Think about them! Dear Peter! What a grand apostle he became! But he wasn't at all suitable at first. He would never have passed an interview for the job. He was impulsive. He got so many things wrong. He needed so much forming, and shaping, and so do we all. When we are called by Christ, there is conversion. That is his work entirely: to illuminates us, to give us understanding, to give us a new heart and a new nature, and love for him; to pour his love into our hearts, to make us willing to believe, willing to serve him and sacrifice to him. What a change is conversion! It is dramatic; it is a crisis experience. But then there is the training, the training to honour him and live for him increasingly with greater commitment. I will make you to become fishers. A fisherman in those days was a wonderful example of a disciple. He had to be disciplined. He had to get up in the early hours before daylight at times, when it was the best time to fish. He was completely committed to his task, and had to keep his timetables. There was all manner of preparation to be done: to clean and to prepare, and to mend the nets. It was arduous work. It required discipline and application and commitment, and if you were tired out and exhausted by it, you said to yourself, ‘Have I got to do this all my life?’ Yes, that was your occupation. The day he stopped, he would no longer prosper, possibly no longer eat. The fisherman goes to where the fish are; he is after them all the time. The Christian is being made a fisher of men, and how different he is. He or she is now converted. ‘I know the Lord. The matter was settled. Isn't it wonderful?’ But soon we can begin to stop thinking about the fish, other lost souls, and we look after our job and our family, and recreation and leisure, our daily employment; but am I a fisher of men? A fisher has got the fish on his mind every day, and that is what Christ is making of us. Are we forgetting our calling?
It is a good idea to put a notice up somewhere at home or in the back of the Bible: ‘You are a fisher.’ Never forget it – to family, to colleagues. God has set me in this place as a fisherman. ‘I don't like this job’, we might say, ‘which circumstances have led me into. I don't like this location. I don't like my colleagues. I don't like the rigours.’ But God has placed us there, not so that we like it, but because there are fish to catch. That's our calling; that is how we should think – for his glory and for his name – and he will strengthen us.