengthen my brothers and sisters in Christ.

To help lead you into a deeper relationship with Christ, to put out into the deep waters, to. To follow that deep waters way with you, helping you to grow and experience the transforming grace of God in your lives.

For many years now, I've tried to live up to that calling through teaching and preaching in my local church.

And I am grateful to my family, my pastor, my church family, for walking beside me over the years, helping me in my growth and my transformation, providing accountability for me and helping me to experience restoration. I don't feel it's something I deserve, but I'm grateful that God has chosen to use me. And now it's time to add a new dimension to what I'm doing.

This podcast isn't about me. It isn't meant to be a platform for me to promote myself or to try to make myself look good. The only reason I'm here is because I feel like this is where God has led me in order to bring biblical teaching that I hope will help you to better become the person God has called and created you to be.

Now, I understand that some of you may have questions, doubts, or even reservations about listening to this podcast and to me because of what I've shared. If that makes you uncomfortable enough to turn this podcast off, I understand. I respect your perspective. Believe me, I've thought about it myself.

But for those of you who remain, I want to say thank you. And now, with all of that said, it's time to slip the moorings and put out to the deep waters.

Let's go back to that scripture that I mentioned at the beginning, Luke 5. We're going to look at verses 1 through 5 with emphasis on verses 4 and 5.

And later on, in a later episode, we'll come back to this verse, this passage actually, and we'll look at the remaining portion of it. But today I just want to look at verses 1 through 5. Verses 13 give us the context of what's going on, which I summarized for you earlier.

But verses four and five are where our real emphasis is going to lay. Again, this is from the ESV.

On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake. But the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word, I will let down the nets.

So Jesus is teaching along the lake of Gennesaret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and he decides to make use of Peter's boat to allow the crowd to hear him better. That's verses one through three. And then comes the instruction in verse four, put out to deep water.

In the context of the passage here, Jesus is talking strictly to Peter.

And it may look like all he's doing is talking about fishing, but what he's really doing, what's happening underneath this is Jesus is beginning to establish for Peter, for Andrew, for James and John, his own authority and ability to call them and ultimately transform their lives. Where this comes into play for us, though, is that we can begin to look at it metaphorically for ourselves.

And as a result, this then becomes our calling. This becomes Jesus beckoning us to move deeper, to embark on a journey of significant transformation. It's fundamentally a command to leave the safety of the shore.

book of collected sayings in: 1921

And so it is with you and me. Our life is safe in the shallows, but we're not made to stay in the shallows. So what do I mean when I say the shallows?

The short answer is that the shallows represent a life that's not challenged. It's the life that intentionally retreats to the comfortable and safe rather than face the unknown or push beyond the bare minimums to get by.

Staying in the shallows is thinking and living like good is good enough. But we aren't called simply to the good things of life. And sometimes, oftentimes, good is the enemy of best.

We allow ourselves to settle for what's good and never strain toward, never push forward to, never experience what's best. But let's look a little harder at this idea of the shallows, because there's more to it than simply not seeking out the best.

And as we begin to expand how we think about the shallows, let's begin to understand why we need to leave them.

Corinthians: 13:11

But when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Now, while in context here, Paul is speaking about love and the process of gaining a fuller understanding of God's love, we can also see his words as a challenge to us to mature in our faith. And honestly, I don't think we can separate those two things.

I don't think we can grow either in love or faith if we're not intentionally growing in the other. I think they go hand in hand. Staying in the shallows ultimately is an immature life.

A Christian who is deliberately choosing to stay in the shallows is deliberately choosing immaturity. Staying in the shallows isn't accidental. It's hearing God's call to go into the deep and then rejecting it.

And you do this every time you choose to not follow what God has called you to do.

You do this every time you don't push a little further or take that extra step or even engaging in the means of grace that God uses to mature and transform us, those ordinary channels through which he forms us, such as prayer or scripture or worship or communion or intentional fellowship with other believers. Now, I'm not saying that any of those things by themselves does anything to us.

You can certainly do anything, each and every one of them, and experience no transformation whatsoever. But these are things that God has put in place to help us to grow.

Staying in the shallows is never taking on anything that challenges you or causes you to grow in love. And ultimately it's resisting the transforming work of grace in our lives. Paul says in Philippians 2:12.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And immediately after that, he tells us it is God who works in us.

And so it ought to be obvious to us, Paul's not saying here that by working out our salvation, we're somehow saved through works. Absolutely not. And he makes that clear by saying it's God who works in us.

But what this does tell us is that God's work in our lives pushes us, propels us to respond in obedience. His grace not only calls us to the deep, it drives us to the deep.

And this drive can be seen in our lives as we become more like him, growing in holiness and expressing that growth through love that's continually being perfected and by the fact that as we grow, we desire it more.

can look at Jesus in Matthew: 16:24

Jesus took up a cross and he headed to death, and he calls us to do the same, to take up our cross, lay aside everything that we would cling to, everything that would hold us back, everything that would keep us from following him, including our own lives.

Staying in the shallows can also mean harboring and clinging to secret sin. And trust me on this because I've lived it.

You can cling to secret sin and have all the appearance of depth that you want. Clinging to a secret sin is like dropping an anchor while trying to row into the deep. You can have all the appearance of spiritual movement.

You can attend the meetings, you can attend services. You can sing the songs. You can wash the nets, to use the metaphor of our passage here, or to at least apply it metaphorically.

But as long as you refuse to cut that line, you're going nowhere. You see, you aren't stuck in the shallows. You're choosing them.

And by choosing them, you're like a ship that stays in harbor. Safe from the storms of the deep, but rotting and warping within and withdrawing from people and relationships without. After all, if you let people get close, they might find out.

And if they find out...

Harboring secret sin points to areas where we're still resisting the sanctifying and transforming work God wants to do in us.

You may love God and you may hate your sin, but until that sin is confessed and fully surrendered, you will be stuck in a cycle of sin, remorse, and incomplete surrender.

And every time that cycle repeats, you spiral further and further from the freedom that God intends for you, leaving you burdened, frustrated, angry and isolated. That's where this calling from Jesus comes in. Moving out of the shallows and into the deep stops that.

Following the deep waters way is the breaking of the cycle and the restoration of broken relationships. If staying in the shallows is dependence on self and leaning on your own understanding, moving into the deep is surrender.

It's a surrender that flows from love and from trusting God and obeying him fully. It's you stopping trying to have all the answers and accomplishing for yourself something you can never attain.

It's a life of trust, obedience, and transformation where his work in you begins to produce true holiness and love.

Now let's go back to that passage in Luke 5 where we find a beautiful example of what it looks like to move from resistance to obedience, from self reliance to surrender. And I think we're seeing the beginnings of transformation here. Peter shows us what trusting Jesus, even when it doesn't make sense, looks like.

Staying in the shallows means trying to make sense of things by ourselves, but moving beyond the shallows means trusting that God knows best. Jesus tells Peter, if you'll remember to put out to the deep and let down the nets for the catch.

And Peter objects, saying, we've fished all night, we've worked, we've toiled, we've labored all night long and we took nothing. We haven't caught anything.

I personally think this is a little bit of a sanitized response, or at least a sanitized retelling of the response, because Peter may well have said or thought something equivalent to, or maybe even stronger, "Are you kidding me?"

Remember before Jesus got into his boat, Peter and his partners were washing their nets. They're getting ready to go home.

They're thinking about having to tell their families they caught nothing. But by golly, they're going to go out the next night and this time they'll get a catch. And now Jesus says, let's go fishing.

Understandably, Peter resists, but what happens next is crucial. He changes course because you said, do it, I'll do it. And then he does.

Now, I mentioned earlier that we'll look at the remainder of this passage in a later episode. But right now, this is the crucial part I want you to see.

The change that Peter has here, where we see the resistance, we see the staying in the shallows, literally. And then the decision to trust Jesus to do what Jesus has asked, even when it doesn't make sense. And that's the essence of trust.

That's the essence really of, of faith. It's obedience in the face of obstacles. Peter, his brother Andrew, his partners James and John, they're all tired. They've worked all night.

They're frustrated. They probably want nothing more than to go home and rest. And yet they obey. In spite of the obstacles, in spite of the excuses, and in spite of anything else, they obey. That's moving out of the shallows and into the deep. That's following this deep water's way.

The shallows tell you the deep is dangerous. Obedience says, I have to go anyway. This kind of trust is also exemplified in setting aside our expectations of what God is going to do.

Oftentimes we approach God with a laundry list of things we want and expectations of how he needs to help us grow. But true trust is surrendering our desires of how God should act and trusting again that he knows best.

Jesus, if he had wanted, could have miraculously filled Peter's boat with fish right there in the shallows, with Peter and Andrew and James and John standing on the shoreline watching. That certainly would have solved the we didn't catch anything problem. But it wouldn't have solved the deeper problem.

It would not have started the journey of learning to trust God through obedience. Did Peter get it right every time after this? No, he didn't. But every time he surrendered his expectations and let God work, his faith grew.

And this is how God works in us, calling us to go deeper, to trust, to obey, to cooperate with his transforming grace. The bottom line is this: putting out into the deep, following the deep waters way is an act of faith. And this is something that we often misunderstand.

And the world will tell us that faith is just belief. But that's not the case. Faith isn't merely believing in something. It's not just giving mental assent that something is true.

True faith is acting on what you say you believe. It's living differently because we trust the one who's calling us.

As one of my professors once said, faith is acting upon the presumption of reliability. It's stepping into action even when it doesn't make sense in our own eyes, because we trust the one who's calling us into that action.

Do you believe God can transform you? Do you believe God can take a broken life and heal, restore and use it for his glory, then act on it?

Moving out of the shallows and into the deep means obeying what God calls you to do, even when there are strong reasons not to. And this is

A pattern we see in scripture over and over again. We see it in Moses at the burning bush. We see it in Peter that morning in the boat with Jesus. We see it in the Israelites crossing the Jordan into the promised land.

And we see it in our own lives when God calls each and every one of us to step into the unknown, to trust him, and to participate in his work. So listen for Jesus call, follow his command. Put out from the shore of your old life and into the deep waters of his new life in you. Trust that he will guide and sustain you every step of the way. After all, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

And remember, there is always deeper water. No matter how long you've walked with God, no matter how much you've experienced God's grace, there is always more. His grace is beyond measure, and he continually calls us to go deeper. Over the next several weeks, we're going to continue to explore this theme.

But now, as we prepare to close this episode, I need to give you something else. You see, every sailor that sets out for the deep has tools of his or her trade to help along the journey.

In the age of sail, these tools included a sextant, a compass, charts, and chronometers, among other things. Likewise, you need tools for your journey, things that will help you to understand where you are and keep you on course for where you're headed.

We start with prayer. This is our communication line with God. In the deep you can't trust your own sight. You have to rely on someone else.

And that requires that you cultivate a relationship through prayer. To hear the voice of the one who knows the waters. It's the only way to stay aligned with his will.

Second is scripture. This is essentially your chart and compass.

You see, the deep is full of currents that will try to pull you back to the shallows, things that will grab your attention, things that will try to overwhelm you, confuse you, confound you, work against you. And you need something that's going to help you stay the course. Study and meditate on the Word. Let it show you where the rocks are and keep you on the true course of holiness. Don't just read it. Navigate your life by it.

And you need other believers. No one sails into the deep alone and survives.

You need to have people that you can talk to about God's work in your life, people who are also on the journey who can tell you what God's doing in their lives. You need their eyes to see what you might be missing. And their hands to help you when the seas get rough.

And here's the key thing, they need you just as well.

And this collectively then is where the local church comes in. This is where accountability, encouragement, and the means of grace collide.

Community isn't an option for the deep water sailor. It's the vessel that sustains you.

Taking these steps is how we cooperate with God's transforming grace.

It's how we put ourselves into a place where God can begin to work in us. It's the tools that God uses to transform us.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope to talk to you again next week when we meet again.

Be sure and tune in as we continue talking about new beginnings and transformation. Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And I look forward to seeing you again here on the Deep Waters way.

The Deep Waters way.

Where scripture, theology and transformation meet.