How does hard work fit in with faith and hope? This year Ruth and I have put serious effort into sharing our vision, our values, our strategies – in short, our work – with quite a few people. Why? Our involvement in mission work, specifically in Bible translation, is dependent upon a steady stream of gifts to cover our work. Without donors, Bible translation won’t happen. Without donors designating gifts specifically to our ministry, we cannot be involved.

What does this have to do with faith and hope? We believe that God must move in the hearts and minds of donors to give. So we look to God to supply our needs. But we are not naive. We recognize basic principles of the Scriptures – principles such as, “Hard work means prosperity; only fools idle away their time.”

Talking about Bible translation and our work is rather like evangelism. God can bring people to Jesus whether we play our fore-ordained role as witnesses or not. And God can supply our financial needs whether we tell them about the importance of God’s Word in the mother tongue of people or not. God is God. But God has told us to be witnesses. God has told us to encourage each other to good deeds. Such work will bring prosperity for God’s kingdom.

We don’t “live on charity”. No, we are working hard. And for virtually all of our adult working lives, we have earned less than a “fair wage”.

We work hard, sometimes doing things that are uncomfortable, and we do so in faith and hope. Partner with us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 5:44 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.