Called Before We’re Ready
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. -Matthew 5:17"
This past weekend, I got the opportunity to serve at a confirmation retreat themed “Fishers of Men” with my husband and 11-month-old daughter.
Throughout the weekend, I kept sensing God gently telling me, “Just receive… rest and be Ollie’s mom”. A request I kept fighting because my identity has been measured by the quantity of my capacity versus the quality of what I can commit to.
The retreat site outside of Houston was quiet. Scattered storms were moving through the area with moments of tree-splitting thunder and lightning. In that space, I found a kind of peace I wasn’t expecting – rest.
I found myself simply observing — holding my daughter, watching the retreat unfold from the sidelines.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that He has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and it made me think about how often we believe we must be complete before we are ready to serve God.
I used to believe that if I wanted to serve, I needed to be perfect in faith first. And in the early seasons, when that wasn’t the case, I felt undeserving – an imposter.
The more I invited God into that space and really listened, the more I realized that Jesus never waited for people to have everything figured out before calling them.
When He began building His Church, He didn’t choose scholars or experts. He chose Simon Peter, a fisherman who was passionate, impulsive, sometimes courageous, sometimes afraid. He spoke boldly one moment and doubted the next. Simon Peter, who is deeply human. Yet Jesus still says to him:
“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” - Matthew 16:18
When Jesus first calls Peter, He says, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." This weekend, I heard that as an invitation into something I’ve witnessed in our Christus community — the woman still showing up to her young adults ministry through a hard season, the teenager who can’t understand quite yet that love isn’t perfect during their confirmation retreat but is hesitantly open anyway, the couple serving quietly in the back. People who are still learning, still growing, but willing to say yes to Christ again and again.
Perhaps, following Christ doesn't always look like doing more. Sometimes it looks like letting go of the idea that we must have everything figured out before we are enough.
And perhaps that is what it means to become fishers of men: not that we have everything figured out, but that we love Christ enough to invite others into the journey with us.
Where in your life is God asking you to receive rather than do, and what would it look like to say yes to that?
Mia Huynh