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FREEDOM FROM PRESENT<br />
FRUSTRATION<br />
Can you recall a time when, despite your best efforts, things just<br />
weren’t working? A particular season of my life comes to mind. We’d<br />
moved as a young family from Oxford to Peterborough to start the<br />
local church that we now lead. There were lots of pressures –<br />
including living in a brand-new city, with very little disposable income.<br />
Karen was at home raising our young girls; I was holding down a<br />
teaching job, trying to finish my doctorate as well as helping with the<br />
family. Most challenging of all, we were trying to get the new church<br />
established. I remember the extreme sense of discouragement and<br />
the pain of feeling like I was failing, badly. I prayed to God, offering<br />
my resignation, which he didn’t accept!<br />
As I look back it’s evident that, tough as it was, this was a crucial<br />
season of what I call root work rather than fruit work, when, despite<br />
a lack of outward growth, we were learning to put deep roots down<br />
into God, into his Word and growing in our conviction that he had<br />
indeed called us. In fact, those acute feelings of frustration and failure<br />
helped produce in me a growing sense that my goal was not to try to<br />
make things happen in my own strength, but to depend on the Lord<br />
and his wisdom and power. This is a journey that I’m still on decades<br />
later!<br />
All of us face struggles and challenges in life. Right now, you may<br />
be very aware of a sense of frustration and failure – or may have a<br />
vague feeling that something’s not right, but you can’t seem to identify<br />
why. If so, there are at least three key lessons from the first part of<br />
the story in John 21, which we are going to look at now.<br />
BIBLE EXTRACT: THE MIRACULOUS CATCH OF
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