Faith That Floats Series

Faith that Floats: When Jesus Gets in Your Boat

Luke 5:1–11 (NLT)

Theme: When Jesus gets in your boat, everything changes. Sometimes God’s greatest invitations come in the middle of ordinary moments. In Luke 5, Jesus steps into Peter’s empty boat and turns a night of failure into a calling that changes everything.

Introduction – When Jesus Interrupts the Ordinary

You ever notice how God rarely checks your schedule before He interrupts it?

Sometimes His biggest moments come when we least expect them.

Illustration: I recently read about a man who missed his connecting flight by just two minutes. He was frustrated—who wouldn’t be? It meant he had to spend extra $150 on a long Uber ride to reach his destination. But here’s the amazing part: during that ride, he struck up a conversation with his driver, who turned out to be a refugee wrestling with questions about faith and eternity.

What looked like a costly inconvenience became a divine appointment. That man later said, “I realized God didn’t delay me—He redirected me.”

Sometimes God’s interruptions are just that—divine reroutes. We think He’s thrown off our plans, but He’s actually putting us exactly where someone needs a glimpse of His grace.

Peter didn’t wake up that morning planning to have his life turned upside-down. He wasn’t at a revival service. He wasn’t on a prayer retreat. He was cleaning his nets after a long, disappointing night of work. He was tired, dirty, probably frustrated, maybe even embarrassed—because in a fishing town, if you come back with empty nets, everybody knows it.

And right there—on that same shore where Peter’s failure was still dripping off his nets—Jesus shows up and says,

“Hey, can I borrow your boat?”

That’s how Jesus works.

He meets us in the middle of our ordinary, sometimes right in the middle of our mess.

Maybe you’ve felt like Peter—just trying to get through the day, clean up what didn’t work, and move on. But then Jesus steps in and says,

“I want to use that boat. I want to use that moment. I want to use you.”

Read Luke 5:1-11

When Jesus gets in your boat, everything changes.

1) Jesus Meets Us in the Ordinary

Luke 5 begins, “One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God.”

I love that—one day.

Not a festival day, not a Sabbath day—just one day.

Jesus wasn’t only showing up in the temple; He was showing up at the lake, at the job site, where people were actually living life.

That’s where He finds Peter—tired, wet, smelling like fish and failure.

And Jesus steps right into that space and says, “Let’s push out a little from shore.”

Now, think about that. Jesus could have preached from anywhere, but He chose Peter’s boat. The very symbol of Peter’s work, his comfort zone, his livelihood—and in that moment, it became a platform for the gospel.

Sometimes the thing you think is just your job, just your daily grind, is the very thing Jesus wants to stand in and speak through.

Maybe it’s your classroom, your clinic, your kitchen, your snowplow, or your office.

Jesus still climbs into ordinary boats.

Illustration:

Back when I was driving school bus, there were days I was just plain tired. Some mornings it felt like it didn’t really matter—I was just getting kids from point A to point B. But one day, one of my students told me that I was the first person every day who was glad to see them. The first person to smile at them that week.

That hit me hard. Because in that moment, I realized Jesus was using my route like Peter’s boat. What felt ordinary to me was actually sacred space—God’s platform to show someone they matter.

God doesn’t need a stage—He just needs a `dered space.

That reminds me of something God said in Zechariah 4:9–10 (NLT):

“Zerubbabel is the one who laid the foundation of this Temple, and he will complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has sent me. Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin—to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”

The people were rebuilding the temple after years of exile, and compared to the glory of Solomon’s temple, this new one looked small and unimpressive. But God said, “Don’t despise the small things—I rejoice in the beginnings.”

In other words, God delights in faithfulness, not flashiness. He takes joy in the small acts of obedience that others might overlook. Every small act of faithfulness: every time you show up, every smile you offer, every seed you plant—it matters to God. And just like those builders were laying stones on the foundation others had started, we’re building on the small, faithful things done by those who came before us.