Are you available? God is searching for people whose hearts are fully His. Learn how to expect supernatural results from God, without limiting His methods.
Transcription
Carlie: Did you know that the Lord wants you to be abundant in every area of your life? He has an abundance for every good work for you. So if you’d like to know more about that, then just hold on.
Announcer: Why live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life? Welcome to the abundant life program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.
Ashley: Hello, and welcome to abundant life. My name is Ashley Terradez and this is my wife, Carlie. And we’re so glad you’ve joined us today in the lounge. We’re talking about the supernatural increase that comes from the Lord. We’re talking about God getting to us, resources, supernaturally. And we’ve been talking about the widow woman and the oil, the supernatural increase of oil in second Kings chapter four. And we’ve been looking at how God wants to get things to us. And he’ll often use something natural in our life and put his super to it, and create supernatural increase. Amen.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: So what story have you got today? What example have you got of this today, Carlie?
Carlie: Yeah, so we’re going to jump right in here. This is in Luke chapter five, and I’m sure this is a story that many of you are familiar with. It’s also mentioned in Matthew chapter four and Mark chapter one, but we’re going to look at Luke’s account here today. It is, as the people pressed upon him, he’s talking about Jesus, to hear the word of God. He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret and saw two boats beside the lake. But the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He entered one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to thrust out a little from the land. It is interesting, isn’t it? That he got into Simon’s boat.
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: And I think part of receiving God’s supernatural abundance, is being in the right place at the right time. We talked about this a little bit with the widow woman and the oil, how when she was in the middle of a crisis and she needed some provision, her sons were about to get taken away to pay for debt, she sought the Lord. She sought the Lord first. And here we are, she was in the right place at the right time, seeking after the things of God. And here we find Simon, he’s in the boat, he’s in the right place at the right time. And he’s listening to Jesus’ instructions.
Ashley: He’s available.
Carlie: He’s available.
Ashley: So a lot of the time with God, it’s being available. It says, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro the earth, seeking who he can show himself strong in, who he can show himself faithful to. And it’s basically, are we available? It’s like he calls the… That basically, he chooses those who are available. And when we say “Yes, Lord.” We become the chosen.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: So God’s looking for people with availability, and really that’s all we have to give to God anyways, ourselves. He’s not impressed by our credentials. He’s not impressed with what we can give him. He’s only looking for someone who’s a willing vessel. Someone who’s submitted and saying, “Yes, Lord, here I am. Use me. Praise God.” And this is what happened to Simon. He was there and he was available to be used to the Lord.
Carlie: Amen. It’s fascinating to me, how everything that God does is to draw us closer into our relationship with him. Even when it comes to receiving supernatural abundance, God is looking for people to partner with. He doesn’t want to just… It’s kind of like, as a parent with a child. Yeah, we could just bank roll our kids activities and college or whatever else [crosstalk] Well, to a degree, right? But honestly-
Ashley: It feels like it.
Carlie: It feels like it. But the sign of maturity, when your child is mature is, when they’re able to support themselves and they’re independent. But as a parent, you always want to have a relationship with them.
Ashley: Yeah.
Carlie: It’s a two way street, isn’t it?
Ashley: It’s like a marriage.
Carlie: It is. And I believe that everything that God is trying to get to us and through us, is because he wants to draw us closer into a relationship with us. There’s a partnership that goes on there.
Ashley: Amen. God’s original design was to live in fellowship with us.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: And to indwell us. And that was it. That’s the whole purpose of… He wants to indwell you, he wants… You’re his temple and he wants to indwell in you. He wants an intimate relationship with you, like a marriage relationship. And if it was all just about getting stuff from God without the relationship, then that’d be… If we was in a marriage and it was all just about you getting stuff from me or vice versa, it’d be a pretty hollow marriage, right? But no, it’s about relationship. It’s about intimacy. It’s about sharing each other’s lives.
And believe it or not, God wants to share his life with you. He wants you to share your life with him. He wants that relationship, that intimate relationship with you. And that’s why he wants to… The way he does things. It takes faith, it takes us believing in him, and it takes relationship. It’s almost like, just when we think we can figure something out to a formula and say, “Do X, Y, and Z, and you’re going to get this result.” With God, it’s nope, it has to be through relationship.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: It always takes faith through a relationship. It’s not just going to be the same way every time. So anyway.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: [crosstalk] God wants an intimate relationship with us.
Carlie: Amen. Amen. So he entered into one of the boats, which was Simon’s and he asked him to thrust out a little from the land. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. Now when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Now, if you are following along in your Bibles there, highlight that bit. Highlight the launch out into the deep and let down your nets, plural, for a catch, because it’s really significant. Simon answered him, “Master, we have worked all night and we have caught nothing.” And if you’ve got your highlighter handy, use it again. It says, “But at your word, I will let down the net.” At your word. When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and the net was tearing. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come help them.
And when they had filled both boats, so that they began to sink. When Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all that were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. But Jesus said to Simon, “Do not fear. From now on, you will catch men.” So when they had brought their boats to the land, they left everything and followed him.
Ashley: Wow. There’s so much in that story. I love this story. And it’s a story of God’s supernatural provision. And that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about how God can get supernatural provision to us. That’s his will, and ways he can get that to us. So what are some of the things that went on in this story that we can learn from? There’s so much in this. The first thing I want to bring out is that, Jesus was a carpenter and Simon Peter was a fisherman. And here’s the carpenter, telling the fishermen how to fish.
Carlie: So they’ve been fishing all night. Caught nothing.
Ashley: Yeah, they fished at night in these times. So they fished at night. That’s why, during the day they came back and they were washing their nets. It says that Jesus saw them washing their nets. So they were washing their nets-
Carlie: They were done for the night-
Ashley: They were done for the day. They’d done a whole night’s work. They’d caught nothing. They’re washing their nets. And then Jesus says, “Go and cast out into the deep. And go out into the deep, launch out into the deep and cast your nets.” And Jesus was the carpenter, Simon was the fishermen. So it’s pretty humbling for Simon to listen to Jesus command him. Because it’s like, that’s one reason why Simon put up a little bit of a fight. “Master, we’ve tried all night. We know what we’re doing here. We’re fishermen, you’re a carpenter.”
Carlie: Go build a table or something and leave us to do the fishing.
Ashley: We know how to fish. You don’t fish during the day, and-
Carlie: I don’t know why you don’t fish during the day.
Ashley: I know, right? It’s funny. In one of the-
Carlie: I guess if you’re a fisherman, you’d know that.
Ashley: It’s a nighttime thing. I don’t know.
Carlie: The fish aren’t hungry during the day? They’re sleeping.
Ashley: They’re sleeping during the day. I’ve only been fishing a few times and all I’ve caught is a cold when I went fishing. True story, because it’s cold and wet.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: But other than that, I haven’t really caught much. So it’s interesting. I think it’s maybe in Matthew’s account. It says, cast your nets over the other side. So one of the accounts, Jesus says, “Launch out into the deep end cast your nets over the other side.” [inaudible] that makes no sense in the natural. So a few things here that Simon’s had to overcome. First, he’s taken advice from a carpenter who doesn’t fish. He’s going against his natural logic, because he’s going fishing in the day. And Jesus says, “Cast your nets on the other side.” Which makes no logical sense-
Carlie: That’s not going to make much difference.
Ashley: One side of the boat makes no difference from the other side of the boat. And also, he’s already washed his nets. So he’s already washed his nets, he doesn’t want to put them back in the sea and have to rewash them again. And he’s been toiling all night and caught nothing anyway. So Simon had a lot of reasons to not obey God here, and say, you know what? I don’t want to do this. I don’t know how many times we’ve been in situations where God says, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you go in love on that person? Can you go and minister to that person? Can you forgive that person? Can you go and do this? Can you go and do that? And it’s like, you just don’t want to do it. I’m tired. I’ve done it before and I haven’t seen the results. But yet, this time is different. This time, you’ve got a word from God to do it. And it makes all the difference. A word from God makes all the difference. Doing something in the power of God, makes all the difference.
Carlie: When he said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” That started to sound… And this word deep, this isn’t just like deep water. This is a metaphor in the scriptures that’s used for, oftentimes, meaning extreme poverty. So, “Launch out into the deep.” He may as well have been saying to Simon, I know you don’t understand, but I need you to go further. I need you to go beyond your natural reasoning. I need you to push the boundaries of what you can understand. I need you to go places you haven’t gone before. When we’re talking about receiving God’s supernatural abundance, we’re talking about expanding our mind. Changing our thinking in order to receive everything that God has for us, because we know that heaven’s resources are limitless. But sometimes we limit God with our human natural understanding, the way we think God can and will provide for us.
Just in the air of healing alone, which obviously is my passion, God has more than 101 ways to get healing to people. He has more than 101 ways to get provision to us, right? But sometimes we find ourselves, we can… In our minds, we might not say this out loud, but we see the provision or we see the healing only coming through a certain channel. So we can actually limit how and when and where God can get resources, healing, whatever it is, to us and through us, just by our way of thinking.
Ashley: Our limited thinking.
Carlie: Our limited thinking.
Ashley: I think it’s Psalm 78, he says they limited the holy one of Israel. It seems crazy to say this, and it takes some explanation. We haven’t got time to fully explain it, but basically God has limited himself to our free will. He doesn’t violate our free will. So therefore, even though God is all powerful, I’m not getting away from that, God is all powerful, he has given us dominion over ourselves. He’s given us our own free will.
And like Carlie said, we can limit God in our life because how we see things playing out. We limit God by saying, “God, is it A or B?” When he has C, D and F. And we limit God with ways we expect it to happen. Well, I think I’m going to go to the doctor and that’s how I’m going to get healed. And that’s fine, because God wants you well. So if you get healed, that’s the main thing. Get healed. But we can read through the scripture so many times that people had an idea how God was going to do something for them. And basically, that’s the only way we let God work in our life because that’s how we’re expecting it. Our expectation is going to determine how much we receive from God.
Carlie: The other thing is, when he says he worked all night, this is meaning toil, right? Toil, in the original language. And that word actually means to work hard with extreme fatigue, burdens, or even grief. So Simon had done everything he could in his natural resources, to provide. And some of us are like that, right? We find ourselves in a place of lack, of not having enough, and it’s not that we’ve been lazy. We’ve been working. We’ve been working hard with grief, with fatigue. We’ve maybe come to the end of ourselves, but Jesus is saying, now do it my way. Now do it my way. You see, and this makes his response more understandable. He says, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand, Lord. I’ve done everything in my own strength, but at your word, I will let down the net.”
Ashley: Right. Backing up there, with the work part. God doesn’t want us to toil and receive nothing. That’s the curse of the work of a hand, if you like. And we can study this out another time in Genesis. Genesis three, where it talks about how after the fall, what happened was, God said, “Now the ground’s cursed. When you work, it’s going to involve toil. It’s going to involve hard labor, and it’s going to be unsatisfactory. You’re not going to get the results you want.” [inaudible] puts it this way. It’s like putting money in a bag with holes in it. The money just comes out the bottom. You’re never quite getting ahead-
Carlie: Bottomless pit.
Ashley: Bottomless pit. And this is what Simon was experiencing here. He toiled all night. He did everything in his own strength he knew how to do, and he still didn’t receive what he needed to receive. Remember, Simon wasn’t fishing here for a hobby. It wasn’t just like he was out fishing on a Sunday afternoon because that’s what he does. Saw a bumper sticker the other day, it says, “I go fishing to take my mind off playing golf.” It’s not just like a hobby. You go fishing or you play golf. This was his livelihood. This is how he fed his family. He had a business, a fishing business. And to go out all night and catch nothing, was a big deal. That was a bad day at the office. And he had toiled and done everything he could, but he’d received nothing. That’s important to remember.
Carlie: But he had to come to the point where he says, “Okay. I’ve done everything in my strength, but because you say so Lord, I’m going to go fishing because you say so.” It might not make sense. And sometimes, in order to receive everything that God has for us, we have to stretch our thinking. And that means doing some things that don’t always make sense.
Ashley: Getting to the point and saying, “Yes, Lord.”
Carlie: Yeah. Coming to the end of ourselves.
Ashley: Saying no, Lord is an oxymoron, right? If he’s your Lord, we always say yes to him. And the good news is, as our Lord, he only has good for us. So when we say yes to him, we know it’s going to be for our good. He’s only got good things for us. He’s only got good plans for us. It may not make sense logically, like Carlie’s saying. It may mean we don’t understand all the results. God’s not asking us to see it all out before we say yes. No, he wants us to say yes, before we can see the end result.
Carlie: This isn’t a contract.
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: This is a partnership.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: And so there has to be trust on both sides of the partnership, right? We have to come into agreement.
Ashley: That’s right. And often we don’t know what the end results. Now we know it’s going to be good, but we don’t know how it’s going to work out. And sometimes we can be guilty of trying to work everything out and we want to know all of it before we say yes to God, but God wants to lead us step-by-step. And until we say yes to that first step, he’s not going to show us all the other steps. One of the reasons is, probably we’ll get scared and run away. Or maybe we’ll try and work it out ourselves. How many times have you done this? I’ve done this so many times in my life.
Carlie: Trying to help God out.
Ashley: Absolutely. God, I’ll help you out. No problem. I can make this work. It’s like Abraham. He tried to make the promises of God, come to pass in his own strength, in his flesh, literally, and ended up with an Isaac… No, Ishmael.
Carlie: An Ishmael.
Ashley: Instead of an Isaac, he ended up an Ishmael. And we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to get ahead of God. We want God to lead us, and that’s why I believe God just shows us one step at a time.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: He’ll show us the first step. And some people come to us and say, “Ashley, why isn’t God speaking to me?” And I say, “Well, have you been obedient with the last command?”
Carlie: What was the last thing he told you to do?
Ashley: What’s the last thing God told you to do? Have you been obedient? Have you followed through on that last commandment he gave you? And if they haven’t, that’s why he hasn’t said the next step. God leads a step at a time. So this is very important to remember, that I love Simon’s attitude here. He puts up a little bit of a fight, “Master, we’ve done this. We’ve toiled all night.” But forget all that. I’ve got a friend who teaches this really well. He says, “What’s on the other side of your but?” Right. He calls it the holy but. I wouldn’t say that, because it’s a little bit edgy. Little bit edgy for us, but he calls it the holy but. He says, “People say, yes, pastor. I know. God supplies all my needs, but I have lack in my life.”
Carlie: When you put a but in there, the problem is, in the English language, when we put a but in something, that negates everything that went beforehand.
Ashley: That’s right.
Carlie: So saying, “I know God provides, but this is what I see in the natural.” What you’re going to receive, is everything that’s after the but.
Ashley: That’s right. Saying, “I know God’s my healer and I know I’m healed by Jesus stripes, but I’ve got pain in my body and the doctor says I’m going to die.” You see, what we need to do is, we need to move our buts. We need to place our buts around, what we need to do is, is like Simon did. Simon did it right. He said, “We’ve toiled all night, we’ve caught nothing. In the natural, this seems crazy, but at your word.”
Carlie: But God.
Ashley: But God. And we need to have that attitude, where it’s like, you know what? It doesn’t matter what it looks out in the natural. It doesn’t matter what our body is telling us. It doesn’t matter what the doctor’s telling us. It doesn’t matter what the bank manager’s telling us. Doesn’t matter what our checking account looks like. But, God’s going to supply all my needs. But, God is my healer.
Carlie: Simon had a holy but.
Ashley: He had a holy but. There you go.
Carlie: Right. Probably had a holy net as well. So he said, “But at your word, I will let down the net.” Now here’s the thing, we don’t always follow God perfectly.
Ashley: I do all the time. I always follow God perfectly.
Carlie: Jesus asked him to let down his nets, plural. Multiple nets. But Simon said, “I don’t really understand what you’re asking me to do, but I’m willing to let down my net.”
Ashley: Singular.
Carlie: Singular.
Ashley: Because he’s been washing his nets. I mean, if he had five nets-
Carlie: I don’t want to clean them all again, right?
Ashley: And he washed them all, why not just let down one net? Because he’s not really sure this thing’s going to work out. It makes no sense. I’ve been there. Haven’t you been there?
Carlie: Oh, yes. But here’s the thing. He still followed God. Now, he maybe not done it perfectly, but the Lord meets us where we’re at, right?
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: He’s not looking for perfection. He’s just looking for a willing heart, and Simon had a willing heart. Even though he didn’t follow perfectly, to the full letter of obedience, he was willing. And so he let down the net and it says, when he had done this, they caught a great number of fish. So much so, that their net was tearing. Now there’s a couple of things I want us to see here, when he let down… If he didn’t let… Well, first of all, if he’d let down more than one net, his net would not have been tearing, right? And also, the catch was in the deep, waiting for him. Think about this for a minute.
Jesus knew exactly where the fish were. I mean, the Lord knows the beginning and the end of time, right? He’s outside of time, he knows the beginning and the end. He knows where we’ve come from. He knows where we’re going to be. And when he gives us direction, we can be 100% confident when we follow his word, that he’s always going to lead us into success. Even if we can’t see, even if it doesn’t make sense to us, he’s always going to lead us into success. So he knew where the resources were, the provision, where the supply was hanging out. When they put down the net, the catch was in the deep, just waiting to jump into the net. The catch is waiting for you. Your catch, your supernatural abundance, is there waiting for you. We don’t have to work for it. We don’t have to toil for it. We just have to collect the spoils.
Ashley: Amen. We just have to believe.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: And do our part by faith. Yeah.
Carlie: All we have to do is be obedient.
Ashley: God wants to get involved with you in the marketplace. It’s amazing how… And I’m jumping ahead a little bit here, but Jesus chose his disciples in the marketplace. The tax collectors, the fishermen. He didn’t go to the synagogue to find his disciples. I really believe that God is into marketplace ministry. I really believe that God wants you to be able to minister in your place of work, in your business. He wants to be… Show himself strong in your business and in every area of your life, not just in our Christian life. Sometimes we separate things. This is our church life and this is a secular life. God doesn’t want that. He wants a part in every area of your life and it’s for good. He wants to be part of your business for good. He wants to transform your business and make you successful. There’s been times in my life where I’ve prayed. I’ve prayed in the Holy Spirit. I’ve prayed and asked God, and he’s shown me things and I’ve gone and done them and made more money than if I’d done it on my own 20 times over.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: He’s shown me specific things. It’s amazing.
Carlie: There’s a blessing in obedience.
Ashley: There is a blessing in obedience. It’s amazing. I remember buying a truck once, in a farmer’s field. It’d been derelict there for years and it wouldn’t start. And I prayed in the holy ghost, and God showed me exactly what to do. And it took two bolts. And I’m not mechanic, believe me.
Carlie: No, he’s not.
Ashley: I’m not a mechanic. This is a miracle. Took two bolts, I bolted back the starting motor, got a couple of batteries in there and fired that truck up and made thousands of dollars over that one sale. That one sale, I made so much money, it was more than 10 deals put into one. And that’s because I was listening to the Lord and the Lord wanted to be involved in our business. He wanted to bless us. Was able to give more and live off more. And God’s doing the same thing here, and he wants to do the same thing to you today. Whatever your business is, there’s nothing too small for God to get involved with. He wants to get involved with your small issues as well as your big issues. Don’t just wait for the big, seemingly spiritual things, to turn to God. You can turn to God when you’re talking about business, and when you’re going shopping. I’ve got friends who go shopping and ask God to show them where the deals are, and they find them every time.
Carlie: This is doing business, supernaturally.
Ashley: Come on. Doing business, supernaturally.
Carlie: If we want a supernatural, abundant blessing in our life, let’s do business God’s way.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: Right?
Ashley: We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it work in our lives so many times. We had a house paid off, completely paid off, supernaturally. Same type of way, it was listening to God and God showed us something to do supernatural, which didn’t make sense in the natural. It didn’t make sense logically. In fact, the opposite made more sense. But we obeyed God, and now it’s a paid for house. So these things are real today. God wants to get his supply, he wants to get his abundance to you today. And its supernatural ways, so we need to hear God’s voice and obey it. And that’s exactly what Simon did here.
Carlie: So the next thing that happened, so he says, when he’d done this, they caught a great number of fish and the net was tearing, right? So they signaled. They found that, oh my goodness, the overflow is flowing here. And I mean, we just can’t contain it all. The catch is so great, we just can’t contain it all. Our net is breaking. So they asked for help. They called in partners in other boats to come and help them. Partners catch more fish.
Ashley: Partners catch more fish. And this is one way you know that you’re operating in God’s supernatural blessing, when it comes to resources. There’ll be enough and extra. There’ll be too much. This was too much for Simon on his own. He had to have partners. He had to give some away. He had to have partners help him with it. And there’s so many times where there’s situations where, when you experience that supernatural overflow, you’re going to have to give some away. You’re going to have to partner. And you’re going to have to have people help you.
And God, in second Corinthians, nine and eight… Second Corinthians, chapter nine, verse eight, it says, “God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you have all sufficiency in all things.” That means our own needs met. So God’s going to meet our own needs, but also we’re going to have an abundance for every good work. So the idea is, we have enough and extra. We have our needs met and we have an abundance for every good work. And this is what happened to Simon. He had an abundance. His nets were breaking and he had to get people to give it away to, get partners to partner with him, otherwise it would have ruined him, if you like.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: God’s provision is boat sinking net breaking.
Carlie: That’s right. The only limit to the size of the catch that they caught that day, was how many nets they put out. How much capacity they had to receive it.
Ashley: So if they put out 10 nets and had 10 boats, they could have caught 10 times of fish.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: It’s just like we looked at last time, with the widow woman, second Kings chapter four. She put out empty vessels and as she poured the oil out, the oil supernaturally increased into those vessels until the last vessel was full. If she’d put out 1000 vessels, that oil would have kept increasing until 1000 vessels were full. If she’d put out one vessel, it would have stopped at the one vessel. So we can limit our own harvest. We can determine the size of our harvest. Paul puts it this way in second Corinthians nine. He says those who reap sparingly… Those who sow sparingly, will reap sparingly. Those who sow bountifully, will reap bountifully. It’s up to us, how much we want to trust in God. God’s limitless.
Carlie: Amen. The next thing is, it says when Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” In that moment, he recognized not just the miracle of what happened, but who Jesus was through it. The abundance on our life, the blessing of God on our life, is an advertisement for the goodness of God.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: It’s an advertisement for the gospel, for the power of God working through our life, but at the same time… And I love this, not only… It astonished everyone. It was a miracle that happened that day, right? But what we often do in these situations is, we’ve looked back at the past and we say, you know what? This was such a great day. This is one time where we saw the supernatural power of God happening. We saw a mighty miracle. Let’s camp on the beach right here with our big catch of fish and make a memorial or remember this day forever, and live in this moment forever. But Jesus said, no, actually, as amazing as his super abundance is, this miraculous catch is, I want you to leave it behind.
How many of us would be prepared to do that? They had the best days fishing they had ever had, more than their nets could contain. They were astonished by it. But Jesus, even in that moment of abundance and supernatural provision, the point in our lives where we feel the most fulfilled and the most used and the most satisfied, Jesus says, “I’ve got more for you still.”
Ashley: Come on.
Carlie: “I’ve got more for you still. Don’t camp at last week’s miracle, because I’ve got more for you.”
Ashley: That’s good.
Carlie: “But you have to be prepared to not be so overwhelmed by the miracle, that you miss the miracle maker.”
Ashley: Wow, that’s good.
Carlie: Amen. Our eyes have to stay on Jesus. If we want the constant supply of God’s supernatural abundance to flow in us and through us, that means being prepared to follow after Jesus and not go from miracle to miracle.
Ashley: Amen. That’s really good.
Carlie: That’s learning to live in the blessing.
Ashley: Learn to live in the blessing rather than miracle to miracle. The other part of that I like as well, is the fact that the catch of fish represented money for their business. That was a large income. That was revenue. God gives us the power to get wealth. Deuteronomy 8:18, he gives us the power to get wealth. He doesn’t give us wealth directly. He gives us the power to get wealth. And in this instance, he gave Simon power to get wealth. He got that big catch of fish, which he would have sold at the market and got that wealth. But notice that Jesus said, “Simon, now I’m going to make you a fishermen of men.” And you see the thing is, wealth or finances is the least important thing.
True riches are people. True riches is our relationship with God. And we never put finances before people. It’s always people first. It’s always God first, and loving people. And finance is just a tool to help us do that. But finance is the least important thing in the kingdom, whereas people are the most important. They’re the true riches. And if we’re not faithful with the least, sometimes it’s difficult to be faithful with the most. And right here, Simon was faithful with the least. He forsook the catch of fish, he forsook that big wad of money, if you like, that big catch, and went after Jesus, because he wanted to catch people. He cared about people and wanting to minister to people. Amen.
Carlie: Amen. And what Jesus is saying here is, real abundance, true abundance is found in relationship with me. Don’t be chasing the abundance, the signs, the wonders and the miracles. They’re great, but relationship with me is where it’s at. That’s what he was saying.
Ashley: Amen. No price. That’s priceless.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: No price can be put on that. Amen. That’s awesome. Praise God. So we’ve learned some principles there about how God has supplied supernatural need. You can apply those to your own life. But we’re out of time this time. We’re going to be back with some more teaching about God’s supernatural provision, about how he wants to get supernatural abundance to you. But until next time, I want to pray for you before we let you go. [inaudible] thank you. For every person watching this show, I thank you Lord, that your heart is for them to increase supernaturally. I thank you, Lord, you have ways of increasing them, they haven’t even thought about yet. And I thank you, Lord, just like Simon, we’re going to be obedient to your word. We’re going to say, there’s all this issues, Lord, but at your word, we’re going to obey you.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: Lord, I thank you. We’re going to obey you and leave all the consequences to you. And you only have good for us, so I thank you. Obeying you is always a sure thing. And Lord, we obey you in Jesus’ name today. Amen. Amen. Isn’t God good?
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: That’s awesome. Well, thanks for being with us. We’ll be back real soon. But until next time, remember, don’t just live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life. We’ll see you next time
Announcer: To order your copy of this teaching, visit our website, TerradezMinistries.com.
Ashley: Hey, thanks for watching today. We’re talking about how God wants to get his supernatural abundance to us and how we can position ourselves to receive the abundance. If this is the only show you’ve watched, be sure to check out our product. The instructions are on the screen there. We have it available in our store. I would really encourage you to get it because we go through lots of practical tips that’s going to help you receive the supernatural abundance from God. God is the biggest giver, and he’s trying to get abundance to you. So check out this resource, check out these products. They’re going to help you receive the blessings of God in your life today.
Announcer: Download your free copy of Ashley and Carlie’s teaching notes at our website, TerradezMinistries.com.
Ashley: Just like Jesus gave you healing, jesus also gave you prosperity in your finances. So whatever your situation is, you can receive the full spirit of the Lord.
Carlie: Because Jesus came, not just to give us life, but to give us life more abundantly.
Ashley: Amen.
Speaker 4: The heart is for people, to set people free with this abundant life.
Speaker 5: Oh, Ashley and Carlie, I think they’re amazing. I think they have a great ministry. I think they’re inspired. I think God’s really working in their lives.
Announcer: Through the many outreaches of Terradez Ministries, people are being saved, healed, baptized in the holy spirit and are receiving financial miracles.
Speaker 7: Oh, it’s wonderful. We’re supporters. We started supporting them last year. And since we’ve done that, we have been so blessed. Our house is paid off, our cars are paid off. We are debt-free.
Announcer: Terradez Ministries is dedicated to empowering believers in the promises of God. Join Ashley and Carlie in spreading the good news of abundance and freedom. Become a partner today. Join us next time for the abundant life program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.