God and The 10th Cast By R. Scott Rodin

What Only God Will Reveal

I know God speaks to us. It may not be in an audible voice, as with the Old Testament prophets. But in my experience, when it happens, it comes breathtakingly close. I want to share a recent experience where His voice was unmistakable, and its impact on me is beyond words. But words are all I have to work with, so here we go. To explain this experience, let me share three strands of my life that were woven together in one extraordinary moment.

The First Strand

Sharing the first strand will require me to be uncharacteristically vulnerable. This is hard for me, but necessary, and I ask for your grace. I have struggled throughout my adult life with a cloud of failure hovering over me. The fact is, I have had many failures in my life. I have failed far more times than I have succeeded. If I allow myself to dwell on it, it can start me down a very dark path. Blessedly, the Holy Spirit continually guides me away from that path, but it’s always there.

Given this history, it is incomprehensible to me how the Lord has led me into my current season of life. I am enjoying an unmerited dispensation of blessing and grace in almost every area. I honestly don’t know why I have been granted the opportunity to live the life I live. Given a history, I have fallen short so many times and in so many ways. I can only credit God’s amazing love and mercy, his longsuffering and forgiveness. I am so thankful every day. Still, it doesn’t seem to add up. There’s a disconnect between my history and the life I am living now. And the struggles over my past lurk in the shadows.

The Second Strand

The second strand, which will seem totally unrelated, but hang in there with me, is my love for fly fishing. My wife and I are avid fly fishers. There is no more sacred place on earth than standing in the pristine waters of a high mountain river. There is joy in casting dry flies into slipstreams with faith and hope. We are particularly lovers of a long stretch of river known as the St. Joe. Suffice it to say, it is both a place of joyous recreation and true worship.

The Third Strand

Now the third strand. We are blessed to be part of a church and a small group. We are all on a journey of spiritual formation, unlike anything I’ve known in my Christian walk. It’s a journey that takes us to a place of exaltation and accomplishment born of spiritual pride. It increasingly exposes how far we have to go in our journey through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a joyful, emancipating journey.

A few months ago, Linda and I were invited to attend a half-day gathering of the Spiritual Formation Society of Washington. Honestly, I was not excited about it. I went because dear friends were leading it, and it felt like perhaps another opportunity to grow. Throughout the sessions, I tried to find something that would be God’s word to me. Sadly, I was mostly failing until the final exercise. We were asked to find a quiet place to sit. The assignment was to contemplate where Jesus might most want to meet us and bring us a specific word. I obediently attempted the exercise with low expectations. As I sat in a chair in the chapel, I opened my heart and mind to the Lord and waited.

What followed became a life-changing moment for me.

A Defining Moment

As I thought about where Jesus would most want to meet me, the image emerged in my mind as clear as day. I’m standing in that beautiful St. Joe River on one of my favorite runs.

I’m casting my line into a riffle that I know has produced abundant cutthroat trout over our last 25 years of fishing these waters. I make a series of casts that are close but are not quite the right look, float, or speed. Then, I make one more cast and, to my delight, one of the St. Joe’s magnificent cutthroats explodes the water, takes my fly, and I’m in for a fight. Next, I must work the beautiful fish around where I can finally net him before he’s too exhausted. I hold him gently by his broad, beautiful belly, lift him to admire all of the spots and lines, including the bright red slashes on his gills that give the fish its name. I thank God for him, pull out the fly, and slip him easily back into the water to fight another day.

The Encounter

As I look downriver, not far away, there is Jesus. Physically, in the flesh, as clear as day, he was standing right there with me the whole time. He’s adorned with all the paraphernalia that seems to be required of those of us who fly fish. He has a smile on his face as he matches me cast for cast working the next eddy down from my hole.

The Conversation

He pauses, pulls in his line, and walks over to me. “That was a beautiful fish you caught. Had to be 18 inches,” he says. “Maybe twenty”, I shoot back. We both laughed, knowing every fish grows two inches as soon as it is released back in the water. He studies the water for a moment, and then, knowing my struggle with my past, he asks me a question that exposes the deep fissures in my soul. “Tell me, did you catch him on the first cast?” I smiled, “No, I seldom ever do.” He replied, “So tell me about the casts it took for you to catch that fish.” I begin to unpack for him the routine I go through on most holes. Starting in close to see if anything is hitting. Moving further out. About every two or three casts, I need to adjust the fly so it floats just perfectly—a few more casts, some of them close to being right, a few of them not.

Then I go further out and work on different areas of water. In and out, upstream and across stream, short and long. And then finally, you get that moment when the fly lands on the water exactly like you want it to. It hits the slipstream just in the right way, and almost every time comes the explosion of water and the thrill of the tug. As I thought it through, I turned to him and said, “No, I probably cast eight or nine times before I finally caught that guy.”

The 10^th Cast

Jesus said, “So it was the 10th cast that caught the fish.” I nodded, and then came the life-changing question. “So, Scott, if you caught the fish on the 10th cast, would you say you failed the nine casts before?” “No,” I responded. “Those nine were necessary; they were required for me to really understand how the fly should sit, where the best slipstream was, which fly to use, and how far out I should go. The first nine casts are where I learned what doesn’t work so that I might finally put the right fly in the right place.”

The Revelation

He didn’t have to say another word. He just looked at me and smiled. The realization poured over me like a tidal wave. The first nine casts were not failures; they were part of the plan. They were what was required to be in the right place for the 10th cast to yield the fruit that it was supposed to yield.

That’s all I needed. I realized that the season I was in now had been built on all that came before. Maybe, just maybe, the failures I had struggled with so much in life were just those early casts; trying things, adjusting things until I was ready, until He was ready, until he had me ready to do the things that he had called me to do.

Suddenly, back in my seat in the chapel, I was sobbing, my head in my hands. For the first time in memory, I was coming to terms with what I had always labeled failure. Maybe, just maybe, God was using each one of them to prepare me for the life I have right now. Maybe the fruit of my ministry is being born on branches scarred from the Father’s pruning.

I pulled myself together, finished the event, and walked with Linda to our car. When I got in the car, I completely broke down. I tried sharing with her what this was all about and what it meant to me. She listened, and then she began to cry with me. So I asked her where Jesus met her. Through her tears, she replied, “He was fishing with me on the St. Joe.”

Nothing Ever Wasted

May God bless you with the understanding that it takes many casts to get the perfect one. None of them was wasted. Nothing in God’s kingdom is wasted. It’s all part of his greater plan. And if you are struggling with some early casting that seems to be bearing no fruit, remember, he will use all of it to bring you to the place where you can be operating in your greatest area of giftedness. He’s preparing you. And every season of life, no matter how much struggle we have, is always leading toward those days, those times, those opportunities when we get to make the 10th cast.

R. Scott Rodin is the Senior Consultant/Chief Strategy Officer for The Focus Group. Over the past thirty-eight years, Scott Rodin has helped hundreds of organizations enhance their effectiveness in leadership, fundraising, strategic planning, and board development. His books and articles are available in over twenty languages. He has taught and consulted with ministries across five continents. Scott also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Association of Biblical Higher Education and as board chair for ChinaSource.

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