The Reason You Spend So Much Time Putting Out Fires

Putting out fires. Course correcting. Damage Control. Righting the ship.

There are a dozen different ways to describe our efforts to get on the right track. One of the secrets is that getting off the wrong track and entering the right one do not necessarily go hand in hand.

A few weeks ago, my wife Kylie was on the phone with a woman named Candace. Candace is leading a team of missionaries in Belarus. They are teaching ESL classes, working long hours and living on five dollars a day. Irritability is high.

“We have two girls who hate each other. They’re saying passive aggressive things behind each other’s backs.

“And everyone is on wifi during their free time.”

“Another team member does nothing but complain.”

“I feel like I spend a majority of my time trying to course correct.”

“To what?” My wife asked.

“Huh?” She replied.

“You said you were spending most of your time course correcting? To what? What is the correct course?”

Candace was silent.

Perhaps the reason we put out fires only to discover newly set ones is because we are not replacing the negative with a positive. We think that absence of negative is the same as positive. But it isn’t. It only creates a vacuum of boredom, apathy, and angst. The result? We set another fire. We don’t know what else to do.

We spend our lives treating symptoms rather than disease. The symptom is destructive behavior. The disease is a lack of vision.

The Bible says, “without vision people perish” Proverbs 29:18. Without vision, people set fires and drive off course and lose the ship at sea.

This is why the framework of life, There-Here-Path, begins with vision setting. We need a course before we can ensure we are on it.

Like Candace, we all sometimes feel as if we are jumping from one problem to the next. The best way to solve a problem isn’t to erase the problem but to provide a solution.

People respond to vision. We set fires and complain and wiggle ourselves into trouble because we are searching so hard for purpose, something to live for. When we can guide people toward a vision they can understand and commit to, they won’t waste their time getting in trouble and we won’t waste so much of our time trying to push the cart back onto an invisible track.