Doing and Being

When I was a little guy, I used to listen to the missionary at church and imagine how he did his job. Somehow, I thought, he would go to the remote village and the people would come to hear him speak. It never occurred to me that the people in the village had to gather food, and might not be available to sit around for hours a day listening to a stranger. I had an idea of how a missionary "does" his work of sharing the Gospel. What if the people the missionary is trying to reach are not interested in his "God talk"?
I heard of a missionary to the Native people in the Southwest of America back in the late 1800's. He put up a sign in front of his house saying, "If you want to get saved, come to the house." After a couple of months of waiting for people to ask about God and nobody came, the missionary determined that the people weren't interested in getting saved, so he ended his efforts and left.
Certainly, we are supposed to be ready to "give an answer for the hope within us" at any given moment, but isn't there more to being a Christian than just "doing"? I have a neighbor who is pretty turned off about Christianity. For years, Christians made him a "project", to get saved. When he didn't say the prayer and walk the aisle, the Christians dropped him and left him alone. When the Lord Jesus told the parable about the wheat and the weeds, he said that the wheat would grow up along side of the weeds. While we are here, living next to unsaved friends and neighbors, God wants us to show His love for them through us. That may take a long time.
Ephesians 5:18b says, "be filled with the Holy Spirit." The verses that follow speak about showing Agape Love in marriage. Those verses are connected to v.18, because we can't show that self sacrificing unconditional love without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Whether we are missionaries, corporate professionals, janitors, or parents, we need to be ready to both speak the Gospel, and live the Gospel. Doing and Being, and both by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, when you are trying to imagine what I do as a missionary, imagine Jannie and myself looking for opportunities to do good deeds and live out Christ's love for my Native neighbors. Now and then, we find opportunities to share our Faith with others. It isn't like my boyish imagination, with people crowding around to hear about Jesus, ...not yet. :)