God wants us to trust him
I heard a great sermon by Andy Stanley www.northpoint.org on faith and want to share a quick summary. It challenged me to pay better attention to those nudgings I get from God.

"I really believe God is nudging me to do _________________..." (what comes next?)
We struggle with this - my job, my money, my status, etc. "If I do this thing I feel God is nudging me to do, I might have to part with _____________ and I'm not really sure I can let go of it just yet." We hesitate to follow the call of Jesus because we are afraid of what it might cost us (money, reputation, failure) yet whatever I tend to withhold from God, what I fail to surrender as it turns out, God is not interested in. He isn't interested in controlling you or making you miserable, He is interested in making you better. Consider this...

Jesus is preaching to a crowd (Luke 5:5) and Peter is nearby cleaning up his nets after a long night of fishing. Peter is in the family business, he is a fisherman doing what he thinks he is supposed to be doing. As the crowd grows, Jesus winds up down by the water and asks Peter to push his boat offshore. He then asks Peter to do something really risky - to go out into the deep water and put out his nets (the very nets he has just spent hours cleaning and rolling up after a long night of work). This is risky. The crowd on the shore could very well have laughed at Peter - his reputation as a businessman was on the line.

Peter gave Jesus some info (as if He needed it), "we've worked long and hard...." Sort of like our saying, "Yes but God, I can't quit this job and follow your lead, I have my reputation in the community, I have this mortgage..." But after arguing with Jesus for a moment, Peter does something extraordinary and essentially says, "God you are nudging me to do something and if I follow you, it seems like such a high price to pay and this just doesn't make sense to me...but because You asked, I will do it".

As you know, Peter puts his nets out and in the heat of the day catches so many fish that his nets begin to break. He calls over another boat and it fills with so many fish that it starts to sink.

We mistakenly think the value of what we are holding onto is the issue...it's not. The issue is faith.

God isn't interested in taking things away from us (think back to when you were not a Christian and you didn't want to "sign up" because you thought being a Christian meant you had to give up all that was fun) - God isn't interested in controlling us - He is interested in making us better.

Steps of faith often require us to give something up. What Jesus wants is not the thing we give up, He wants us to have the faith to follow Him. In Peter's case, He rewarded his act of faith with a bounty of fish so great that it filled two boats and ultimately led to Peter becoming a "fisher of men" and the rock of the Church. Just an ordinary fisherman minding his own business took a step of faith and followed Jesus and oh, how he was rewarded.

Soar.