When my son, Gideon, was young, he took me “fishing” in his bedroom. The floor became a lake and his bed turned into a boat. The toys on the floor were no longer toys, but crocodiles, and two long, brown wrapping paper tubes became our trusty fishing poles.

I followed his lead into the world of the imaginary and mimicked his motions as he sat on the boat with his fishing pole dangling over the water. Every few moments he’d look at me and smile and then make a comment about how the fish weren’t biting yet.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, he suddenly sat up straight and looked at me with eyes as wide as saucers. “Mom, I think I felt something!”

“You did? Well, reel it in so we can see if you caught anything!” He raised his wrapping paper tube/fishing pole high in the air and acted like he was examining his line. “What is it?” I asked, careful not to jump to assumptions.

“It’s a great big fish!” he exclaimed, and went right back to fishing after he put his big catch into the boat.

Now that I knew how the game was played, I waited for a bit and pretended to get a nibble on my own line. “Gideon,” I whispered, “I think I got something!” He watched quietly as I made a big, dramatic show of reeling in my line and acting as if the fish was so big and heavy that it was hard to reel in. Finally I held my pole up triumphantly and exclaimed, “Wow! Look! I caught one, too!”

Gideon looked at me, looked at the cardboard tube and said simply, “No, you didn’t.”

I realized then what it really meant to go “fishing” with my son. It meant that we did the fishing together, but he did all the catching on his own!

Several of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen by trade before they left their boats to follow Jesus; and when He first met Peter and Andrew, He told them to follow Him and He would make them “fishers of men.” They took this call to evangelism seriously as they shared the good news of the gospel everywhere they went, and it’s a call to evangelism we still take to heart even today. We’re to share Christ with those around us. We’re to give our testimonies often. We’re to do everything we can to witness to others and be “fishers of men.”

But the one thing we so often forget is that God never tells us to be “catchers” of men at all. He just tells us to fish. The burden of the catch has always been on His shoulders, not ours. Sometimes it can take so much preparation to finally build up enough courage to share Christ with someone that we’re disappointed if they don’t accept Him on the spot. We think maybe we said the wrong thing or we failed in our efforts. But we never know what’s going on in a person’s heart like God does. And because of that, all we can do is continue to fish – continue to share Christ whenever we can – and leave the catching up to Him.

Have you “gone fishing” without getting any bites lately? Tell us about it and let’s pray together for a good catch!