Fishing for Suffering

My friend sent me this note and I was compelled to refelct on the outcome that this topic might possess.  1 Peter 4:19 challenges, "Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing."

From a devotion exert written by Oswald Chambers in his book Utmost for His Highest, Chambers challenges belevers to consider their perspective of what, to God, is useful and not useful.  In reference to useful suffering, to choose to suffer means that:

"... there is something wrong; to choose God's Will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God's will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. No saint dare interfere with the discipline of suffering in another saint.

The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God. The people who do us good are never those who sympathize with us, they always hinder, because sympathy enervates. No one understands a saint but the saint who is nearest to the Saviour. If we accept the sympathy of a saint, the reflex feeling is - Well, God is dealing hardly with me. That is why Jesus said self-pity was of the devil (see  Matthew 16:23). Be merciful to God's reputation. It is easy to blacken God's character because God never answers back, He never vindicates Himself. Beware of the thought that Jesus needed sympathy in His earthly life; He refused sympathy from man because He knew far too wisely that no one on earth understood what He was after. He took sympathy from His Father only, and from the angels in heaven. (Cf. Luke 15:10.)

Notice God's unutterable waste of saints, according to the judgment of the world. God plants His saints in the most useless places. We say - God intends me to be here because I am so useful. Jesus never estimated His life along the line of the greatest use. God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is."

What about preaching?  What would that involve?  How about speaking, when Paul went to Antioch in Acts, that would be preaching.  The outcome of this focus is that the things we think about we speak about.  Their heart was ready and willing to speak about what was of interest to them and meaningful to them.  Good news is what we are compelled to tell!  

I think of fishing in respect to suffering and speaking.  We have new neighbors down the street and I have not met them, yet.  I can't wait to go and speak to them, to meet them, to share the Story with them.

I envision fishing with a bobber.  The bobber is cast in a place where fish are anticipated to be.  I may fish all day long and consider where the fish are at and where they may bite.  Sometimes it seems like these efforts won't produce the fish at all.  As a last effort one might cast right in the middle of the lake, the deepest part, the place where it seems like this would not find shelter.  You catch one and you are beside yourself because your calculations of what you thought would work did not play out.  Fishing is totally out of our control.  To some extent we can prepare for the fish that we going to catch, transport ourselves to the location, and allocate time so we can spend time fishing.  My most memorable fishing stories are ones where I didn't anticipate what would happen and things occurred outside the box, things that occurred that were orchestrated by incalculable events.

- Jeff Eller -