Catch and Release

I was thinking today back to my childhood. For a short time, my immediate family lived in Miami, Florida and we would spend our weekends usually doing one of two things: we would either find our way to one of the beaches or we would drive down to the Keys. My parents owned a small parcel of land on Big Pine Key at the time. It was completely undeveloped and capable for one task being done on it: camping. So on many occasions we would pack up the car and drive down to Big Pine Key for the purpose of camping there. One Thanksgiving was especially memorable that we spent in our tent on BPK feasting on, you guessed it, Turkey Franks.
Being that the land was undeveloped and very scrubby, even the camping was a bit interesting. About all it afforded us was an opportunity to fish. As a kid, I had very little patience for anything and even less for waiting for some fish to decide if it wanted to bite my hook or not. We would spend hours casting and reeling, casting and reeling...it became as rythmic as the water lapping up at our feet. There were a few special moments where fishing actually had some appeal to it for me: when we would actually catch something! Never mind the fact that I didn't like the taste of fish--it meant that all that hard work of sitting paid off. It was then that I received my education. We would certainly keep the fish we were planning to eat for dinner but I was introduced to a very curious practice that I saw no sense or value in whatsoever: the idea of catch and release. For some strange reason, we would go to all the trouble of sitting, waiting, sitting some more and waiting even longer all to finally catch a fish--only to carefully maneuver the hook out of its mouth or gills and then throw the thing back in the water!  What a waste of time!  Who cares if we weren't going to eat it?  It's the law of the ocean--if you caught it, you can do whatever you wanted with it.  The only problem was, there was no "law of the ocean," and if there were, it was actually the opposite of my childhood understanding of doing whatever you wanted with what you caught--it was catch and release.  It would irritate me to no end to see all that time and effort thrown back into the water to swim away. 
I have come over the years to love the concept of catch and release but as it applies in a different scope.  I am sitting in a hotel room right now in Texas awaiting travel to a conference in Mexico where I have great expectation of receiving some significant impartation into my life and ministry.  Yet, here's the thing: my expectancy for receiving from the Holy Spirit is not just for me to "catch and prepare for my dinner."  My heart is on receiving from the Holy Spirit and then releasing whatever I've received into my family, my spiritual daughters and sons, my church, and then into the world.  In the Kingdom of God, catch and release is the guiding principle:  Jesus said in Matthew 10.8 "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.  Freely you received, freely give."  What's the point of catching something, whether it be revelation, impartation, a gift...anything, but then keeping a hold on it so it you become the one who has received some revelation, impartation, gift, anything that other people need to come to receive?  That speaks to carnal Christianity, where it is still all about the individual.  Kingdom living is recognizing that whatever I've received has come from the King for the purpose of building His kingdom.  And so Catch and Release becomes the living paradigm for this kingdom life.  Jesus told us in John 15.16, "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain...."  The only way I've seen to have any fruit that remains is to continue to see it borne over and over again--a continual supply.  If I have sons and daughters in the spirit and if I am consistently catching and releasing the things from the Holy Spirit into their lives, they'll be continually bearing fruit.  Because we are inextricably connected by real, personal relationships, this continual bearing fruit is the fruit that remains.  The fruit that is held on to is the only fruit that rots and is prevented from increasing.  I could move in things in the Holy Spirit right now perhaps with great success and amass a great following over whatever gifts I possess, but to what end?  The slow, deliberate process of developing daughters and sons who can have truth caught and released to is the greatest expression of building God's Kingdom on earth--in the hearts of those who have freely received and now will freely give.  Who would've thought that those days of waiting and finally catching fish just to release them would have any impact on my life?  What I used to despise has become the motto for our lives: Catch and Release.  ~Brian Lukacsko