Shooting Snakes

Shooting Snakes

I spoke recently at a place and told a story where someone referred to me as "Reverend". The circumstances weren't such that I needed to correct that and it really wasn't the point of the story. After the seminar a brother came up to me and wanted to discuss how and why I handled or didn't handle the use of "reverend"...after a forty-five minute lesson on an entirely different  topic, all this brother heard was one of HIS knee jerk reaction phrases. He didn't listen to anything else. He only focused on that one phrase. (By the way the guy who called me "reverend" ten years ago is a good friend of mine now and we have many regular deep spiritual discussions. He no longer refers to me or any minister as a "Reverend"...but it wasn't the first thing he needed to be taught).

In another instance I read from the Word the phrase "grieve the spirit" (not my words but a quote from the Word. Another brother, who is so afraid that someone might still think charismatic gifts still exists, missed the point of that lesson because he was stewing on that phrase. He waited until the lecture was over to take me to task on it. Maybe the point here is that I should use phrases differently. I really don't think so.

It's like a story I heard. Several guys were out in a boat. They were fishing. One thought he saw a snake. They moved the boat and sure enough there was a snake in a tree on the shore. They killed it with a boat paddle. Later someone else thought they saw another snake swimming in the water. They chased it down and tried to kill it with the paddle. Soon they abandoned fishing and spent the rest of the day hunting snakes...of which they found none.

It’s often so easy to stop fishing and start hunting snakes. You don't have to be very courageous to catch a fish; but it is pretty exciting to kill a snake. I think it's important to note here that the snake killers never told whether the snakes were poisonous or not. But killing snakes- even just hunting snakes feels more productive than fishing when the fish aren't biting. God has called us to be fishermen, not snake hunters. If you are catching fish and a snake tries to steal your fish or crawl into your boat you need to deal with it. Once you leave fishing for snake hunting you forget what your purpose is. Once you leave fishing for snake hunting you waste a lot of time. Many churches have traded in fishing for snake hunting. It allows them to look busy and even make a lot of noise. But in the end, it is not very productive. In fact, after a while, after they have beat the surface of the water with a paddle in an attempt to kill the snakes the fish won't bite even if they start trying to fish again. Snake hunting seems to scare the fish away.

Originally written by Lonnie Jones.