There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the Professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter.

The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.

When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.

The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

While this story could certainly be shared concerning our nation today, I share it with our churches in mind. As believers and churches we have become so comfortable with what we do inside the comforts of our “safe” buildings that we have forgotten our original quest and mandate. We have so bought into society’s philosophies that we have forgotten that we are to be different. It was entrusted to us by God to reach a lost world with the good (Great) news of God’s plan of redemption.

What will you do to get back outside the confines of the parameters we have placed on ourselves and allowed society to place around us. We are not captives of this world, but slaves of the great, Almighty creator of the universe! Let us return to forage in the forest of lostness as commanded by God Himself.