Most Recent Blog Post

Have you ever been fishing? My father took us fishing growing up. He got us up at five in the morning. We would get dressed, half asleep, and stumble out the door to get our fishing poles.  He would grab the bait bucket with the live bait to put on our hooks. We would head out to the fishing pier that stretched out over the Gulf waters. We were all excited to catch the big fish. Yet before we could cast our lines into the water, we had to put the bait on the hook. We would reach into the live-bait bucket and pull out a squishy and smelly live shrimp. We would then try to put the bait on the hook. Our hands would be stinky and sticky from the shrimp.

I remember one time when my mom was fishing with us. We had put the shrimp on her hook for her because she didn’t like to get all smelly. She pulled back the poll to cast out the line and when she did, her line went further up than out. At that same moment, a large seagull flew down and grabbed the shrimp from my mom’s fishing line. The seagull also grabbed the hook as well in its beak. My mom screamed and my dad grabbed her fishing pole to reel in the bird. It was the most amazing catch of the day.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells Simon that he will catch people. So how do we catch people? While Jesus called Simon to be a fisher of men, I believe God is the real fisherman, Jesus is the hook, and we are the bait! Yes, I said you are bait! Have you ever considered yourself to be stinky and sticky? I know most of us don’t want to be seen that way. We want to show everyone our good side.

However, if God is the fisherman and Jesus is the hook, God needs good smelly and sticky bait to attract others to him. If we only offer God our good side, how attractive will we be as bait? We did not catch any fish with fake shrimp. God wants to take your stinky and sticky messed up lives to be the bait so that others may see his love and forgiveness! God wants you just as you are so that his grace in Jesus may be the hook that brings his people to him.

So how can you be the bait in this world? Let me use this analogy. In the game of Go Fish, each person has a set of cards and one person asks another if they have the same type of card. If the person does have the card, they hand it to the person asking for it. If they do not, they tell him to “Go Fish”. All too often we are afraid to ask others to meet Jesus. We don’t want to be rejected. We are afraid that others will see our smelly side. Yet like the game, Go Fish, we can draw a card from the Go Fish pile. In life, God promises we can always draw on his love in his son Jesus. It is in this power we find the ability to be God’s bait, attached to Jesus the hook, to be thrown into the ocean of this world. We can only be the bait if we draw on God’s love in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit!

We draw on God’s love by coming to him in prayer, reading his interaction with his people in the Bible, and surrounding ourselves with his followers to walk with us on this fishing journey. The more time we spend with our God, the more open we are to show our messy and stinky lives with the world because we know we are loved and forgiven. God has chosen us to attract his people, not to ourselves, but to himself through the love and forgiveness of Jesus as seen in our lives.

Are you willing to be God’s bait?