Gone Fishin'

Mark 1:17 – “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

You don’t see signs like Gone Fishin’ in the big stores in big towns, but there was a time when you might see something like that in a small store in a small, out-of-the-way town. It was something of a cliché in some movies or TV shows about small towns. The idea was there are more important things to do than stand behind a counter waiting for the next customer to come in and hopefully buy something. I have had neighbors down through the years who were avid fishermen. They would wait until Saturday and hook up the boat to the pickup and head out to their favorite lake to match wits with a wily fish. Meanwhile, the grass mowing or yard work or other chores were put on hold until they returned. Underneath it all, though, it doesn’t have the same flavor as that Gon Fishin’ sign in a store window. It has more of a frantic, hurry-up feeling that says the fishing has to be squeezed into the schedule somehow.

In the bible passage above, Jesus is telling his new recruits to stop what they are doing and follow him. These were professional fishermen. This is how they made their living, paid the bills, and supported their families. We know that Peter was married and in all likelihood so were the others. Jesus called people from all walks of life. We know there was a tax collector and a doctor. Most likely, there were shop owners and farmers and sheep ranchers. He called people from all walks of life and they became his apostles and disciples. Have you ever stopped to think about that and what those people really did? Imagine for a moment that someone you had never met told you to resign from your job today, not with two weeks’ notice, but just walk away. Here you are, with your spouse, children, mortgage, car payments and debts, and some guy you don’t know is telling you to walk away and follow him. He assures you that it will all be taken care of somehow and you just have to have faith in him. What are you going to do? We know what the young man did in Matthew 19:21-22 when Jesus invited him to be a follower. He turned around and left.

Jesus doesn’t ask everyone to make such a large sacrifice as giving up everything to follow him. He does ask that we follow him to the best of our ability and beyond. We don’t have to go out and cast big nets and drag large groups of people to church or preach to people on street corners. He does expect us to fish in our own way. If you know anything about fishing, you know you have to use some kind of bait and a hook in order to catch a fish. Whether the bait is a worm, a shrimp, or an artificial lure, it needs to be something that catches the fish’s attention as it goes swimming by. Our bait may be just the way we live or the things we say that catch the attention of someone else. Our hook isn’t something barbed and painful, it is just the way we may respond to that person who asks about what he or she has seen. It is something that makes them want to know more, hear more. The one thing we can’t do that a real fisherman does to a real fish is to reel them in against their will. Can you just see the reaction of someone who has expressed an interest in what you have or are doing and then you grab them by the arm and drag them to your church? They would toss out the hook and swim away as fast as they could, never to be seen again. No, it is our duty as Christians to bring them to where they can hear more about what Jesus has to say, to hear what God has in his plans for them. We need to infuse them with at least reluctant curiosity and allow them to reel themselves in so they can hear for themselves. We have to face the reality that they may stay or they may swim away. It is their choice and chasing after them with “your message” may just hurry the withdrawal. Remember, it is your initial actions or words that brought them close by. It is Jesus’ message that will make them want to stay.

There are two kinds of people who become Christ’s fishermen. One is the type like I just described above, the ones who attract by their lifestyle, the things they do and the words they say. The other kind is the pushy obnoxious kind. They are always pushing their thoughts and ideas about Jesus at people. It gets to the point that people avoid them because any encounter becomes a preaching session. It would be like going to the lake and instead of using bait on your hook, you used a cowbell. As you can imagine, there would not be a fish anywhere around.

Jesus invited all of us to be fishers of men. He expects us to help him by bringing people in close enough so he can touch their hearts and souls, and in so doing, lead them to an eternal life with God. Are you living a life that helps his efforts, that attracts others to you so you can lead them close enough to hear? Are you a cowbell on the end of the line? Is your life such that no one would believe you are a Christian or, if they do, does the way you live, act and speak drive them away from the mere thought of wanting to know more about him?

Are you one of Jesus’ fishermen? He is always looking for those who are willing to be one.

Wishing On A Starr

In 1954, a television program debuted that became a Sunday night staple for the whole country. That was back in the days of black and white television, with TV antennas sprouting on roofs and rabbit ear antennas on the sets themselves. There was no cable TV, no satellite dishes, and the show remained in black and white until 1961. The program was called Disneyland. It kept that name until 1958 when the theme park opened and the show changed its name to Walt Disney Presents. Those who were around then can probably still sing the lyrics to the theme song. The singer was a cartoon character, Jiminy Cricket, and the song started like this:

When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are.

There are other examples of wishing on stars that we have done as kids, and sometimes as adults. One of them is this nursery rhyme:

Star light, star bright

First star I see tonight

Wish I may, wish I might

Have the wish I wish tonight

We have all done our share of star gazing. Who hasn’t lain on the ground on a summer night under a clear sky and just looked up at all of the stars. I remember my dad pointing out the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and showing me how to line up two stars in the Big Dipper to find Polaris, the North Star. He didn’t know many of the other constellations, but those were the two important ones because if I knew the direction of north at night, I would be able to find my way.

A little over 2,000 years ago, there was a group of shepherds on a hill watching over a herd of sheep. They didn’t own the sheep, they were hirelings whose job it was to make sure the sheep didn’t roam away or be attacked by predators. In those days, shepherds were on the bottom end of the social scale and many of them were petty criminals who used the night to hide from the authorities. Surely they did their share of star gazing and wondering what the stars were. Imagine how startled they must have been when they were interrupted and told they should leave the sheep and go to a stable in nearby Bethlehem so they could see the savior who had been promised. Think about it: the first people who met Jesus were lowly commoners, petty criminals.

On the opposite end of the social scale were three wise men, three kings, three astrologers. They also studied the stars and they all saw the same thing: a star that was moving like a beacon in the night. Being the people they were, they followed that star until they found the true Star at the end of the journey. They found the child Jesus, the one who would be the savior of the world, who would reopen the gates of heaven with his life and his death.

He is not a star we need to wish on, but only to pray to. He is our beacon, our guide in this life. If we just follow this star, accept his teaching and live our lives accordingly, then we will get to live throughout all of eternity with the maker of the stars. That’s a promise we don’t have to wish for.

It Sets Us Apart

“Our Father…”, the prayer given to the apostles by Jesus at their request: “Lord, teach us to pray.” is a lesson in who God is, what we want or expect from Him, and the one thing that sets us apart from the other religions and ways of life. It contains, by itself, the guidelines of what it takes to be a good Christian. God gave us the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, handing them to Moses to teach and lead the Israelites as He demanded. This simple prayer contains within it a simple command or bargain.

The entire first half of the Lord’s Prayer tells us who God is, the supreme ruler who lives in the home to which we all wish to go when our time is up. It says that not only is He a ruler, but also the holiest of all. It contains the promise that someday His kingdom will come to occupy the Earth. As the supreme being, it tells us that His will, not ours or another’s , must be done. It must be done at all levels of His kingdom. He is, after all, the supreme king.

As His subjects, we have the right to expect Him to take care of us, making sure we have food and shelter. It is a request, politely stated, from the ruled to the ruler. We also ask that He protect us from temptation, with the implication that that temptation may be beyond our normal strength to resist. It also asks Him to protect us from whatever evil there may be which is attempting to attack us. It closes with once again acknowledging His absolute power over everything and that the glory is all His.

Now, before you point out that there is a part missing from the second half of the prayer, no there isn’t. That part is the focus of this writing. It contains both a request and a bargain. As human beings, we are going to fail and fall. It is a part of our imperfection, part of our inheritance from the first sinners, Adam and Eve. We know that we are not going to live up to the promises and best intentions we have as Christians. So, we ask for His forgiveness, secure in the knowledge that we will receive it. The kicker, the bargain, is that we ask Him to forgive us in the same manner that we forgive others. If we don’t forgive others, then we are telling God it is okay with us to not be forgiven by Him.

What kind of forgiveness are we talking about? The unconditional kind, of course, without limits on the number of times we forgive. We all remember the parables about the servant who was forgiven by the king and then didn’t forgive one of his fellow servants, and the fate that befell him. Or, the man who asked Jesus how many times he should forgive and the answer was “seventy times seven times”. Taking into account that culture and those rules, Jesus was really saying there is no limit. There is nothing in that part of the prayer which allows us to put conditions on our forgiveness. We are supposed to forgive as God forgives, with a forgiveness that implies forgetting as well.

The ability to forgive and forget is something that all of us, as followers of Jesus Christ, should learn and practice every day. The ultimate act of forgiveness, the best of all examples, is the one that Jesus himself showed us. As he was dying on the cross, full of pain, his last act was to ask his Father to forgive those who had tortured him, hung him on a cross like a common felon, and killed him. Can we, as Christians, do less within our own lives?

Adoptinated

A long time ago, I had some friends who had a couple of cute kids. I worked with him and got to know him and his family quite well. He and his wife kept trying to have children and it just never happened for them, so they finally decided to adopt. They adopted a baby girl first and later a boy. They decided right away that they would tell the kids they were adopted as soon as they were old enough to understand rather than not tell them and have them find out when they were much older. He told me they explained to the kids that their natural parents loved them but, for some reason, weren’t able to keep them and care for them, so they asked this couple to be the mommy and daddy. They said they explained to the kids that they loved them and the best days were when each of them came to live there.

One day when I was over at their house visiting them, the little girl came rushing up to me and very excitedly told me, “I’m adoptinated!” Thanks to the wisdom of my friends, she knew her history and that she was special and had received a very special gift: she was picked out by her parents to be a part of their family, just as was her younger brother.

Adoptinated. What a great word, even if it was born in the mind of a small girl! She heard that story many times down through the years and she said she can’t wait to tell the children she will have some day.

We all know about adoption and most of us know at least one person who was adopted. We hear about people who were born elsewhere and when they become citizens of this country, they bragged about their adopted country. Adoptions are done out of love, whether for a child or a country. It takes a heart full of love to go through all that it takes to adopt.

I said above that we all know someone who was adopted. Taking that one step further, we are all adopted. Every last one of us is adopted, not by parents, but by God. He so loved us that He made sure we were created in His spiritual image and likeness. We were all born to our natural parents, but when we were baptized and accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, we were officially adopted. We are all heirs of the Kingdom. Just as we will someday inherit those things that our natural or adoptive parents leave to us, so too do we have our inheritance from God. We have the gift of eternal life with Him in Heaven.

We are all God’s children. We have the most precious of inheritances and gifts, the limitless love of God. As God’s children, all of us are brother and sister to each other. We are all family, the family of the Most High God! We are all the beloved son or daughter of God and He is well pleased in us. Rejoice and be glad in your adoptination!

Whadda Ya Want?

There is a restaurant in Atlanta called The Varsity. Since opening in 1928, it has grown and claims to be the world’s largest drive-in restaurant. When you walk in the first time, don’t expect the usual, polite server asking you for your order. Instead, you will be greeted with a curt, almost rude, “What’ll ya have?” Rather than being offensive, this is just part of the atmosphere of the place, and one of the reasons people become repeat customers.

There is another part of our lives to which we come seeking service. It isn’t a place where there is a counter or a drive-through lane. There isn’t a person wearing a brand-name uniform, with a trained smile and a memorized sales pitch. Rather, this is our best, most loyal friend, our God in whom we trust our lives. We come to Him often or rarely, seeking some favor or help, hoping that He will answer our prayers in the manner we think is best for us. Whether we receive the answer we want or the favor we seek is up to Him. It is a matter of our faith in God that we believe “Father Knows Best” and He always has our best interests for us, even those we don’t agree with. Can you imagine God responding to our prayers with The Varsity’s, “What’ll ya have?”, as if He was in a hurry and didn’t have an eternity of time to listen to our needs?

While God listens to us with an infinite amount of patience, and it probably takes that for some of us, it isn’t always the case when He is the one asking. While we expect Him to be there for us and listen to us, we don’t always do that for Him. How often does your attitude cause you to respond to His requests with, “Whadda ya want?” We don’t have the same courtesy towards God that we would give to a total stranger. Perhaps God has been nudging you down different paths as He prepares you for a specific task He wants you to do. As you move from one path to another, it would be easy to get frustrated and stop doing what He wants you to do at that moment or time in your life. He knows where He wants you to go and what He wants you to do. The hardest thing for us as believers is to really believe God knows what He is doing, and He doesn’t need our “fine tuning” to move us along. Sometimes, God doesn’t show us the big picture, but just what we need to see for the near term. This is, for us as humans, arguably the hardest part, to have the faith to believe that God knows what He is doing and has a plan. All we have to do is follow that plan in faith, or, some would say, blindly.

It is easy to ignore God when He tries to guide us or nudge us so we will accomplish a task in His great scheme. It is easy to ignore Him once or twice or even more than that. God, however, will keep trying to get our attention and to get us to do what He wants us to do. So, the next time He taps you on the shoulder or whispers in your ear, say, “Whadda You Want, Lord? How can I help you today to accomplish your plan for tomorrow and all of eternity?”

The Two Listeners

As Christians, we know that God hears our every thought, every word, every wish that flows through our brains. We know that He always answers our prayers, sometimes with a “Yes” and sometimes with a “No” and sometimes He answers us when He gets around to it, just to teach us a little patience. God, however, isn’t the only listener, the only one who hangs on our every word, just waiting for the opportunity to respond. There is that other one out there, the very antithesis of good. Whether you call him the Enemy, Satan, the Devil or any of the other names he has collected down through time, he is still there, always there, listening to your every word and prayer, watching every action, using his knowledge of human nature to plan his next temptation of YOU!

As I said above, God always listens and always answers, even in the little, simple things. I, personally, don’t believe in boring God with long, rambling, exhaustive prayers. I used to do a lot of long distance driving as part of my job as a traveling salesman. From where I lived to the farthest edge of my territory was about 150 miles. Each day as I got on the road, I prayed the same prayer: “Father, no cops, no tickets, no accidents, no car problems, no problems of any kind, and no critters in the road, Amen.” I had that job for over two years, and none of those things ever happened.
Sometimes we aren’t praying to Him or asking for something, we are just living life and handling the good and the bad. Perhaps we are having a tight month financially and suddenly we come into just enough money from someone or something to tie us over. Maybe we are having a tough moment in our personal or spiritual life and all of a sudden a friend calls, one we haven’t talked to for a long time, and the discussion works around to whatever is bothering us and helps us to resolve it. He is looking out for us and will use whatever or whomever we need to take care of us.

God also protects us from getting those things which could be harmful to us, things or situations which we want or request. Satan is right there at all times tempting us to go after things that will lead us to his kingdom instead of God’s. There was a country song a while back that told us to, “Thank God for unanswered prayers.” Words to heed, words to remember when you wonder why God hasn’t given you the answer you think you want. Remember, though, that one gift God gave us which allows us to ignore His wishes and do whatever we want: free will. We have the right to choose the wrong choice.

Have you read the Book of Job? Then you know that God allows the Devil to temp us, to do bad things to us so that we will lose faith in God. The Devil is so bold that he even tempted Jesus, not once but three times! Just think how easy it would have been for the human side of Jesus to have looked at all of the kingdoms of the world, looked into His own future and the agony of the cross, and just said, “Okay, you’ve got a deal.” The Devil listens just as closely and intensely as God does. Do you pray for something bad and then are surprised when you get it? Now what are you going to do? There it is, that bad thing you wanted, all you have to do is accept the deal that goes with it. You have to reject God and accept what the Devil offers you. Maybe you are married and in anger you tell your spouse that if he or she doesn’t like the way you do things, then they should just go find someone better. Why are you surprised when it happens? Did you not ask for it? Yes, it is your spouse’s fault for cheating or leaving. However, you asked for the temptation to come around and the Devil was only too willing to help out. It is an old cliché that tells us to be careful what we pray for, because we just might get it.

So, always remember there are two Listeners. God is always there waiting for you to talk to Him, pray to Him, ask so that He can give, seek so that He can help you to find, knock so that He can unlock the door. The Devil is also always there, just waiting for you to allow him to nail your soul up on his trophy wall, mounted, stuffed, with your own set of horns. You and you alone have the choice as to which of them listens and grants your requests. Go out, pray and choose.

To Love And To Serve

When I was in the first grade, a very long time ago, and started to learn about God, the book the teacher used had a lot of questions and answers about God that we were expected to memorize. Even now, decades later, I remember the first two questions and the answers:

Who made you?
God made me.

Why did God make you?
To love and serve Him in this life, and be with Him for eternity in the next.

The concept of eternity may have been a bit difficult to fully comprehend, for some of us it felt like eternity was how long it took to get to the weekend so we could play with our friends. It was, at best, a hazy concept, that “forever and ever” idea that someday we would understand.

It was the whole idea of loving and serving someone or some being that we could not see or sense, whom we would never see or feel in an ordinary, human way that was a bit difficult to comprehend. Like all kids that age, we just took it on faith that God existed and we had to love and obey Him like we did our parents. We knew the teacher knew everything and so we just took a blind leap of faith. Being children, that was easy.

Many years and decades have rolled by since that first-grade innocence, and some of those classmates have certainly gotten to fulfill the last half of the second answer. The others, I am sure, have gone the ways of the different results of the seeds that were thrown out in that well-known parable. Most, I am sure, are still loving and serving Him in some capacity or other. Some have gone into different ministries, became business people, teachers, joined the military, became husbands, wives, parents. It is how we did all of those different vocations that reveals to the world and ourselves just how we have loved and served Him who made us.

How do you love an all-powerful, all-loving Being? And how do you serve Him? The simple answer is by following the rules He has laid out for us. The bible is that guidebook, the one He created through the divine inspiration of those who wrote the words down for the rest of us to read. It is an operational guideline, a step-by-step set of instructions by which we are to govern our lives. The marvelous gift that He has given us is the total freedom to choose how we do that, or even whether we do. Our choice to follow His living words is the outward and inward expression of our love for Him, unconditional and all-accepting.

The second half of the second answer is our reward. It tells us up front that God created us to spend eternity with Him in Heaven, that we were designed from the very beginning to do exactly that. The neat thing is that He gave us the promise of that reward up front. We don’t have to earn it, it is already ours. There is, of course, a choice, that issue of Free Will, the other wonderful gift He gave us. We can choose to turn Him down, we can choose to go the other direction and spend eternity with God’s antithesis, the Devil. The Devil is always looking for new recruits to populate his kingdom. One theologian I heard said that God does not send us to Hell, we choose to go there. We choose to go by turning our back on God, on His ultimate mercy and forgiveness, and telling Him that we don’t want any part of what He is offering us. We do that through sin and rejecting God’s forgiveness. It doesn't matter how big or serious our sins may be, or whether or not we feel we are worthy of God’s forgiveness, God is still bigger and more forgiving of any sin we can commit. His forgiveness is universal, it is already there. It is up to us to accept or reject God and everything He has given us, promised us. We don’t know for certain if anyone has ultimately rejected God, after all He is open to last minute appeals and changes of heart. We only know that God created us to be with Him and not with His sworn enemy.

There is a statement you can read on plaques, signs and bumper stickers that says, “As for me and our house, we serve the Lord.” The price we pay is not a price, but a joyfully performed duty, one of obedience and submission to His will. The reward is greater, more unfathomably wonderful than anything we can imagine. It all comes down to simple math: Love + Service = Eternity with God. How can you go wrong with that?

In The Beginning...

About three years ago while driving my 30-minute commute to work, I found myself thinking about life and how God fits into it.  Over a period of days, I found myself thinking about different ideas and themes along that line.  It finally got to the point that they were like those songs that stick in your mind and won't go away.  One night, I decided to open up the laptop and start typing them out.  I thought they might finally go away.

As I was typing them, I discovered the words I typed were things I had never thought about, ideas I had never discovered in my head before.  Over the next week, I wrote out seven different writings.  Now what?  That was when I realized I was only the typist, not the author.  One in particular brought me a particular insight.  I was going to write this one and it was very late.  I told myself I would just go to bed and do it the next day.  I couldn't go to sleep and finally realized I was being told to get back up and write.  Some of you may scoff at the idea, but I realized that it was God telling me what to write and he wanted me to do that one right then..  With that came the knowledge I was supposed to share them.

Share them?  What does that mean?  How?  Why?  I was full of questions and started telling God I wanted some answers before I wrote any more.  In a sense, I went on strike because he wouldn't answer my questions.  I didn't write again for over a year, even though I could feel the ideas and themes in my head just waiting to be done.  There were a couple times I shared a writing with someone who was going through some life problem that I had written about.  That was all I did.

Finally, I gave in and told God I would start writing again even though I didn't know why or how I was supposed to share them.  I told him I would just do it on faith and the belief he would tell me when the time was right and how I was to do it.

I thought about blogging back then, but it didn't feel like the right thing to do at the time.  So, I just kept writing...and writing...and writing.

I started thinking about blogging again recently, but wasn't sure it was the right venue.  I have a daughter who has been blogging for several years and I sent some of the things I had written to her and asked her what she thought.  She came back with a simple answer, "Yes".

I hope the writings I post out here in the future touch you in some way.  I look forward to hearing your comments and feedback.