Jamie Bosten has the pulpit this morning and he opens with a question that sounds simple until you actually sit with it: what do you pray for?
Not what do you pray. What do you pray *for*. What are you actually asking God for when you bow your head? Is it stuff? Safety? Comfort? Or is it something bigger?
Then Jamie puts an image on the screen that’s going to sit with you long after you leave the building. A dash. Just a little horizontal line. The kind you see on every tombstone and every obituary — between the year someone was born and the year they died. Two dates and a dash.
You don’t pick the dates. Those belong to God. The dash is the only part that’s yours. And the question Jamie’s asking this morning is: what are you doing with it?
He takes us to the Sea of Galilee.
Mark 1:16-20. Jesus is walking along the shore and sees Simon and Andrew casting nets. They’re fishermen. It’s what they do. Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And immediately — the text says immediately — they dropped their nets and followed Him. A few steps further, He sees James and John in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending nets. He calls them. They leave their father in the boat with the hired men and go.
No committee meeting. No two-week notice. No “let me think about it.” They just went.
Then Luke 5. Same guys, different night. They’ve been fishing all night and caught nothing. Jesus borrows Simon’s boat, teaches from it, and then tells Simon to go back out into deep water and let the nets down again. Simon — the professional fisherman who just spent an entire night catching zero fish — says, “Master, we’ve worked all night and caught nothing. But at your word, I’ll let down the nets.”
And they haul in so many fish the nets start tearing. They have to wave down the other boat to come help. Both boats fill up so heavy they start to sink. Peter falls on his knees and says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you’ll be catching men.”
They brought the boats to shore, left everything, and followed Him.
That’s what it looks like when the dash changes direction.
Jamie closes with the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25. A master leaves three servants with different amounts — five talents, two talents, one talent. The first two invest and double what they were given. The third buries his in the ground. When the master returns, the first two hear “well done, good and faithful servant.” The third hears something very different.
Everyone has a talent. Everyone has a dash. The question isn’t whether you have something to offer — you do. The question is whether you’re using it or burying it.
What do you pray for?
Scripture References:
Mark 1:16-20 · Luke 5:2-11 · Matthew 25:14-30
