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Key Bible Verse: "Beware! Don't be greedy for what you don't have. Real life is not measured by how much we own" (Luke 12:15). Bonus Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-11

Gear. Like most outdoorsmen, I love getting new gear. If you love the outdoors, I'm sure you can relate (your wife too—painfully perhaps). But the problem with a gear obsession is that it won't make you a better hunter or angler. It'll make you a little more prepared, maybe, but it won't make you better at cornering your quarry in a wild pursuit.

By the age of ten, I was loaded down with gear. A green Plano tackle box housed my personal lure display: Rebel Wee-R and Rapalas, spinner baits and plastic worms, and God only knows what else. Even though my dad owned a small outdoor store, when going for smallmouth bass, he would hover close to only a chosen handful of lures. Sometimes it was a beat-up, paint-chipped crank bait. Or just a purple and red spinner bait. Or a few others in between. And he was absolutely phenomenal at dragging in those fit-throwin' smallmouth.

A lot of today's gear is faddish and often unnecessary. One of my friends in the outdoor industry, a TV personality, said it best, "Most turkey calls are made to call the hunter, not the turkey, just as many fishing lures are made to catch the angler."

—Jason Cruise in Into the High Country

My Response: What "gear" do I want most right now? Is it really an essential, or am I being lured?

Adapted from Into the High Country (B&H Publishing, 2006) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, keep me from accumulating things just to fill a void in my life that only You can fill.

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