Description
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE IS IN YOUR FISHBOWL
Fish Food
Ed Young
January 28, 2001
He said it only as Jesus could—short, succinct, and to the point. He locked eyes with a couple of first century fishermen and said, “Come follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” Simon and Andrew responded, and their lives and especially their fishing techniques, were never quite the same. Interestingly enough, this was not their first encounter with our Lord. They had become Christ-followers about two months earlier. Read about it in John, Chapter 1. This was, though, their first call to discipleship. One day, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” If we believe that, if we accept the fact that we should all become fishers of men, then that makes the gospel fish food.
There are many different fish swimming around in your tank and in mine. They are at the office, around our neighborhood, at the health club; you name it, and they are there. They need desperately some fish food. They need some fishermen, some men and women who love them enough to present the food to them so they can taste true life and ultimately eternal life.
As I studied this text over the last several weeks, I kept asking myself this question: Why would Jesus tap a bunch of fanatical fishermen on the shoulders to be in his inner circle? Why fishermen? He could have picked tax collectors or physicians. He could have talked to soldiers. But most scholars feel that about seven of the disciples were anglers.
Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because fishermen are fascinating people. I think right up front we could all agree that fishermen are optimistic. You rarely meet a fisherman who is pessimistic. I mean, fishermen go, “Yeah, we are going to catch them. Today is the day. It’s going to be the mother load. We’re going to cast our nets or our rod and reel, and we are going to catch all these fish.” Fishermen think they are always just one cast away from that lunker, from that wall-hanger.
Speaking of being optimistic, fishermen love to fish in all types of conditions. That’s how optimistic they are. They’ll fish in rain. They’ll fish when it’s sunny. They’ll fish when it’s hot. They’ll also fish when it’s cold.
(Video of fishing)
It was about 30 degrees, wind chill factor who knows how cold, the water was muddy, and we came up fishless. But you can tell, because I love to fish, I was pretty optimistic. I was fired up.
If you know Christ personally, if you have bowed the knee to him, then Jesus commands us to become fishers of men. Notice when I read Mark 1:17, the Bible does not say “catchers” of men. Jesus said, “I will make you fishers of men.” And here is the cool deal. Our part, as human beings, is simply to fish. It’s to cast. Christ’s part is to do the catching. So we do the fishing; Christ does the catching. That’s the greatest deal in the world. So we should have a huge amount of optimism. Why? Look who we have out there drawing fish to our bait. Look who we have out there working and nudging people to follow what we are sharing with them, to dine on fish food.
Jesus talked to a bunch of anglers who became disciples because they were optimistic. They had another trait. They were also patient. Fishermen are patient people. They have that ability to sit there on the bank or in a boat and wait and wait and wait and wait. They say to themselves, “I know they are here. I just know it.” What is so funny is fishermen have a measure of faith. They rarely see the fish they catch even though they have these electronics like a fish finder or something. They might see them on that screen, but they can’t really actually see the fins and scales. Still, they say, “You know what? I’m going to wait them out. Sooner or later, they will bite. I’ll keep my bait in the strike zone. Oh, yeah, here he comes. Here she comes.”
I’m 0 for 1 in fishing. I took another trip. Here’s what happened.
(Second Fishing Video)
That was last Sunday afternoon. Again, I came up fishless. But you can tell, I am a pretty patient person. I’m patient. As a fisher of men and women, you must be patient and so must I. I know right now some parents are maybe praying for a wayward son or daughter. You are praying and praying, and you think, “What’s the use? She’ll never make the turn. He’ll never bow the knee to Christ.” Remain optimistic and remain patient.
I heard about a student who attends our student ministry sessions on Wednesday night. She was talking about several of her friends who attend Fellowship Church on their own, and these high school girls are praying for their parents to bow the knee to Christ. I would say to those two young ladies, “Remain optimistic and patient. Keep on praying. Don’t give up.”
I have a friend who shows up every now and then at Fellowship, and I have been praying for the guy for several years. This past month, as I began to write his name out in my prayer journal, I almost stopped several times and said, “What is the use? This guy is a far-away-from-God type. I don’t know if he will ever come to Christ.” But then my mind rushed to 2 Peter 3:9, “He, God, is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God is working. He is doing the catching. All we have to do is fish. All we have to do is cast. All we have to do is share our fish food.
Fishermen are optimistic. Fishermen are patient. Fishermen are also something else: intentional. They have a huge intentionality quotient. If you are intentional, what do you do? If you fish, you go where the fish are. To go where the fish are, you have got to think like a fish. You have got to get on their level. You have got to be willing to get a little bit slimy, a little bit dirty, and a little bit messy to catch the fish. I thought to myself, “You know, I haven’t caught a fish. I am 0 for 2. Where can I go that I am guaranteed a huge bass?”
(Third fishing video)
You know what is funny? You talk to a bunch of Christ-followers, and they will tell you that they understand this Mark 1:17, angling adventure challenge. Rarely, though, will they get out there and get dirty and messy, think like a fish, go where fish are, and actually make a cast. Its human nature, isn’t it, to sit by a fire, to sip on some hot cappuccino while we are reading a fishing magazine, or maybe watching a fishing video, instead of actually fishing. It’s much easier for me to do that, to study the meaning of the fishing terms, the Latin behind them, the etymology of this or that. That’s easy.
Some churches that are dying around our nation have that holy huddle mentality, that us-four-and-no-more deal. Let’s just study fishing, and let’s just examine the lint in our navels and just keep it as a little Christian deal. Let’s don’t get out there and start casting. Let’s don’t get out there and be a friend of sinners like Jesus was. Let’s don’t get out there because maybe we’ll have to hear some profanity, maybe we’ll see someone doing something they shouldn’t do. This is something we cannot CLEP out of. We can’t skip this. This is one of the basic tenants of Christianity. Christ’s number one agenda was to do what? To die on the cross for our sins and rise again. The moment we receive that, the only reason we are not zapped to heaven at that moment is we are to fish for souls. We have got to be intentional about it, and I want to give you a compliment. I’m talking about Fellowship Church. We have so many fanatical fishermen here. I mean, we have men and women who are serious about this stuff.
If you ever talk to a fisherman, which I am sure you do now and then, fishermen have this love for fish. You just fall in love with them. I was eleven years old and it just hit me. Since I was eleven until now—I am thirty-nine—I love to fish. The same should be true in the Christian life. Once Jesus infiltrates our lives, he places a supernatural love for people, this love of another kind inside our lives, this love of fishing. It is the love that drives us to fish. A lot of people here have that love.
To show you how many great fishermen we have at Fellowship Church, let me ask you this question. Listen very carefully. How many of you attended Fellowship Church for the first time because someone invited you? Lift your hand and keep them up. Look around. Is that awesome or what? Someone loved you enough to invite you to this church. Every time you show up at a worship service, whether it be on the weekends or First Wednesday, let me tell you what we are doing. I don’t care if we are singing in worship, I don’t care if we are doing a drama, I don’t care if it is some crazy fishing video, we are casting. We are simply giving out fish food and we want to be very intentional about it.
Fishermen are patient. They are optimistic. They are intentional. Also, fishermen are persistent. Creative fishermen just don’t give up. People call them in the fishing world, fish hawks. They just stay after them and after them.
(Fishing video in our office lobby aquarium)
Persistence always pays off no matter what body of water you find yourself in. Whether it be in your aquarium, a lake, a reservoir, or an ocean, fish. Yes, that fish is okay. I mashed the barb down, and the Oscar is swimming happily in the aquarium; so don’t worry about the fish. He is doing well. He is well-fed and well-trained.
I have a friend who has been a part of Fellowship for about a year, and if you think about persistence and wonder about the definition of that term, especially as it relates to fishing, this guy fits that to a tee. He has an occupation, and he uses the occupation as a time to fish. He casts and he fishes and he prays. I cannot describe to you the numbers of people, families, even students who have come into the life of Fellowship Church and who have bowed the knee to Christ because this guy is as fisherman. He is persistent. I have known him for a while now and I have seen him wait. I have seen his optimism. I have seen his persistence. I have seen his patience. I have seen all of it. He is an intentional, fanatical fisherman.
If you feel that maybe your Christian life is kind of on pause, like it’s sort of blasé, if you feel sort of like you are going through the motions, I will bet you cash money it relates back to the fishing formula. The greatest way to deepen your faith, the greatest way to broaden your horizons is to become a fisher of souls, a man or woman who casts. There is nothing like it. The moment you do that, the moment you have someone in your life you are sharing with, the moment you invite someone here to Fellowship Church and they are seated next to you, and you see them respond to the Holy Spirit through maybe a song or maybe a drama or maybe a video or maybe a message, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Let me tell you why I am giving you this message. Let me tell you why I am so intense and so aggressive in my presentation. Do you know why I am doing it? Do you know who this message is for primarily? It’s not for you. It’s for me. It’s for me. God has tapped me on the shoulder to lead Fellowship. I know that one of the main focuses of a truly Biblically functioning New Testament Church must be a church that is white hot for evangelism, a church that is intensive about fishing. So often, I get so involved in the goings on of the church and the ministry and all this, that I can feel my life and my vision and values kind of drifting. I start worrying about us four and no more, the Holy huddle, just our little group right here in this little aquarium, instead of saying, “Yes, we have got to worry about that, but also we have got to keep the fires of evangelism white hot.”
That begins with me. If I don’t feel it, if I’m not revved up, if I don’t love fishing, it does not translate into this church. But I am praying that many of you who have been sitting by the fire, sipping cappuccino, reading fishing magazines, I’m praying that many of you will get up off of your rear, put down your cappuccino, open the door, jump in the boat, and brave the elements and hit the high seas to catch the fish that God has in your life.
You don’t have to fly to Zimbabwe or the Orient to share your faith. Why fly over one mission field to get to another one? If God calls you there, great, good for you. Start in your own aquarium. Start in your own body of water. But I guess the question that is kind of hanging out there is the “how” question. How? “Okay, Ed, you have talked about it. I understand about people being optimistic, patient, intentional, and persistent and all that. But how? I’m ready. I am a Christ-follower. How do I do it?”
If you accept this angling adventure challenge, you have got to do, I believe, several things. First of all, you have got to pray the fisherman’s prayer. The fisherman’s prayer goes something like this, “God, make me a fisherman. Make me a fisherman. You give me the ability, Lord, to cast, to take those risks, to say those words of truth to people you have strategically stocked in my life.”
For years, I never prayed that prayer. For years, I just worried about a few others and myself. For years, I was into the navel gazing thing, singing “Kumbaya,” sitting around a campfire, saying, “We’re the white hats. They are the black hats. We are the in crowd. They are the out crowd. We are heaven-bound. They are hell-bound. They are so bad.” I did that for a long time until, one day, I bowed the knee to Christ. As I bowed the knee to him, I said, “Lord, make me a fisherman.” I didn’t know a lot of the Bible. I didn’t know what to say. I just said, “God, make me a fisherman.”
The next day, I had a conversation with a guy who said this to me, “Ed, something is different about you.” I thought, “Wow, this is it. I can cast now. I can fish now.” I stumbled. I fumbled. I had the backlash. I thought I got hung up. I could barely even share the gospel, the good news. But several hours later, this young man asked Christ to come into his life. From that moment on, I’m telling you, nothing is like it. We can talk about discipleship, and we can talk about in-depth teaching, and that is great. We all need that. But that is a pipe dream unless people are not getting saved and getting caught for the glory of God. You don’t have to worry about discipleship if you are not really into fishing.
I think a healthy church should be made up of three groups. Number one, we should have a lot of people swimming in the local church who don’t know Christ personally, who are hell-bound people. If a church does not have people in droves coming to it who are outside the family of God, then that church is not a New Testament, Biblically-functioning church.
The second group of people in a healthy church should be people who are brand new believers. A church should be jammed with brand new believers and hell-bound people.
The third group should be people who are mature believers, people who fish, people who are deep, people who are intense, people who are optimistic, people who are patient, people who are intentional, people who are persistent. That is a healthy church. That’s it. Muster up the courage to pray that prayer. It will change your life radically. Pray the fisherman’s prayer.
There is something else. Tell fish stories. Fisherman love to tell stories, don’t they? They can tell you how long he was, what was his girth, what kind of lure or bait you caught him on. Catfish, alligator gar, large mouth bass—whatever it is, they will tell you. Even if you don’t want to hear it, they will tell you: “Let me tell you about the fish.” They will show you pictures: “Look at that. See right there? Look at the size of that thing. Unbelievable.”
We love it. I love telling fish stories. There is something about it. Do you have a fish story? I mean, you have accepted this Mark 1:17, angling adventure challenge from Jesus. You are supposed to be a fisher of men. Do you have a fish story? Do you have a story about how someone came to Christ because of your fishing? If you don’t, something is messed up in your Christian life. You are missing out on one of the greatest things known to man. All of us should have regular stories of fish that by the grace of God we cast to and were caught and were reeled in, cast to, caught, and were reeled in. If we don’t, we are just taking up space, wasting water in our aquarium. I don’t want to waste water, do you? Do you have fish stories?
“Well, Ed, I don’t know that much about the Bible. How do you expect me to share it with this person at work or share it with my neighbor or share it with my family member when I don’t know that much about it.”
Just tell your story. That’s what you have got to do. Just tell your story. Tell how you were cast to, how you were caught, how you were reeled in. Just tell it. That’s what a witness is. The Bible says that we are to be witnesses. A witness is someone who tells the truth about what they know, what they feel, and what they see. That’s all we need to do. If you don’t know an answer to a question, that’s why we have a bookstore. Just go and ask the bookstore. Ask one of us. We are commanded to do that, regularly share.
In Mark 16:15, Jesus said, “Go,” not “Yo,” “Go,” and the word literally in the original language means “as you are going, as you are swimming, as you are doing life. “Go unto all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”
I have got a friend named John. John has more fishing gear than anybody I have ever seen in my life. This guy looks like he is straight off the pages of Bass Pro Shop Magazine or Orvis or whatever. He has everything—the sweaters, the little jackets, the raingear, the boots, the socks; and he has all the rods and reels and tackle. When I go fishing with John, he is so immersed in the tackle and stuff, getting all set up, he rarely fishes. I said, “John, you rarely fish. You have got all these cool refreshments and all this junk. Man, put it down and fish. The fish are biting.”
Don’t be like John. Fish.
True fishermen also do something else. True fishermen practice catch and release, don’t they? They practice catch and release. When I fish, I do not keep fish. I just don’t. From the time I was eleven years old until now, I have returned almost every fish I have ever caught. When I catch a bass or maybe a tarpon or a bonefish or whatever, when I bring them in, I am very careful with them. I usually use barbless hooks. I unhook them, revive them, and let them go. I release them. I always say to myself, “Boy, this is great because now that fish will swim, and he or she will get bigger and bigger, and I can catch them another time. Then I think, they will reproduce and get healthy because now they are back in their environment and all that.”
As a church, we practice catch and release. When we catch people by the grace of God, we reel them in and release them into ministry. When we release them into ministry, as they deepen their faith, they too reproduce themselves and they too grow. We have a healthy and dynamic church.
When God allows you to reel someone in, make sure you release them somewhere into ministry, the local church. Obviously, we have a pretty sweet environment. God obviously must think Fellowship Church is a great place to grow, because we have grown from 150 ten years ago to over 13,000 in attendance. That’s a God thing, a fishing thing, by His grace.
So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I am talking to Christians now. I am in your face, between you and your makeup. I can smell your cologne right now. Are you going to fish or cut bait?
Now let me stop here because most of you thought I was going to conclude the message. We have some people here who are not Christians. Many, because I know the great fishermen that we have here at Fellowship have invited people here, who don’t know Christ personally. If you don’t know the Lord personally, let me tell you how you can make that decision. Simply say, “Jesus, I want to ask you to take control of my life.” During this entire message, during this entire service, we have been casting and the bait is simply this: Jesus Christ loves you so much, he died on the cross for your sins and rose again, something you don’t deserve.
I have presented that to you right now. If you want to, it’s your choice to take the bait or not. If you take the bait, if you eat the bread of life, you are simply saying, “God, I admit to you my sinfulness. I turn from my iniquities and turn to you and receive Christ and what you did for me on that cross.” The moment you bow the knee to him, he will clean and clear up your life. He’ll forgive you for all of your sins—yesterday, today, and in the future. He will give you a power and strength. He will give you a love for fish and fishing like you have never had before, if you will just do it.
What are you going to do? Are you going to eat the fish food or not? When you look at the Bible and the church and the message of Christ, it is all about fish food.