Do you like to fish? I’m not particularly fond of it for many reasons. First, you have to bait your hook by taking a slimy, wiggling worm and ram a hook through it causing blood and guts to ooze out. Second, it’s boring. All you do is sit still and wait. I don’t wait particularly well when I’m forced to, so I certainly don’t choose to put myself in situations where I have to wait. Finally, and probably most important of all, you have to be quiet. If you’re not quiet, you scare the fish away. No one has ever used that adjective to describe me and there’s a reason why. I’m not quiet. I’ve been anointed with the spiritual gift of blab. I’m also not still, thus fishing is not for me.
In Matthew 4:19 Jesus says, “Come, follow me…and I will make you fishers of men.” Fishing for people sounds like a whole lot more fun than fishing for fish. You still have to invest time in order to be successful, but you don’t necessarily have to be still or quiet. While fishing for fish is something some of us are called to or choose to do, fishing for men is something we’re all called to do [Matthew 28:18-20].
Matthew 13:47 compares the Kingdom of heaven like a net that was let down into a lake to catch fish. The great thing about the story is, the one catching the fish simply has to go fishing and bring in the haul. It isn’t the fisherman’s job to sort out the good fish from the bad fish. God assigns the job of sorting to the angels [vs. 48]. It’s His job to clean them [Psalm 51:7, 10]. All we are responsible for is the catching.
In Luke 10:2 Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” He needs us to get busy doing our job. It’s time to hang the sign on your door that reads “Gone Fishing” and start investing in lives of others and reeling them into the Kingdom. What are you waiting for? The fish are biting!