This past June I was traveling through Mizzoula, Montana with the desire to go fishing. Mizzoula, Montana has always been in my mind the perfect place to go fishing. I think this idea came from the movie “A River Runs Through It.” My two main problems in this venture was that I didn’t have much money to spend or the experience of how to fish. What God had in store for me was an incredible life changing experience.
My first challenge was I only had $40 to spend. I needed a fishing rod and a license to fish in Montana. I went to the local Wal-Mart and purchased a fishing rod for $15 and a license for $25 which would give me the opportunity to fish for a day. When I left that parking lot and drove away, I was so excited, extremely confident this was my day to catch many fish. I was surrounded by mountains and feeling quite masculine.
This is what men do. We fish.
Learning to Fish
I would be the definition of a rookie in fishing because I have only fished 5 or 6 times in my life. It took me only 10 minutes before I got the line all messed up on the reel of the fishing rod. Wow! I completely felt like a loser when this happened. How does one go from feeling masculine to feeling like a loser within such a short period of time? This was a humbling moment and so good for my heart. I needed help, and my action step was to pray. So I went back to Wal-Mart, and He provided me with Tom.
Tom worked at Wal-Mart, and seemed to be an expert in fishing and repairing a fishing reel all knotted up. Tom made it look so easy, and he was training me how to fix this problem if it happened again. Then he took me out to the parking lot, and taught me how to fish. It wasn’t until I was driving back to the river to fish that I realized God was revealing to me His heart for discipleship. A Chinese Proverb says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Asking for help
What I learned from this experience of fishing in Mizzoula, Montana is that I need help in areas that I am inexperienced. What I needed was Tom to teach me how to fish so that I could fish for the rest of my life. Do you know how to pray? How many students around you are inexperienced in prayer? It takes humility to ask for help when you don’t know how to do something. It will take humility from students to ask others to help teach them how to pray.
We need men and women who know how to pray to train those that don’t know how to pray. I believe the key to a mighty prayer movement is to disciple believers how to pray. Matthew 28:19 tells us to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This is a commandment from Jesus! Will you obey Him and get discipled in prayer? Will you obey Him and disciple others in prayer? Amen.
Kim
13 years agoGreat post Brent! Prayer is absolutely the foundation of all things, so it’s imperative that people be trained in that. Praying we’ll see more and more students become passionate about prayer this semester!
Justin Christopher
13 years agoThis morning 6-7 student met for our second week of a four-week study on prayer. The conversation has been great. It is nothing really deep. It’s just a study on what motivates prayer, God’s purposes in prayer, ways to pray beyond ourselves, and developing disciplines of prayer. It has been great conversation. I hope after this study, they begin to teach it to their friends too.