My Dad is a fisherman… a seriously devoted FISHERMAN! 
One of my favourite phrase of his was a fisherman’s word of wisdom, “Jesus catches his fish before he cleans them,”.
I always gleaned two main points out of this. First, Christians have no place in judging and demanding people change their ways when they aren’t Christ followers. If and when Christ calls us and blesses our heart with his presence he will do the changing. Even he didn’t come to judge but to heal.
Second, there is a very good reason why he doesn’t clean us before or right away after salvation is restored to us, and that is relationship. If we changed before, we would miss out on gaining understanding about who our saviour really is… AND what would we learn about ourselves, about our saviour, if we had perfection handed to us on a platter immediately after our conversion? We are healed and freed from our sins in a process of relationship with Christ. We struggle in this life, but NEVER alone and NEVER in our own strength. Christ does the catching and the cleaning; we just need to be in love with him and ready and obedient to the process he takes us on.
Watching Dad clean fish was a messy messy process… so too can life in Christ be. It isn’t suddenly more sleek then our walk before we met our Lord and we need to be honest about all this. The perception we put out there about needing to be perfect to be part of our club has always and will always be unhelpful to others and our selves; besides being an all out lie.
Like any metaphor used to help explain Christ and his way, this bit of fisherman’s wisdom is only a partial aid to a complicated and infinitely awesome God.
The first time I saw the picture, seen at the top of this post, my dad’s phrase flowed to my mind in a gush and I am thankful for his hearty and sound advice into my life over the years. My God fearing Dad was, and is, a huge blessing in my life!
P.s. May we all gain from this discussion another piece of understanding; that we are focusing too much on what we see when we judge others and try to force change on them before they meet Christ personally. May we remember that Jesus is concerned with OUR HEARTS!
TTFN
