FISHERS IN AMERICA!!

Yesterday I went fishing. I love fishing, just being on the beach when the sun is rising, its relaxing and I get to spend that time reflecting on what God has been doing in my life. When I first cast my line out I got an almost instant bite and reeled the fish in. Cast out another time and got a little bit bigger fish. I thought after that I may as well go out a little bit in the ocean, mainly just waist deep to see if I could cast out further and possibly get a different type of fish. I cast out a few times and got a few nibbles but never a full bite. After casting out a couple times I figured id try to fish back on the shore line, as I cast out on the shore I again got almost an instant bite. As I was reeling in the fish I just caught I thought, "well I'll just stay here then since they are actually biting here".

Whats the meaning to this little story?

Ive said it many times and I'll say it again, WE NEED TO BE MISSIONARIES IN AMERICA.
Now you can say, "well Andrew we have a ton of churches here", yeah well that might be the problem. Ive seen, especially here lately, that we as Christians like to ask people if they go to church. My stand on this question is, well so what if they go to church, going to church doesn't make you a christian, and sometimes and pushes the non-believer further away from christianity. We tend to focus so much on church and asking people where they go to church that we fail to tell them about Jesus and the Gospel. We will talk to a stranger and ask them if they go to church and when they say no we always like to invite them to our church, but as I can recall I don't remember Jesus ever asking any of the sinners that he healed and had mercy on if they went to church. Why is this? I think the answer to that question is one major reason, WE ARE WANTING TO START MORE CHURCHES THAN WE WANT TO ACTUALLY BE. That is a major word right there for christians, BE. It seems we all know how to go to church, how to worship God, and how to thank him and even give an offering, but when it comes to actually being the church, we fail miserably. Jesus said that when he left, WE(the church) would be doing even greater things than he did. Where is this power? Ive read before someone had said that if the holy spirit left the church nowadays, nobody would even know it was gone. As harsh as that statement is, it is very true. We get so caught up in church tradition and rituals (lets be honest, thats technically what they are.....rituals) that we forget to actually BE the church to the lost. We go to church and say, "oh yes im gonna change today", then we leave and do the same exact routine. We need to break out of that routine! We constantly send people to foreign countries to witness and share the gospel and meanwhile a mile down the road we have drug lords running our communities. WHERE IS THE CHURCH!?!? We always seem to be seeking people in different countries but we have so many lost people in America. Just like the fishing story, we start on the shore but we wanna go out, there is no reason to go out, we have plenty on shore that needs food. We have lost souls right in our neighborhoods that are starving and ready to eat and drink.

So I challenge everybody including myself. This week as you go to work and do what you do every week, witness to somebody. Dont just do something good for them, share the gospel with them, and dont ask them to come to church, they dont need church right now, they need Jesus.

DON'T GO TO CHURCH, BE THE CHURCH