The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Like A Fishing Net Series

I’ve talked to pastors about where they want to see their church in five years and they draw a great picture of what they would like to see their church accomplish, the live that are touched and a community that is impacted. And then I ask what they are doing to accomplish the purpose and they get that deer in the headlight look.

I know a man that talks passionately about the environment but the moment I ask him what he is doing to improve things the conversation stops. He has a purpose but he’s not all that useful.

Some people have no idea how to achieve their purpose have never connected the next dot, they are just content to talk about what should be without moving to the next step of what could be.

Often Robert Kennedy is quoted as saying “You see things: and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why Not?’” Actually it was his brother Ted Kennedy who remarked in the eulogy he delivered at Bobby’s funeral “Some saw things the way they were and asked 'why?” Bobby saw things the way they could be and asked 'why not?‘“

But it was actually first said by George Bernard Shaw who said almost fifty years earlier “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

But it’s not enough to dream unless you are willing to take the next steps. A purpose in life is wonderful but if you aren’t willing to do something to achieve that purpose you will just be frustrated. Again to quote the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle “The purpose of man is in action not thought.”

And we don’t know how the net was thrown; the story doesn’t tell us what technique the fisherman used. Was the net thrown underhand or overhand, was it drawn up quickly or slowly?

We are told that this would have been a familiar scene along the shores of Galilee, where fishermen cast their nets from the shores into the shallow water or from their small vessels into the deeper waters but the goal was the same in both instances, to catch fish.

Sometimes in the church we get so caught up in how things are done we miss out on why things are done. We stand back and say, “Well we’ve never cast the net from a boat before, we’ve always done it from the shore, if we start using boats it’s a hard to say where it will end up, it’s a slippery slope” Or “I don’t think it is proper to throw the net underhand, it should always be thrown overhand.” But to quote Chinese revolutionary Deng Xiaoping said “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” Let’s never get so caught up in technique at Cornerstone that we miss out on what we are supposed to be doing. And that is casting our net and being fishers of men.

Let’s make sure we not only have a purpose but that we actually do something, anything to achieve that purpose.