Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. – John 21:5-6
As a young man, I went up to Canada for a camping trip with a family who had a cabin on Snow Lake. My friend and I were able to use a little boat to do some fishing. He had a hook and a line, so I asked him what we were going to use for the bait. He went into the kitchen and took a little hunk of cheese and began to slice it into tiny cubes. He said we were going to use the cheese for bait!
Having grown up by the ocean, I had plenty of experience fishing, and I had never used cheese in all my life to catch a fish. I looked at him and said, “How in the world are we going to use cheese to catch fish? Fish don’t even know what a cow is!” But he was convinced it would work, so I just shook my head and said, “Okay.”
Out on the lake, my friend put his cheese on the end of the hook. I stood there watching, not about to take part in something unsuccessful. He dropped it in the water, and it did not take more than a minute or so before the line started to tug. I thought it must have been a turtle or something, because no fish would eat cheese! But then he started pulling it in, and there was a nice big trout. My jaw just about dropped. I thought it must have been luck until he put his line out with another piece of cheese, and sure enough, in a minute or two he had another trout. By the end of the day he had several. I had been sure that it would never work, but it was more successful than some of my attempts with what I considered good bait.
God has called us to be fishers of men. He wants us to go out there and evangelize—to preach the Gospel to every creature. It is our calling and our privilege. But is it possible that sometimes we think we know what will and will not win souls for God before we give it a chance? This is the most important catch we will ever find, and we need to do everything we can to reach the lost. Maybe there is something we need to try that we have never tried before. Maybe there are people we have never talked to that we should talk to.
How is our catch for the Lord so far? Do we have any meat? If our efforts have not been bringing results, perhaps we need to ask Jesus what to do differently. His instructions may not always make sense to us, but we need to take a chance sometimes and just do what He says anyway. We might be surprised at the results!