What's Your Story?

This past Saturday evening, I attended the 4th Annual Outdoorsman Banquet held in Suffolk, Virginia, with friend, pastor and speaker Brodie Swisher (www.thrutheseason.com). Scope & Hook was invited to be an exhibitor at the event as well, which gave me an opportunity to talk with those in attendance about the mission and purpose of the ministry. With spring turkey season right around the corner, I brought my full strut mount with me and placed it at the table, as it serves as a good tool to bring folks close and spend some time initially talking turkey with them. As I fully hoped and anticipated, many a hunting story was relived around that table Saturday. All outdoorsmen are alike in at least this one respect - we all have stories that we like to recall with fellow hunters and fishermen. Stories of special trips in the outdoors with friends and family, stories of days gone by when the game was plentiful and the action was unreal, stories of record book fish and game harvested, and stories of missed opportunities and the big ones that got away. And as more time passes from the point in which these hunting and fishing trips took place, the more chance there is that the story surrounding them has been exaggerated and embellished to capture the attention of even more bystanders the next time it's told.

 

2 Timothy 1:7-9 (NASB)

For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity...

 

Eyewitness Testimony

With last year's Chesapeake Bay hot spots not producing much of anything for us in 2013, my buddy and I set out Saturday in search of aquatic life in untested waters...to us anyway. Destination - the upper Virginia Chesapeake, and point of entry - Ingram Bay. As we were preparing to put the boat in the water, two other fishermen came in behind us with the same intentions. We spoke with them at the ramp for a moment, quickly realizing that they were locals who fished the local Bay tributaries on quite a regular basis. One of the two described in particular detail how he himself had caught rockfish, speckled trout and puppy drum throughout this past winter and into the early spring due to the warmer water in the Bay and its tributaries. There before us had to have been 'the guy' that we had heard about through third and fourth-hand fishing stories, the one who was catching these fish throughout the winter when nearly all other fishermen struggled or hung it up all together until more favorable conditions returned. Well, we explored many new spots and went on to have a pretty good day, and although we didn't hook many of our target species, the Lord did bless us with plenty of action in the form of young scrappy rockfish. Regardless of what the skeptics say, based on where we were Saturday, the future of the Bay is looking up!

2 Peter 1:16 (NASB)
For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.