How Are Missionaries Like Lizards? Part B

So just how are missionaries like lizards?

1. Lizards are found all over the world and adapt to nearly every climate: Missionaries all around the world are about a global challenge with a local impact for the Kingdom.

2. Lizards have been around for a long time: Missionaries should recognize their heritage since the time of Christ and contribute to the future of their craft.

3. Each kind of lizard was created with its own special characteristics and ways to protect itself and find its prey: Each missionary has their own special gifts from God to be used for the kingdom of God.

4. Lizards are on their own from the moment they hatch: Missionaries should seek to plant churches from the start that are free of dependence on the missionary or his money; they should seek methods of evangelism, discipleship, leadership training and church planting that are reproducible by the locals.

5. Lizards strive to blend into their surroundings: Missionaries should both seek to make sure that they are integrated into the Masters plans and that what they do considers the local culture and is culturally appropriate within biblical standards.

6. Lizards diligently hunt prey: Missionaries are on the hunt to find and do whatever it takes to help initiate ministry and church planting movements, they can't just wait for it to come to them.

7. Lizards quickly regain mobility after basking in the morning sun: Missionaries should draw inspiration and direction daily first from the Lord, basking in his warmth and word to revive and strengthen them.

8. Lizards have to worry about becoming prey: Missionaries must keep aware of the environment within which they work and learn to recognize spiritual dangers. They need to stay close to the cross and seek to avoid sin that could ensnare them.

9. Lizards are vulnerable to attack in the early morning hours: Missionaries must recognizing when they are vulnerable to attack by Satan and his wiles as he tries to attack them and their ministry.

10. Some Lizards drop their tails and grow new ones: Missionaries are not perfect, but will learn from bad experiences in order to stay on the hunt and drop ourselves in order to grow more like Jesus.

How Are Missionaries Like Lizards? Part A

How Are Missionaries Like Lizards?


We have begun planning for home ministries and one of the things you need to do is to come up with a program for children. Since we have a lot of lizards and geckos here, both inside and outside the house we thought that would make a good starting point. We like the ones inside since they eat the other bugs we would rather not have inside. The ones on this page are two of the ones we found in our yard.

Lizards only show up twice in the Bible. Once when they are declared unclean to eat and will make things unclean when they die in Leviticus 11 and again in Proverbs 30 where they are compared with ants, coneys and locusts as things that are small but wise. So what does it say? Vesrse 28 says a lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces.

So what did my children say when asked how missionaries are like lizards?

Has teeth (spoken by one who has been bitten, yes, even geckos have teeth!)
Goes around all over the place
Can be green ( ?)
They try to stay away from cats, dogs and other dangerous animals
They have good stories about escaping
Can climb trees ( from my tree climber)
They eat bugs
Can be captured and eaten by cannibals (historically speaking)
Swim in rivers
Kill mosquitoes (but the missionaries don't eat them!)
They speak foreign languages (well lizards do speak lizard tongue)
Missionaries catch lizards, lizards catch bugs
They live in forests and cities
Occasionally geckos change screens, missionaries change continents. ( geckos seem to prefer the same window screen night after night)
Lizards shed their skin, missionaries changetheir clothes : ) hopefully more often than lizards shed their skin!)
And Lizards go find bugs, Missionaries go find people (but frogs just wait for flies to come to them!)

If you have any thoughts as to how missionaries are like lizards, write me.

Next Week