Who would think you'd miss a fleet of big brown trucks? If they say UPS on the side, you'll miss them if you're off the streets for long! I mean, Americans found out a few years ago when the UPS drivers went on strike. Within hours in some cases, days in almost every case, thousands of UPS customers were in a crisis. At that time they said 80% of America's packages were carried by UPS! It's probably changed by now, but that's how it was then. Apparently, all the other guys were fighting it out for the other 20%. On the first day back after the strike, I'll bet some of those drivers were greeted with a standing ovation by some of their customers, "You're back! We're saved!" What a mess! I mean, businesses were almost on the ropes in a few days. They were manufacturing their product; the folks on the other end needed their product, but it wasn't happening. A sender and a receiver are not enough. Not if the person delivering it isn't doing their job! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Most Important Mission You'll Ever Have." There's an ongoing strike that's affecting many lives, in fact, it's cost many lives. Some of the people are not getting their delivery. Might be folks you know, folks you love. Our word for today from the Word of God - 2 Kings 7 - God's people, the Jews, are under siege in their capital city of Samaria. Their food supplies have been cut off by an invading enemy and no one's coming in,and no one's going out. The siege got so long and the starvation in the city so desperate, people were spending big money for even a morsel of food. There had even been incidents of cannibalism. Enter the four lepers. Because of their disease, they are forced to live outside the city walls. So they are really starving. In one last act of desperation, they decide to walk over to the enemy camp, surrender, and throw themselves on the mercy of those soldiers. They figure they're going to die either way. But they don't know that God's carrying out this miraculous deliverance that scatters the enemy army and leaves their camp totally untended, food and all. It's almost amusing to think of these four lepers just expecting an arrow at any moment. Then they wander around this empty camp, looking for someone to surrender to, and realizing they are now the new owners of enough food to feed an army! That's when it stops being amusing. They're gorging themselves. They're totally forgetting about the people who are dying in their city. The package was there loaded with food, the people who needed the food were there, desperate for food, but they went on dying. Why? Because the people who should have been delivering it were on strike. 2 Kings 7:9, a word for those overstuffed lepers and for us overstuffed Christians, surrounded by people dying of spiritual starvation. The Bible says, "Then they said to each other, 'We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait, punishment will overtake us." Thankfully, the delivery guys finally woke up; they realized they couldn't wait any longer to bring life to the people who were dying without that food that they had so much of. You get the picture. Let me just say, it could be the place where you work, where you live, where you go to school, where you exercise. And at that place, there's no one delivering Jesus to them. God paid with the life of His only Son for the eternal life He really wants them to have. And the people you know are so in need of a Savior. Right? But none of that matters if the person assigned by God to be the one delivering Jesus to them is on strike. That could be you. This is a day of good news - we cannot keep this to ourselves. You are the precious link between your Savior and someone He died for. Please, be sure the delivery gets through, whatever it takes. Lives depend on it!