Fighting the good fire

Source: Australian Geographic

I've been thinking - how can we keep God's mission central to our lives, when it seems that most of our lives are taken up by other things? Telling people about him seems to be a thing that gets done sporadically, when the opportunities pop up (sometimes not even then). So how can evangelism remain our prime focus?

Well, I thought of a helpful analogy recently. Consider the life of a volunteer country fireman. They have other things to do, during the time when there are no fires to put out. They must look after their farms and take care of the necessities of daily life. However, their primary responsibility is as a fireman. Once that fire-bell rings, they must drop everything and run to put out the fire. Their jobs come sporadically. But even though they aren't continually involved in fighting fires, it is still their primary concern.

Even though they are voluntary, they still must undergo training to be effective. We must do the same. Once a town gets large enough, they will be able to support full-time firemen. This is really the only difference between full-time gospel workers and the rest of us. We must do our work voluntarily because there are not the resources available to support us full-time. However, our duties remain the same. We may not be able to devote our entire working day to fighting fires, but we can still think of this as our primary mission. We may not be able to devote that much of our time to training ourselves as effective firefighters, however we still must undergo regular training to be effective. Imagine if the volunteer firefighters became fat and lazy and forgot how to connect their hoses!

So keeping this analogy in mind, we can still go about our everyday lives, doing the things that are necessary to keep ourselves alive, and yet still have the sharing of God’s gospel as our primary mission.

So then if we are working, the money we have after taking care of our own needs can be used to support full-time firefighters throughout the world. And if you are a student then studying is just a means to making this money more effectively.

But all the time, we are ready for any fires that break out.