Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake #3
The Dream Slayer:
Jim checked the fish plant message board for his shift assignment. “Yes! I’m on the hoist today!” Grabbing his rain gear, he scrambled down the stairs to start unloading the fishing boats.
It wasn’t that Jim liked the work at the fish plant so much. It’s just that he was crazy about the boats, and the job gave him a chance to get close to them. He knew the skippers by name, and the stories they told stirred him deep. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be a fisherman!
The first boat to pull up to the hoist that morning was long and sleek, painted shiny black with flawless turquoise trim. Her name stood out on the bow like a delicate gem. She was a Satin Doll, for sure.
“Look at that beauty!” Jim usually kept his thoughts to himself, but the sight of her was just too much. “Someday, by golly, I’m going to have me a boat like that.”
His boss overheard and laughed tiredly. “Get real,” he mumbled. “In all your life you’ll never the bucks for that one. Besides, just look at yourself. Puny little body! Skinny little arms! If I were you, I’d just stick with what you’ve got going here and be satisfied.”
Tell me, do recognize that voice? If you’ve ever had a wild or unlikely dream, you probably know it all too well – the sluggish voice of the Dream Slayer. Often, he speaks out of the mouths of those closest to us. Our supervisor, co-workers, even family members and good friends. “Give it up,” he says heavily.
It’ll never be. Go back to sleep and forget it.”
So, what do you do when this stifling messenger speaks up? How should you react? Jesus had some simple advice: “Expect it,” He told His disciples, “and ignore it!”
Just because people around you aren’t wildly supportive, it’s no reason to abandon your dreams. Listen instead to the encouraging voice of God – and get going!
“Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.’” Mark 6:4
The Launch Point:
You know, the Bible is packed with stories where God used people just like Jim, to accomplish his purposes. It’s a common theme. Over and over, God uses the under dogs, the “who in the world is he/she?” kind of person when He wants to do something. Take King David in the Bible, (the David vs. Goliath kid and the 2nd king of Israel), for instance. When Samuel the prophet came out to anoint one of Jesse’s sons (Jesse was David’s father) as the future king of Israel, Jesse didn’t even parade the boy out for Samuel to examine. David was the youngest in the family. A cursory read of this text and a couple of others makes it quite clear that he was not highly regarded by the rest of his clan. He was pigeonholed by these people to be at the bottom of the pecking order and there he would have remained until he died as far as they were concerned and then God got involved. God put His plan in motion and the rest was history. Thanks to God’s doing, he became the king of Israel and the launch point of the lineage that would culminate with the birth of Jesus.
Then there’s Gideon, another unlikely hero. His story is recorded in Judges chapters 6 through 8. When his story begins, Israel was a mess. They had corporately and collectively told God to go take a hike and God apparently honored their request. If they thought that they could handle the Midianites without His help…fine, go for it. How’d that work? Yeah, about that. After seven years of Midianite oppression, the Israelites came to their senses and repented and God, being a merciful God, sent a deliver. He chose Gideon for the job. The angel of GOD came to Gideon and greeted him like this. “GOD is with you, O mighty warrior!”
It’s entirely possible that Gideon perhaps looked around the room to see if anyone else was in there with him, because God couldn’t be talking to him. When Gideon realized that God was indeed talking to him, Gideon thought God had lost his mind. He brought up the obvious. God had turned Israel over to Midian and they were on their own, getting stomped into poverty, so yes, they needed a deliver, but him!? Gideon was the runt of the litter (his words, not mine,) from the weakest clan in the tribe of Manasseh. Gideon sounds kinda like Jim from the Fish Tales story except he had zero confidence. I wouldn’t be too hard on Gideon, however. Given his circumstances, he was correct. Except, there was an X factor that was in play. That X factor had a name too. It was Yahweh, the God of Israel. Israel had repented and God reentered the story, not like He’d ever left, He had been letting Israel do things their way.
The first order of business on God’s agenda was to get Gideon’s head right so, what followed was a series of signs by God and responses of obedience by Gideon. Without going into a lot of detail, God’s character and power were revealed, Gideon’s confidence was built up and an idol was torn down. Then came the recruitment of an army. Gideon summoned men from the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali and formed a 32000 man army. It was an impressive feat, but it wasn’t what God wanted. That army was too big, and it needed to be whittled down because, with those numbers, after God performed a miracle and delivered Israel from the bondage of the Midianites, Israel would take the credit for themselves. No, there had to be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the victory was the result of God’s doing and no one else. After weeding out his army by getting rid of those who were either too afraid or not alert enough, God had exactly what He wanted. Gideon’s army consisted of 300 men and these were the men that God would use to save Gideon and deliver the armies of Midian into his hands. He then gave Gideon one last piece of assurance. When Gideon went to spy on the Midianite camp late at night, through a dream of a Midianite, God revealed to Gideon that the fate of the battle was already decided. Gideon and Israel would win.
The battle was a total smoke and mirrors act. In the dead of night, Gideon and his army surrounded the Midianite camp. Each man was armed with a torch and a clay pot. Once everyone was in place, Gideon had the few trumpeters in his company blow their trumpets, and everyone shouted as loud as they could, “for the LORD and for Gideon,” while breaking their clay pots and holding up their torches. What resulted was a lot of noise and confusion and the Midianites, who were apparently on edge already, turned on each other by mistake, and then panicked and fled from the mayhem in an unorganized fashion. In the next few days, the leaders of the Midianites were hunted down and killed and Israel was delivered.
Does this seem like an unlikely story, a story that while plausible perhaps, is predicated on just dumb luck? Perhaps. But here’s the thing. God is sovereign and the master of all things, including… dumb luck. Think about it for a minute, who do you think manufactures dumb luck? Furthermore, Gideon’s success was never predicated on Gideon’s strength anyway. Gideon’s success depended entirely on God and God’s strength; Gideon was just a major player in the story.
So, what’s the point? The point is that anytime God gives someone a vision or calling or mission, regardless of the size of that mission, God is the one who will have to make it successful. In all fairness to Gideon, his original assessment of both himself and his circumstances was spot on until God got involved. Shift over to our other example, David. Had God not picked David for his life calling that led him to become the King of Israel, David would have just been the youngest person in his father’s family, competent perhaps, but certainly not the leader of the nation.
Here’s the second point. Neither David nor Gideon had God’s vision for their lives until God got involved. They were thinking that their life was going in a whole different direction. And what turned out to be their life’s mission wasn’t their mission for their lives at all, it was God’s mission for their lives. They were just the people that God used in the process.
The application here is simple. We need to ask God what His vision for our lives is and then act on it. We have to ask, wait expectantly for an answer and then act in obedience to that answer. Or, it might be as in Gideon’s case, God won’t necessarily wait for us to ask. He will just give us the mission and expect us to act in faith and fulfill it. Either way, the question is whether or not we will obey when God calls us to do something. Show time folks. See you next week.
Here is the information for Fish Tales For Heaven's Sake
Fish Tales, For Heaven’s Sake, Copyright 1996, Mountain Ministries Publishing, ISBN 0-9653402-5-2
Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake #2
A Sheriff’s Sale Leftover:
There she sat – a sheriff’s sale leftover. We were shopping for our first boat when we found her, forgotten and discarded in the back of a Tacoma boatyard. Everything of value had been stripped: engine, radios, rigging, gear. Nothing left but a hollow shell.
To some folks this might have been a depressing sight. But for us the boat was exactly what we’d been looking for. You could see she’d been a beauty in her day – a forty-two-foot wooden trawler with good lines and a high bow. While rummaging through the cabin, we came across the original bill of sale for ninety-seven thousand dollars. What a find!
My husband noticed a small hole in the outside cabin wall and mentioned it to the seller. “Yeah, well, she’s got a little rot but she’s pretty sound overall.” We offered him six thousand and he quickly snapped it up.
A few days later, we pulled out of the Tacoma harbor with our new treasure under tow. (That’s another story altogether!) Next stop was Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle.
For the following two years, we would pour every spare dime and available minute into restoring her to what she once had been – a proud Alaskan trawler.
Devalued, discarded and discovered. Jesus used this theme over and over in His parables to let people know that God is in the business of restoration. He used word pictures about missing sheep, broken pottery and lost coins to convey the importance He attaches to a second chance.
Driven by love, God combs the boat yards of life searching for treasure that others have overlooked. He recognizes potential, He knows the original purchase price, and He is out to buy back that which was cast aside.
“What woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”
“And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I have lost!” Luke 15: 8 – 9.
The Launch Point:
“Devalued, discarded and discovered.” What did that look like in the Bible? Scripture is full of examples. Let’s look at some.
Abraham. Originally given the name Abram by his parents, he was an idolater in Ur of the Chaldees. God found him and called him. What did God see in him? We aren’t told. All we’re told is that God tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go west to a land he didn’t know. In faith, the man obeyed, and God used his lineage to usher in the Messiah 2000 years later. About that lineage though, the term lineage would imply that he had a son but for many years, like 100, he didn’t have one. And if you want to get picky, not that it would have mattered in that culture, he didn’t have a daughter either. His wife, Sarai, was barren. At age 89, like her husband who was ten years older than she, she would have fit the description, “devalued and discarded.” By age 90 however, the term, “discovered,” could be added to the mix. She gave birth to a son and the lineage that would culminate in the birth of Jesus many years later, was begun.
Let’s fast forward a couple of hundred years. The young man in question is named Joseph. He’s Abraham’s great grandson. His destiny was to become the Prime Minister of Egypt but at age 28, because he had refused to compromise and sin, he was buried in an Egyptian prison with no hope of ever getting out. God had not forgotten about him, however. In fact, he was being trained and prepared for his future and at age 30 he was miraculously released from prison and promoted to Prime Minister on the same day. For the rest of his life the only person Joseph answered to was Pharaoh. Devalued, discarded, and discovered. That’s Joseph’s story.
Moving on to the book of Judges. There’s another young man. As we pick up his story, he’s a broken man, a shell of his former self. His name is Samson. God set him apart at his birth to be a man who would deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistine oppressors. At one time he was strong. Superhuman strong but his strength was conditional on his hair never being cut. Was this a hocus, pocus, fairy tale? No. Not getting his hair cut was part of the Nazarite vow that Israelites could voluntarily make to set themselves apart for service to God. What’s different about this one however is that instead of Samson choosing God and voluntarily taking this Nazarite vow, God chose Samson at the time of his birth and, upon reading his life story, I’m not sure that Samson liked it. He consistently rebelled and his rebellion was acted out in one selfish act after another. Yes, God was able to use him to complete his mission, I suppose, but that had much more to do with the sovereignty of God than it did with the faithfulness of Samson. God just played the hand He was dealt.
(I’m speculating here but the hair was an outward symbol of the Nazarite vow. As long as the hair was uncut, the vow and the mission were still in play. It was all God’s doing and not Samson’s and no, it was not the way God normally did things. God is sovereign however so He can do what He pleases.)
Eventually, Samson let slip to a beautiful Philistine woman what the secret to his strength was, “If you cut my hair, I will become as any other man.” Shortly thereafter, Samson fell asleep in her arms and she cut it as he slept in her lap. He was awakened by a band of Philistines and, sadly, events played out just as he said they would. His strength was gone. He was captured, bound, and his eyes were gouged out. The Champion of Israel was now a prisoner of war of the Philistines, reduced to being a captured trophy by his enemies. He was broken and discarded but God wasn’t done with him yet. His hair started to grow back.
One day the Philistines threw a banquet at the temple for their god, Dagon, and apparently their entire leadership was in attendance. Among other things, they were giving praise to Dagon for delivering Samson into their hands. Then, someone got the bright idea to fetch Samson from the prison for their amusement. They brought him up for entertainment purposes, mainly to mock him.
After his performance was concluded, Samson asked the servant leading him to take him to the pillars that supported the temple so that he could support himself. The Philistine leadership, about 3000 in number, were all on the roof. And there, leaning against the pillars, Samson prayed one last time. “O Sovereign LORD, remember me. O God, please strengthen me once more, and with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” As he braced himself between the two main pillars that held the entire structure together, he prayed one last time. “Let me die with the Philistines.” He then pushed with all his might and the structure came down on everyone who was in it. According to the Scriptures, Samson took out more people in his death than he did with his life.
There are many applications here but the point I want to focus on is this. Samson was flawed and discarded but God used him anyway. Was it a perfect story? Please! I’m sure that God had a much different story planned for Samson, but, in spite of Samson’s rebellion, God was able still use him.
I have one last example and then I’ll wrap this up. It’s Peter’s story. On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter denied ever having known Jesus three times. After the resurrection however, Jesus took the initiative, found Peter and re-instated him to his position of leadership. Peter, the disgraced disciple, was transformed into Peter, the apostle who two months later preached the sermon at Pentecost and went on to be one of the leaders of the early church.
All these stories, and many others like them throughout Scripture, have this in common. God took ordinary people with checkered pasts, pasts that logic dictates should disqualify them from any kind of service, and used them anyway. Did God mess with their lives and change them? Absolutely. Repentance was always involved. Proud Samson, for example, had to be humbled so that he would acknowledge that the source of his strength was not because he was so good but because God was. Peter had to acknowledge publicly in front of the rest of the disciples that he really did love Jesus. And Joseph, that cocky 17-year-old kid, by the time he was 30, had to acknowledge that he couldn’t interpret dreams but that it was God that did it through him.
What this means for you and me is this. We all have a mission in life, something planned out by God for us to do, but many of us have made so many mistakes that logically we’re thinking that there’s no way that God can use us anymore. And we live with regrets. Know what though? God is not limited by logic. God is not limited by our limitations. When it comes to being used by God, it’s not about us. It never has been. It’s about God and His power, not ours. And, Scripture is full of stories of people who had a past that God used anyway. And not just Scripture, church history is full of these stories as well. Take John Newton, for example. He was a slave trader who repented and surrendered his life to Christ and became a key player in the abolitionist movement in Great Britain that eventually ended up abolishing the slave trade there. Repentance and surrender were two key components in these people’s life stories, but God used them, in spite of their past.
So, what will we do? Will we make ourselves available to be used by God or not? That is the question each of us has to answer. Maybe you’ve never even thought of approaching God before. It just wasn’t in the cards, or at least so you thought. God was just never a part of your life, and yet, here you are, reading this article talking about being discovered by God and being given a mission, a purpose for living. What about your past though, or your limitations? The good news is that because it’s God we’re dealing with here, that there’s hope for all of us, despite our circumstances. The ball is in our court though. He won’t decide for us. If we say yes, He will take us and transform us from the inside out. If we insist on turning Him down, He’ll sadly let us go. Choose wisely my friend. See you next week.
Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake #1
As I mentioned last week, for the next two months, I am going to feature a guest writer on this website. As some of you already know, I was kid #5 in Dan and Dorothy Roach’s household (yeah, the youngest), and I write a weekly blog but I’m not the only writer Mom and Dad raised. Kid #4 is pretty good in her own rite, in fact, as it was pointed out to me by my fellow coaches on our way to Nooksack Valley last night, she’s better than I am. She’s published a book and I haven’t. (Whatever. Who asked you anyway, Caleb? Just call the defense, dude.) Anyway, my big sister, Kathy Peterson, used to live in Sitka, Alaska where she wrote a weekly column, “Parables From the Harbor,” for the local newspaper and she later published 64 of her favorite columns in an easy to read book, Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake! The Collected Parables of an Alaskan Harbor. In the upcoming weeks I would like to feature a dozen of my personal favorites from that book. Here’s how it will work. I’ll record the story that Kathy wrote, verbatim, and then I’ll use that as a launch point for spiritual application which will be my thoughts. I will also include the publisher information and the ISBN at the end of each post if anyone were to want to purchase a copy of the book. (I don’t know if Kathy has anymore new copies in stock but there are used copies available on Amazon.) Here’s post 1 of 12.
“Just a Little Rot…..” by Kathy Peterson
Everything I know about rot I learned from our first boat. We knew when we bought her that there was a little rot in the cabin. We’d need a couple sheets of plywood and maybe some fiberglass. No problem! “Pretty sound overall,” the eager seller had said. Right…..
First day of summer vacation we showed up at the marina, ready to work. We had pop and chips and sandwiches, our kids, and a few tools. My son cranked up the radio and asked, “Where we gonna start, Dad?”
Our task for that day was to fix a small hole in the rear cabin wall. My husband probed the wall, looking for the end of the rot. I watched as he moved to the port side. His screwdriver sunk into a corner post with sickening ease. “That one’ll have to come out.” He checked the other studs. Most were in a similar condition.
Next thing I knew he was up on the roof, and he looked grim. “Let’s start up here,” he said. “It’s pretty bad.” So off came the flying bridge like an old pirate’s hat, exposing leprous-white mold on the wood underneath.
One day stretched into another, as we filled the dumpsters with rotten wood. Now it was my daughter who asked, “Hey Dad – where are we going to stop!?”
So…that’s how I learned about rot. I learned that it’s not always right out there where you can see it. And that it seems to spread from plank to plank. But mainly I learned that skippers hate it. And that they won’t start adding good wood until they’ve torn out all the bad.
The idea of a parable is to look for a heavenly meaning in an earthly story. Do you see any parables here? Can’t you just picture God showing up on a job like a new skipper? It’s a sure bet that when he gets involved in your life, the rotten stuff is going to go. At first you’ll eagerly ask, “Where shall we start?” But after He’s been at it for a while, you might wonder, “Where’s He going to stop!?”
“Create in me a clean heart, O God. And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10
The Launch Point:
There’s any number of applications that one can do with a parable but, using “Just a Little Rot…” as the launch point, I’d like to address people who are already professing followers of Jesus. If we analyze that parable, it says a lot about what Jesus will do in us if we choose to follow Him. It’s nothing unusual incidentally, nor is this anything new, it’s what we signed on for when we decided to follow Him. Let’s take a brief stroll over to Hebrews 12:1.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)
Notice how the writer of Hebrews addresses rot and what to do with it when you find it. He says to get rid of it. Duh. To label sin as rot and get rid of it is the obvious response. But did you notice the other not so obvious and yet equally important form of rot he addresses? Look at the distinction between sin and just, out of a better term for it, clutter? Re-read the verse. “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down.” Every weight is what the writer said. And then he goes on to emphasize, “especially the sin that so easily trips us up.” Notice, however, that he didn’t say only the sin, rather, he said especially the sin. What that means is this. Sin isn’t the only thing that could possibly qualify as rot. Rot could possibly be some okay stuff, even some good stuff as well. The problem with it is, however, it can slow us down. It can prevent us from becoming what God wants us to be.
Some forms of this rot can easily morph into sin. For example, social media can be a form of rot. Is anything wrong with it? Not really. It’s a neutral thing that can be used for either good or evil. I have some legitimate friends today that I have met through social media. I have family members that live far away and social media allows us to connect. I can see what my son is doing in his business through what he posts on social media. That’s a good thing. However, if I spend so much time on social media that it takes away from time I need to be spending on work projects for my employer, or if it becomes such a time sucker that I don’t nurture the relationships that are right in front of me, like the relationship that I should have with my wife, then it becomes, well…rot.
Or maybe I spend too much time or money on a hobby, and it takes away from the time and money that should be spent on more important things. And, it keeps going to the point that the truly important things suffer. Uh oh, that hobby is no longer a hobby, it’s probably an idol and that’s rot.
On the Roach Place, my mom used to raise a vegetable garden and as a kid, it was my job to weed that garden. I remember once asking Mom what a weed was. Her definition was simple. “Any plant that is growing where it shouldn’t be, is a weed.” Therefore, if I was pulling weeds in the section of the garden designated for beets and a renegade corn plant was growing there, that corn plant was a weed and it had to go. It’s the same thing in our relationship with God and our call to obedience. Anything that’s in the way of us doing something that God has called us to do, for us, can be designated as rot and it must go.
Or here’s another example. This points to something more benign. Having coached football for over thirty years, I’ve seen many players in those years, and some have experienced success at the D-1 university level. Let me tell you about one of the really good ones. I first coached Mike when he was in junior high and he was a good center for me. He was also a good center for the high school coach. He started all four years on the offensive line and, upon graduation, walked on at Washington State University. How good was he? He was good enough his senior year at WSU to be the starting center, playing in the Rose Bowl. One of the keys to Mike’s success in the early years, especially his junior high and high school years to be precise, was his size. He was a big kid, average height but stocky with kind of a streak of nasty thrown in for good measure. He was the perfect kind of kid to anchor any high school line.
When he went to WSU however, by those standards, he wasn’t big anymore and everybody had a streak of nasty or they wouldn’t have been there. He was short by NCAA standards and light. He couldn’t do anything about his height, but he had to fix the weight problem. He had to pack on the pounds in order to compete, and it had to be the right kind of pounds. It couldn’t be fat, it had to be muscle. He did it though. He put in the work, took care of his body and finished his college career as a two-year starter and, as I said, played his last college game in the Rose Bowl. If you look at a picture of him that was taken during that time, he was huge.
I ran into Mike last week. I had to look twice before I said hello to him though. Frankly, I wouldn’t have recognized him had he not been with his wife who works where I do. He looked like he was in excellent shape but here was what threw me. He’s 85 pounds lighter than he was in college. He’s married, has four kids and he’s no longer playing football. Simply stated, he’s no longer doing what he was doing in college and he didn’t need the weight anymore, so he dropped it.
Was all that weight a bad thing? Not if you’re the starting center for Wazzu. However, if you’re a dad with four boys, all under the age of 10, that is a whole different matter. In fact, you could easily argue that carrying that weight into middle age could be – strike that – probably would be, detrimental to one’s health. In a word, it would be…. rot.
So, what’s the point? Life changes sometimes, and so must we. Occupations change. Missions and assignments change. The only constant in life is that life is constantly changing. Therefore, we, at times, must change with it, adapt, especially if God prompts us to do so. Especially if He’s the one driving the change, orchestrating events in our life to fit His plans. What that means for us is, should we find ourselves in this spot, that we must shed excess baggage at times. It means, tearing out the rot, pulling out the corn plants growing up amongst the beets. And what if we can’t do that? Sometimes in His mercy, if we can’t or won’t tear out the rot, God will do it for us. (Sometimes we won’t even know that a change is necessary until it hit hits us in the face. When that happens, it may just be a part of life and not our fault or a result of any sin. Life happens and we just have to play the hand we’re dealt.) It may look like a pink slip. It may look like an injury, and accident or an illness. It may take any number of forms, but you can be sure of this, when God tears out the rot, it’s a good thing. You see, there’s more to the story of The Rusty, (that’s the name of the boat that the rot was removed from) than what’s being told today. The Rusty was the boat that provided my sister and her family with probably fifteen years’ worth of adventures. The rot was replaced and The Rusty became seaworthy. My friend, God didn’t bring you out here to kill you. He’s got an adventure planned for you, a mission for you and a plan to maximize you but, the rot must go first.
So, how about it? Will you take Him up on His offer? Yes, you will be pruned but you know what? If they had not taken all the rot out of The Rusty, that boat would never have left the boat yard. It would have been good for only salvage and scrap metal and it was destined for a whole lot more than that. And you know what else? So are you. Yeah, so are you. That voice you keep hearing. You know that one that never seems to go away. The one that keeps saying that you were made for so much more. That’s not last night’s dinner, that’s Jesus. He’s calling you and He’s waiting for you to respond. He’s also not likely to go away unless you absolutely turn Him down. So, do yourself a favor. Embrace your destiny and say yes to Him. See you next week.
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. Matthew 9: 9. (ESV)
Here is the information for Fish Tales For Heaven's Sake
Fish Tales, For Heaven’s Sake, Copyright 1996, Mountain Ministries Publishing, ISBN 0-9653402-5-2
copyright 2020 by Sam Roach
The Dream Slayer:
Jim checked the fish plant message board for his shift assignment. “Yes! I’m on the hoist today!” Grabbing his rain gear, he scrambled down the stairs to start unloading the fishing boats.
It wasn’t that Jim liked the work at the fish plant so much. It’s just that he was crazy about the boats, and the job gave him a chance to get close to them. He knew the skippers by name, and the stories they told stirred him deep. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be a fisherman!
The first boat to pull up to the hoist that morning was long and sleek, painted shiny black with flawless turquoise trim. Her name stood out on the bow like a delicate gem. She was a Satin Doll, for sure.
“Look at that beauty!” Jim usually kept his thoughts to himself, but the sight of her was just too much. “Someday, by golly, I’m going to have me a boat like that.”
His boss overheard and laughed tiredly. “Get real,” he mumbled. “In all your life you’ll never the bucks for that one. Besides, just look at yourself. Puny little body! Skinny little arms! If I were you, I’d just stick with what you’ve got going here and be satisfied.”
Tell me, do recognize that voice? If you’ve ever had a wild or unlikely dream, you probably know it all too well – the sluggish voice of the Dream Slayer. Often, he speaks out of the mouths of those closest to us. Our supervisor, co-workers, even family members and good friends. “Give it up,” he says heavily.
It’ll never be. Go back to sleep and forget it.”
So, what do you do when this stifling messenger speaks up? How should you react? Jesus had some simple advice: “Expect it,” He told His disciples, “and ignore it!”
Just because people around you aren’t wildly supportive, it’s no reason to abandon your dreams. Listen instead to the encouraging voice of God – and get going!
“Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.’” Mark 6:4
The Launch Point:
You know, the Bible is packed with stories where God used people just like Jim, to accomplish his purposes. It’s a common theme. Over and over, God uses the under dogs, the “who in the world is he/she?” kind of person when He wants to do something. Take King David in the Bible, (the David vs. Goliath kid and the 2nd king of Israel), for instance. When Samuel the prophet came out to anoint one of Jesse’s sons (Jesse was David’s father) as the future king of Israel, Jesse didn’t even parade the boy out for Samuel to examine. David was the youngest in the family. A cursory read of this text and a couple of others makes it quite clear that he was not highly regarded by the rest of his clan. He was pigeonholed by these people to be at the bottom of the pecking order and there he would have remained until he died as far as they were concerned and then God got involved. God put His plan in motion and the rest was history. Thanks to God’s doing, he became the king of Israel and the launch point of the lineage that would culminate with the birth of Jesus.
Then there’s Gideon, another unlikely hero. His story is recorded in Judges chapters 6 through 8. When his story begins, Israel was a mess. They had corporately and collectively told God to go take a hike and God apparently honored their request. If they thought that they could handle the Midianites without His help…fine, go for it. How’d that work? Yeah, about that. After seven years of Midianite oppression, the Israelites came to their senses and repented and God, being a merciful God, sent a deliver. He chose Gideon for the job. The angel of GOD came to Gideon and greeted him like this. “GOD is with you, O mighty warrior!”
It’s entirely possible that Gideon perhaps looked around the room to see if anyone else was in there with him, because God couldn’t be talking to him. When Gideon realized that God was indeed talking to him, Gideon thought God had lost his mind. He brought up the obvious. God had turned Israel over to Midian and they were on their own, getting stomped into poverty, so yes, they needed a deliver, but him!? Gideon was the runt of the litter (his words, not mine,) from the weakest clan in the tribe of Manasseh. Gideon sounds kinda like Jim from the Fish Tales story except he had zero confidence. I wouldn’t be too hard on Gideon, however. Given his circumstances, he was correct. Except, there was an X factor that was in play. That X factor had a name too. It was Yahweh, the God of Israel. Israel had repented and God reentered the story, not like He’d ever left, He had been letting Israel do things their way.
The first order of business on God’s agenda was to get Gideon’s head right so, what followed was a series of signs by God and responses of obedience by Gideon. Without going into a lot of detail, God’s character and power were revealed, Gideon’s confidence was built up and an idol was torn down. Then came the recruitment of an army. Gideon summoned men from the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali and formed a 32000 man army. It was an impressive feat, but it wasn’t what God wanted. That army was too big, and it needed to be whittled down because, with those numbers, after God performed a miracle and delivered Israel from the bondage of the Midianites, Israel would take the credit for themselves. No, there had to be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the victory was the result of God’s doing and no one else. After weeding out his army by getting rid of those who were either too afraid or not alert enough, God had exactly what He wanted. Gideon’s army consisted of 300 men and these were the men that God would use to save Gideon and deliver the armies of Midian into his hands. He then gave Gideon one last piece of assurance. When Gideon went to spy on the Midianite camp late at night, through a dream of a Midianite, God revealed to Gideon that the fate of the battle was already decided. Gideon and Israel would win.
The battle was a total smoke and mirrors act. In the dead of night, Gideon and his army surrounded the Midianite camp. Each man was armed with a torch and a clay pot. Once everyone was in place, Gideon had the few trumpeters in his company blow their trumpets, and everyone shouted as loud as they could, “for the LORD and for Gideon,” while breaking their clay pots and holding up their torches. What resulted was a lot of noise and confusion and the Midianites, who were apparently on edge already, turned on each other by mistake, and then panicked and fled from the mayhem in an unorganized fashion. In the next few days, the leaders of the Midianites were hunted down and killed and Israel was delivered.
Does this seem like an unlikely story, a story that while plausible perhaps, is predicated on just dumb luck? Perhaps. But here’s the thing. God is sovereign and the master of all things, including… dumb luck. Think about it for a minute, who do you think manufactures dumb luck? Furthermore, Gideon’s success was never predicated on Gideon’s strength anyway. Gideon’s success depended entirely on God and God’s strength; Gideon was just a major player in the story.
So, what’s the point? The point is that anytime God gives someone a vision or calling or mission, regardless of the size of that mission, God is the one who will have to make it successful. In all fairness to Gideon, his original assessment of both himself and his circumstances was spot on until God got involved. Shift over to our other example, David. Had God not picked David for his life calling that led him to become the King of Israel, David would have just been the youngest person in his father’s family, competent perhaps, but certainly not the leader of the nation.
Here’s the second point. Neither David nor Gideon had God’s vision for their lives until God got involved. They were thinking that their life was going in a whole different direction. And what turned out to be their life’s mission wasn’t their mission for their lives at all, it was God’s mission for their lives. They were just the people that God used in the process.
The application here is simple. We need to ask God what His vision for our lives is and then act on it. We have to ask, wait expectantly for an answer and then act in obedience to that answer. Or, it might be as in Gideon’s case, God won’t necessarily wait for us to ask. He will just give us the mission and expect us to act in faith and fulfill it. Either way, the question is whether or not we will obey when God calls us to do something. Show time folks. See you next week.
Here is the information for Fish Tales For Heaven's Sake
Fish Tales, For Heaven’s Sake, Copyright 1996, Mountain Ministries Publishing, ISBN 0-9653402-5-2
Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake #2
A Sheriff’s Sale Leftover:
There she sat – a sheriff’s sale leftover. We were shopping for our first boat when we found her, forgotten and discarded in the back of a Tacoma boatyard. Everything of value had been stripped: engine, radios, rigging, gear. Nothing left but a hollow shell.
To some folks this might have been a depressing sight. But for us the boat was exactly what we’d been looking for. You could see she’d been a beauty in her day – a forty-two-foot wooden trawler with good lines and a high bow. While rummaging through the cabin, we came across the original bill of sale for ninety-seven thousand dollars. What a find!
My husband noticed a small hole in the outside cabin wall and mentioned it to the seller. “Yeah, well, she’s got a little rot but she’s pretty sound overall.” We offered him six thousand and he quickly snapped it up.
A few days later, we pulled out of the Tacoma harbor with our new treasure under tow. (That’s another story altogether!) Next stop was Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle.
For the following two years, we would pour every spare dime and available minute into restoring her to what she once had been – a proud Alaskan trawler.
Devalued, discarded and discovered. Jesus used this theme over and over in His parables to let people know that God is in the business of restoration. He used word pictures about missing sheep, broken pottery and lost coins to convey the importance He attaches to a second chance.
Driven by love, God combs the boat yards of life searching for treasure that others have overlooked. He recognizes potential, He knows the original purchase price, and He is out to buy back that which was cast aside.
“What woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”
“And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I have lost!” Luke 15: 8 – 9.
The Launch Point:
“Devalued, discarded and discovered.” What did that look like in the Bible? Scripture is full of examples. Let’s look at some.
Abraham. Originally given the name Abram by his parents, he was an idolater in Ur of the Chaldees. God found him and called him. What did God see in him? We aren’t told. All we’re told is that God tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go west to a land he didn’t know. In faith, the man obeyed, and God used his lineage to usher in the Messiah 2000 years later. About that lineage though, the term lineage would imply that he had a son but for many years, like 100, he didn’t have one. And if you want to get picky, not that it would have mattered in that culture, he didn’t have a daughter either. His wife, Sarai, was barren. At age 89, like her husband who was ten years older than she, she would have fit the description, “devalued and discarded.” By age 90 however, the term, “discovered,” could be added to the mix. She gave birth to a son and the lineage that would culminate in the birth of Jesus many years later, was begun.
Let’s fast forward a couple of hundred years. The young man in question is named Joseph. He’s Abraham’s great grandson. His destiny was to become the Prime Minister of Egypt but at age 28, because he had refused to compromise and sin, he was buried in an Egyptian prison with no hope of ever getting out. God had not forgotten about him, however. In fact, he was being trained and prepared for his future and at age 30 he was miraculously released from prison and promoted to Prime Minister on the same day. For the rest of his life the only person Joseph answered to was Pharaoh. Devalued, discarded, and discovered. That’s Joseph’s story.
Moving on to the book of Judges. There’s another young man. As we pick up his story, he’s a broken man, a shell of his former self. His name is Samson. God set him apart at his birth to be a man who would deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistine oppressors. At one time he was strong. Superhuman strong but his strength was conditional on his hair never being cut. Was this a hocus, pocus, fairy tale? No. Not getting his hair cut was part of the Nazarite vow that Israelites could voluntarily make to set themselves apart for service to God. What’s different about this one however is that instead of Samson choosing God and voluntarily taking this Nazarite vow, God chose Samson at the time of his birth and, upon reading his life story, I’m not sure that Samson liked it. He consistently rebelled and his rebellion was acted out in one selfish act after another. Yes, God was able to use him to complete his mission, I suppose, but that had much more to do with the sovereignty of God than it did with the faithfulness of Samson. God just played the hand He was dealt.
(I’m speculating here but the hair was an outward symbol of the Nazarite vow. As long as the hair was uncut, the vow and the mission were still in play. It was all God’s doing and not Samson’s and no, it was not the way God normally did things. God is sovereign however so He can do what He pleases.)
Eventually, Samson let slip to a beautiful Philistine woman what the secret to his strength was, “If you cut my hair, I will become as any other man.” Shortly thereafter, Samson fell asleep in her arms and she cut it as he slept in her lap. He was awakened by a band of Philistines and, sadly, events played out just as he said they would. His strength was gone. He was captured, bound, and his eyes were gouged out. The Champion of Israel was now a prisoner of war of the Philistines, reduced to being a captured trophy by his enemies. He was broken and discarded but God wasn’t done with him yet. His hair started to grow back.
One day the Philistines threw a banquet at the temple for their god, Dagon, and apparently their entire leadership was in attendance. Among other things, they were giving praise to Dagon for delivering Samson into their hands. Then, someone got the bright idea to fetch Samson from the prison for their amusement. They brought him up for entertainment purposes, mainly to mock him.
After his performance was concluded, Samson asked the servant leading him to take him to the pillars that supported the temple so that he could support himself. The Philistine leadership, about 3000 in number, were all on the roof. And there, leaning against the pillars, Samson prayed one last time. “O Sovereign LORD, remember me. O God, please strengthen me once more, and with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” As he braced himself between the two main pillars that held the entire structure together, he prayed one last time. “Let me die with the Philistines.” He then pushed with all his might and the structure came down on everyone who was in it. According to the Scriptures, Samson took out more people in his death than he did with his life.
There are many applications here but the point I want to focus on is this. Samson was flawed and discarded but God used him anyway. Was it a perfect story? Please! I’m sure that God had a much different story planned for Samson, but, in spite of Samson’s rebellion, God was able still use him.
I have one last example and then I’ll wrap this up. It’s Peter’s story. On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter denied ever having known Jesus three times. After the resurrection however, Jesus took the initiative, found Peter and re-instated him to his position of leadership. Peter, the disgraced disciple, was transformed into Peter, the apostle who two months later preached the sermon at Pentecost and went on to be one of the leaders of the early church.
All these stories, and many others like them throughout Scripture, have this in common. God took ordinary people with checkered pasts, pasts that logic dictates should disqualify them from any kind of service, and used them anyway. Did God mess with their lives and change them? Absolutely. Repentance was always involved. Proud Samson, for example, had to be humbled so that he would acknowledge that the source of his strength was not because he was so good but because God was. Peter had to acknowledge publicly in front of the rest of the disciples that he really did love Jesus. And Joseph, that cocky 17-year-old kid, by the time he was 30, had to acknowledge that he couldn’t interpret dreams but that it was God that did it through him.
What this means for you and me is this. We all have a mission in life, something planned out by God for us to do, but many of us have made so many mistakes that logically we’re thinking that there’s no way that God can use us anymore. And we live with regrets. Know what though? God is not limited by logic. God is not limited by our limitations. When it comes to being used by God, it’s not about us. It never has been. It’s about God and His power, not ours. And, Scripture is full of stories of people who had a past that God used anyway. And not just Scripture, church history is full of these stories as well. Take John Newton, for example. He was a slave trader who repented and surrendered his life to Christ and became a key player in the abolitionist movement in Great Britain that eventually ended up abolishing the slave trade there. Repentance and surrender were two key components in these people’s life stories, but God used them, in spite of their past.
So, what will we do? Will we make ourselves available to be used by God or not? That is the question each of us has to answer. Maybe you’ve never even thought of approaching God before. It just wasn’t in the cards, or at least so you thought. God was just never a part of your life, and yet, here you are, reading this article talking about being discovered by God and being given a mission, a purpose for living. What about your past though, or your limitations? The good news is that because it’s God we’re dealing with here, that there’s hope for all of us, despite our circumstances. The ball is in our court though. He won’t decide for us. If we say yes, He will take us and transform us from the inside out. If we insist on turning Him down, He’ll sadly let us go. Choose wisely my friend. See you next week.
Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake #1
As I mentioned last week, for the next two months, I am going to feature a guest writer on this website. As some of you already know, I was kid #5 in Dan and Dorothy Roach’s household (yeah, the youngest), and I write a weekly blog but I’m not the only writer Mom and Dad raised. Kid #4 is pretty good in her own rite, in fact, as it was pointed out to me by my fellow coaches on our way to Nooksack Valley last night, she’s better than I am. She’s published a book and I haven’t. (Whatever. Who asked you anyway, Caleb? Just call the defense, dude.) Anyway, my big sister, Kathy Peterson, used to live in Sitka, Alaska where she wrote a weekly column, “Parables From the Harbor,” for the local newspaper and she later published 64 of her favorite columns in an easy to read book, Fish Tales for Heaven’s Sake! The Collected Parables of an Alaskan Harbor. In the upcoming weeks I would like to feature a dozen of my personal favorites from that book. Here’s how it will work. I’ll record the story that Kathy wrote, verbatim, and then I’ll use that as a launch point for spiritual application which will be my thoughts. I will also include the publisher information and the ISBN at the end of each post if anyone were to want to purchase a copy of the book. (I don’t know if Kathy has anymore new copies in stock but there are used copies available on Amazon.) Here’s post 1 of 12.
“Just a Little Rot…..” by Kathy Peterson
Everything I know about rot I learned from our first boat. We knew when we bought her that there was a little rot in the cabin. We’d need a couple sheets of plywood and maybe some fiberglass. No problem! “Pretty sound overall,” the eager seller had said. Right…..
First day of summer vacation we showed up at the marina, ready to work. We had pop and chips and sandwiches, our kids, and a few tools. My son cranked up the radio and asked, “Where we gonna start, Dad?”
Our task for that day was to fix a small hole in the rear cabin wall. My husband probed the wall, looking for the end of the rot. I watched as he moved to the port side. His screwdriver sunk into a corner post with sickening ease. “That one’ll have to come out.” He checked the other studs. Most were in a similar condition.
Next thing I knew he was up on the roof, and he looked grim. “Let’s start up here,” he said. “It’s pretty bad.” So off came the flying bridge like an old pirate’s hat, exposing leprous-white mold on the wood underneath.
One day stretched into another, as we filled the dumpsters with rotten wood. Now it was my daughter who asked, “Hey Dad – where are we going to stop!?”
So…that’s how I learned about rot. I learned that it’s not always right out there where you can see it. And that it seems to spread from plank to plank. But mainly I learned that skippers hate it. And that they won’t start adding good wood until they’ve torn out all the bad.
The idea of a parable is to look for a heavenly meaning in an earthly story. Do you see any parables here? Can’t you just picture God showing up on a job like a new skipper? It’s a sure bet that when he gets involved in your life, the rotten stuff is going to go. At first you’ll eagerly ask, “Where shall we start?” But after He’s been at it for a while, you might wonder, “Where’s He going to stop!?”
“Create in me a clean heart, O God. And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10
The Launch Point:
There’s any number of applications that one can do with a parable but, using “Just a Little Rot…” as the launch point, I’d like to address people who are already professing followers of Jesus. If we analyze that parable, it says a lot about what Jesus will do in us if we choose to follow Him. It’s nothing unusual incidentally, nor is this anything new, it’s what we signed on for when we decided to follow Him. Let’s take a brief stroll over to Hebrews 12:1.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Hebrews 12:1 (NLT)
Notice how the writer of Hebrews addresses rot and what to do with it when you find it. He says to get rid of it. Duh. To label sin as rot and get rid of it is the obvious response. But did you notice the other not so obvious and yet equally important form of rot he addresses? Look at the distinction between sin and just, out of a better term for it, clutter? Re-read the verse. “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down.” Every weight is what the writer said. And then he goes on to emphasize, “especially the sin that so easily trips us up.” Notice, however, that he didn’t say only the sin, rather, he said especially the sin. What that means is this. Sin isn’t the only thing that could possibly qualify as rot. Rot could possibly be some okay stuff, even some good stuff as well. The problem with it is, however, it can slow us down. It can prevent us from becoming what God wants us to be.
Some forms of this rot can easily morph into sin. For example, social media can be a form of rot. Is anything wrong with it? Not really. It’s a neutral thing that can be used for either good or evil. I have some legitimate friends today that I have met through social media. I have family members that live far away and social media allows us to connect. I can see what my son is doing in his business through what he posts on social media. That’s a good thing. However, if I spend so much time on social media that it takes away from time I need to be spending on work projects for my employer, or if it becomes such a time sucker that I don’t nurture the relationships that are right in front of me, like the relationship that I should have with my wife, then it becomes, well…rot.
Or maybe I spend too much time or money on a hobby, and it takes away from the time and money that should be spent on more important things. And, it keeps going to the point that the truly important things suffer. Uh oh, that hobby is no longer a hobby, it’s probably an idol and that’s rot.
On the Roach Place, my mom used to raise a vegetable garden and as a kid, it was my job to weed that garden. I remember once asking Mom what a weed was. Her definition was simple. “Any plant that is growing where it shouldn’t be, is a weed.” Therefore, if I was pulling weeds in the section of the garden designated for beets and a renegade corn plant was growing there, that corn plant was a weed and it had to go. It’s the same thing in our relationship with God and our call to obedience. Anything that’s in the way of us doing something that God has called us to do, for us, can be designated as rot and it must go.
Or here’s another example. This points to something more benign. Having coached football for over thirty years, I’ve seen many players in those years, and some have experienced success at the D-1 university level. Let me tell you about one of the really good ones. I first coached Mike when he was in junior high and he was a good center for me. He was also a good center for the high school coach. He started all four years on the offensive line and, upon graduation, walked on at Washington State University. How good was he? He was good enough his senior year at WSU to be the starting center, playing in the Rose Bowl. One of the keys to Mike’s success in the early years, especially his junior high and high school years to be precise, was his size. He was a big kid, average height but stocky with kind of a streak of nasty thrown in for good measure. He was the perfect kind of kid to anchor any high school line.
When he went to WSU however, by those standards, he wasn’t big anymore and everybody had a streak of nasty or they wouldn’t have been there. He was short by NCAA standards and light. He couldn’t do anything about his height, but he had to fix the weight problem. He had to pack on the pounds in order to compete, and it had to be the right kind of pounds. It couldn’t be fat, it had to be muscle. He did it though. He put in the work, took care of his body and finished his college career as a two-year starter and, as I said, played his last college game in the Rose Bowl. If you look at a picture of him that was taken during that time, he was huge.
I ran into Mike last week. I had to look twice before I said hello to him though. Frankly, I wouldn’t have recognized him had he not been with his wife who works where I do. He looked like he was in excellent shape but here was what threw me. He’s 85 pounds lighter than he was in college. He’s married, has four kids and he’s no longer playing football. Simply stated, he’s no longer doing what he was doing in college and he didn’t need the weight anymore, so he dropped it.
Was all that weight a bad thing? Not if you’re the starting center for Wazzu. However, if you’re a dad with four boys, all under the age of 10, that is a whole different matter. In fact, you could easily argue that carrying that weight into middle age could be – strike that – probably would be, detrimental to one’s health. In a word, it would be…. rot.
So, what’s the point? Life changes sometimes, and so must we. Occupations change. Missions and assignments change. The only constant in life is that life is constantly changing. Therefore, we, at times, must change with it, adapt, especially if God prompts us to do so. Especially if He’s the one driving the change, orchestrating events in our life to fit His plans. What that means for us is, should we find ourselves in this spot, that we must shed excess baggage at times. It means, tearing out the rot, pulling out the corn plants growing up amongst the beets. And what if we can’t do that? Sometimes in His mercy, if we can’t or won’t tear out the rot, God will do it for us. (Sometimes we won’t even know that a change is necessary until it hit hits us in the face. When that happens, it may just be a part of life and not our fault or a result of any sin. Life happens and we just have to play the hand we’re dealt.) It may look like a pink slip. It may look like an injury, and accident or an illness. It may take any number of forms, but you can be sure of this, when God tears out the rot, it’s a good thing. You see, there’s more to the story of The Rusty, (that’s the name of the boat that the rot was removed from) than what’s being told today. The Rusty was the boat that provided my sister and her family with probably fifteen years’ worth of adventures. The rot was replaced and The Rusty became seaworthy. My friend, God didn’t bring you out here to kill you. He’s got an adventure planned for you, a mission for you and a plan to maximize you but, the rot must go first.
So, how about it? Will you take Him up on His offer? Yes, you will be pruned but you know what? If they had not taken all the rot out of The Rusty, that boat would never have left the boat yard. It would have been good for only salvage and scrap metal and it was destined for a whole lot more than that. And you know what else? So are you. Yeah, so are you. That voice you keep hearing. You know that one that never seems to go away. The one that keeps saying that you were made for so much more. That’s not last night’s dinner, that’s Jesus. He’s calling you and He’s waiting for you to respond. He’s also not likely to go away unless you absolutely turn Him down. So, do yourself a favor. Embrace your destiny and say yes to Him. See you next week.
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. Matthew 9: 9. (ESV)
Here is the information for Fish Tales For Heaven's Sake
Fish Tales, For Heaven’s Sake, Copyright 1996, Mountain Ministries Publishing, ISBN 0-9653402-5-2
copyright 2020 by Sam Roach