People are not fish and we don't bait them.

photo used by permission johnnyberg on rgbstock.com

I recently read a short article on evangelism that began like this...

If you want to be a successful fisherman, you don't look for the most comfortable spot on the lake. Instead, you go to where the fish are, and you make it as easy and attractive as possible for the fish to swallow your hook.

Since we are called to be "fishers of men," I get the fishing analogy and I agree with not just looking for a place that's comfortable.  Sometimes we have to go into the dark and uncomfortable situations in order to share Christ's gospel with those who don't know him.

They lost me, however when they suggest that we make it "as easy and attractive as possible for the fish to swallow the hook." First, I don't like thinking of people as fish to be baited, then hooked and second, I'm not sure that we should make it as easy and attractive as possible for people to receive Christ.  I don't see that in the Bible..not from Jesus and not from the disciples.  They didn't water down the message just to make it attractive.

In fact, Jesus was often so forthright with the cost of following him that many people turned away and I don't read anywhere that he chased after them trying to make the gospel more palatable.

I'm not saying that we need to be rude or pushy.  We don't need to make it difficult to understand what it means to follow Christ.  But we do owe it to people to respect them enough to help them make a fully informed decision to follow Jesus.  Too many churches and Christians mislead people by telling them that once they accept Jesus as Lord, their lives will be just hunky-dory.  When trouble hits, and it always hits, new believers think that God should jump right in and fix everything for them.

He never promised that.  Truth is, Jesus said "...in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, because I have overcome the world."  (John 16:33)

He also warned people to count the cost of following him in Luke 14:25-33.


So, let's be careful to do what it says in 2 Timothy 2:15..."Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."


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What Penn Gillette (atheist) thought when someone gave him a Bible.

 What do you think avowed atheist, Penn Gillette thought about the man who gave him a Bible. Did he get angry? Tell the guy off? Laugh in his face?  Watch this video and find out...

The key was the man's sincerity, his caring attitude and his conviction that if a man is lost, the love of Christ within us should compel us to reach out with the truth.

Maybe we should care more about a man's destiny than what he might think of us if we shared our faith in a loving, non-confrontational way.

What do you think? Would you reach out to an atheist in love?

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Jesus said, "Don't follow me."

We have many accounts, in the Bible, of Jesus meeting a person and after just a short interaction with them, he invited them to follow him - to accompany him as he walked the dusty roads carrying the message of love and the Father's redemptive plan.

However, there's at least one incident where he did something quite different.

It was the story of the demon possesed man from whom Jesus had cast out many demons. (You can read the story here.)

This is what happened when it was time for Jesus to move on...

"As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed." Mark 5:18-20 (NIV)

The New Living Translation puts it like this...

"But Jesus said, “No, go home to your family, and tell them everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful he has been." Mark 5:19 (NLT)

The man begged to go with Jesus, but Jesus sent him back to his people, back to his family to tell his story.

We all have a sphere of influence - certain people with whom we have built a relationship, people who know us; family, co-workers, people in our church, etc.  These people have seen us through the ups and downs of life, but it's the down times - the trials of life that speak most clearly to them.

Why? Because they all go though rough times themselves.  They want to know that when times are hard, you can count on God. They want to know that He will give you the strength to stand strong and make it out on the other side of the trial victoriously.  So, Jesus sent the man who had been touched by God back to his family, his home town and he instructed the man to share with those who knew him best, what the Lord had done for him.

Let's remember this when God does something wonderful for us. Let's share it (in an attitude of love) with those we know. Those who seem open to it and those who don't, because they, too will soon face a challenge and your words will come back to them.

In doing that, we are actually following Jesus more than we even realize.

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(Copyright© 2012 Jan Christiansen. All rights reserved.)