Dear Family and Friends,

Many of us are familiar with the saying –

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

It’s a great saying except for one problem. The author failed to consider that not everyone is capable of learning how to fish. I would starve if my life depended on it.

For instance, I once got a bit adventuresome (young and dumb) and went well beyond the reefs off Kahala Beach to dive for fish. I was floating along looking for anything to spear, when all of a sudden I started seeing black spots. There were too many spots to count and they kept appearing and disappearing, only to reappear again.

I surfaced to rinse my goggles but that didn’t help. I kept seeing black spots.

It wasn’t until I decided to dive deep that I learned what was going on. Beneath me was a huge school of stingrays. There were dozens of them – everywhere! I didn’t stick around long enough to ask them their name but I think they were spotted eagle rays.

Rather harmless but who cares. By this time, I was about ready to chum the water.

Today, we’ll spend our time learning how to enhance our fishing skills and dive deeper so we can feed ourselves.

I’m not talking about fish to consume. The food I’m referring to is the kind that satisfies the minimum daily requirement for our souls.

Yes, you read that right. We really should spiritually nourish ourselves on a daily basis.

I’ve been reading, studying, seeking, pondering and compiling my thoughts on what it takes to make progress in our faith walk – to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). I’m not done but I’ll share a little of what I’m thinking.

When it comes to the subject of self discipleship, we have a multitude of resources available to us – the Bible, books explaining the Bible, self-study programs, etc. Then there are the activities encouraged by pastors such as daily devotions, attending church, small groups, and classes, etc.

All these resources and activities are designed to help us progress toward our goal – to be more like Christ. 

But I wonder how many of us have Bibles and inspirational books lying around the house untouched? Or a growing backlog of online videos we still intend to watch one day?

The problem is not the lack of resources. What is standing in the way of our faith walk is actually ourselves. What is holding us back is our will, or lack thereof, to use these resources. 

It’s our will that dictates everything we do, or choose not to… 

The Gospels tell of the night Jesus and His disciples were in the Garden. They had just finished a big meal and it was now late and cold. But this was the same hour Jesus needed His friends the most. He pleaded with them to stay up with Him. Yet they slept.

Then our Jesus shows us how to best react in touchy situations. Rather than scolding them, Jesus used the moment to warn them of the temptations of the world.

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41 NIV

The plight of the disciples in Gethsemane is one we all experience. It is too easy to be distracted from doing what our spirit wants.

Our spirit wants to read our Bibles and watch informative videos. But our flesh is weak, is it not?

Our flesh screams, ‘I want to do something else!’ It drowns out the desires of our spirits. The evil one knows our weak spots. He knows how easily we rationalize and put off til tomorrow what we should do today.

Even though our spirit is willing to do whatever God asks, our flesh often times convinces us, our will, to hold back.

Jesus wants us to watch and to pray because we are the battleground of a spiritual war for our souls. Jesus wants us to be more and more like Him. The enemy wants us to unwittingly participate in our own destruction.

As such we must watch for the enemy’s attacks. It’s called temptations. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ we get tempted, it’s when.

Jesus then wants us to pray – asking for help in overcoming the temptations of the flesh so that our spirits can be freed to follow Jesus.

Let’s do this, especially on a daily basis. With Jesus on our side, we can win this battle. And fish to feed ourselves. 

Let’s also find the will to go deeper in learning about Jesus. We tend to spend most of our time studying what Jesus commanded and taught.

But have we considered studying how He treated others, how He reacted to challenges, how He sometimes challenged others or responded to questions with a question?

Jesus taught many lessons on how to love others – through His actions and reactions.

But to find these lessons we have to go deeper into the scriptures and look for them, inserting ourselves into the moment, feeling the emotions of each person there, and then comparing what we would have done and said to those of Jesus.

The results may be surprising. The lessons life changing. We may very well find that lessons like these are just as important as those learned from the words Jesus spoke.

My friends, let’s go fishing with Jesus this week. Let’s watch, pray and go deep daily. Your soul will thank you.

In love always,