Avoiding Hooks

Rough water. Cold and blustery. Hardly anyone there. Five bucks for night crawlers. Lines snag the weeds. Worm guts under my fingernails. A hook pierces my thumb.

After an hour of catching no fish, a voice announced: “Daddy, a stocked pond might be more fun.”

We fished the lake with worms, hooks, and bobbers while nearby a man cast his lure with a rod . . . and reeled in a nice bass. Hey, that’s just great.

I looked up the term “lure” and discovered the word “tempt” in the definitions. The probable origin of “lure” stemmed from the German, Luder, which means, “bait.” The connection between bait and temptation intrigued me. Later our family talked about it over dinner.

“What does fishing teach us about how Satan tempts us?” I asked. Various answers shot back:

“Satan is patient.”
“Quick pleasure with ongoing regret.”
“Different bait for different fish.”
“The bait hides a hook.”

The first time Satan cast his lure at humanity revealed his technique: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1).

Satan muddied the water by directly contradicting God’s Word. What’s more, he cast doubt on God’s goodness by suggesting the Lord was keeping them from their full potential: “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4–5).

With both God’s Word and God’s goodness in question, the woman had nothing to base her decision on except her own common sense. And she took the bait. Hook set.

One of the lasting lessons of Eden is that even perfect people had the potential to make a stupid decision if they base it on their own wits apart from God’s Word. How much more vulnerable, then, are you to deception?

God never created you to choose for yourself what is right for you. (The fact is, you don’t know what’s best for you.) He never intended you to determine what is right or wrong. Rather, He created you to choose to do what is right or wrong.

Important difference.

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image from http://www.handmadefishhooks.com/