It’s November and Deer Season is in full bloom.  The air is finally beginning to feel like fall and the leaves, what’s left of them from Hurricane Michael, are turning beautiful colors.  For most of us our deer will be rutting at some point this month and the key is that you just have to be there.  You can’t choot’m from your recliner or from work.  You just have to get out there, be alert and ready.

As we pull away from home in our pickup trucks visions of Boone and Crocket bucks begin to dance through our heads.  We begin to strategize our hunting spots and we can just visualize that buck as he slips out of the thick stuff and out into the opening for a clean shot.  We know he’s there.  We’ve done our scouting, placed our stands, cut our shooting lanes.  We’ve also sighted in our rifles or tuned our bows and practiced every imaginable shot.  We’re ready! Now if only the buck will cooperate.

You can do all this work and still not get that buck.  It’s amazing how many opportunities are missed because of last moment distractions.  Something at work or home comes up and we can’t go.  What’s more aggravating is to actually get to go, be sitting in your stand and allow yourself to become distracted and miss the shot of a lifetime.  Maybe you’re asleep in the warm sunshine, watching the Bull Dawgs on your phone or watching that pesky squirrel when all of a sudden, he’s just there, standing broadside looking at you. And as soon as you make that first move he’s gone, never to be seen from that stand again.

In Mark 4:12 Jesus tells his disciples, “they may indeed look and yet not perceive; they may indeed listen and yet not understand, otherwise, they might turn back and be forgiven.” (CSB)

In deer hunting you can be in the right place at the right time and still not get the buck.  If your attention is filled with other things you’re not going to see it or hear it until it is too late. It’s the same way in real life.  If our lives are cluttered with the wrong things we will miss the real trophies of life. Work is good and necessary unless it pulls us away from the Lord and our families.  Sports and hunting are good unless we get to the point of worshiping them and have no time for Sunday worship in church or time with our families. 

In Mark 4:3-8 Jesus tells the parable of sowing seeds on different soil.  Some of the seed falls and the path and on rocky soil and never have any potential.  However, some falls on good soil but it is filled with weeds, cares of this world, to the point all God-potential is choked out.  The cares of this world are so thick you can’t see or hear what God is doing.  How about you?  God is at work all around you.  Do you see it?  Do you hear His voice?  God has done all the preseason work. He’s placed His stand on a tree at Calvary so that you can experience His Grace and be a Real HUNTER! If you want to know more of how to be a real HUNTERCLICK HERE,  and see what it takes to be a Real HUNTER!

In Christ,

Kyle