BAIT

My Belief

I flew with the same Jewish guy for 8 DAYS in a row! I was certain that God was going to give me some AWESOME opportunity to share some hard evidence from the “OLD” TESTIMENT on how Jesus Christ of Nazareth absolutely has to be the “Jewish” Messiah of Israel. I had it all mapped out in my mind. I just had to get him talking about the “Jewish Bible” (aka Old Testament) and his faith in Judaism. Then I would hit him with the fact that in Daniel Chapter 9, from the Old Testament, God gave Daniel the prophesy of the “Seventy-Sevens”. This prophesy clearly lists the ENTIRE time line for the Jewish people from the point in which God issued the decree to rebuilt their temple through the fact that Jesus would be cut off and killed in 31AD and then ends with Jesus Christ returning to destroy the Antichrist at the end of the age. In my minds eye it was perfect. I had a spiritual Left, Right, and an Upper Cut ready and I thought I was going to knock this guy out for Jesus!

Well, that didn’t happen. We agreed on everything. We agreed on politics and the direction of the country. We agreed that Israel was in the middle of a coming “Islamic meat grinder”. I got him to agree that the Jewish Bible had to be credible. I even got my Flight attendant in on the act. He was a Christian and we were both hitting this guy with how much faith we had in Jesus Christ. The real problem I had was when I tried to tell this guy I could prove it to him in the Old Testament. When I tried to start that conversation he would start getting sensitive. He would start telling me, “Well I don’t know enough about Daniel so I don’t want to talk about it”. He would also start side tracking the conversation or say he just wanted to read the paper. He was a great guy that loved intellectual and historical conversations until it came to Jesus. I could not believe how good he was at keeping me from giving him what I considered to be the “nail in the coffin” or cross for that matter. I ended 8 days of flying with this guy and felt very frustrated. I was praying to God, “ATHIESTS AREN’T EVEN THIS DIFFICULT”. The only peace I found was in a sermon I heard a while back about spiritual bait. My pastor preached that when Jesus offered the woman at the well “living water” that was His way of dangling spiritual bait. In the story she was excited to receive the water that would quench her thirst once and for all, but she also could have said, “get out of my way weirdo so I can draw water”. God only asks us to be open to opportunity. To dangle spiritual bait out there and then be prepared to give an account of the hope that we have in Christ. He did not say that everyone would take it.

Scripture

John 4:10

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Application for Life

In these last days of the church we have to be willing to put ourselves out there as spiritual bait. Some men may stray away from it, some may nibble, and some may take the entire thing. One thing is for certain, no one will get it if we don’t “cast” it out there. Even though my Jewish friend and I had a lot of great conversations about Israel and the Bible, he never took the bait. He nibbled at it a little and maybe even was force fed a little because of the boldness God has given me. People don’t save people, only Jesus does. So even though I felt unsatisfied at the end of our trip, God will do the rest. He will take our conversations and hopefully the next time he flies with a Christian Captain the Holy Spirit will harvest that life for Christ.