Which Bucket?

Yesterday my dad was ordained as a deacon at his church. It was an awesome service & thrilled I got to be a part of it. I was sitting there listening to the preacher talk about how deacons are supposed to act and how their wives were supposed to act (1Timothy 3:8-13), but one thing the preacher said really stuck out in my mind, he said deacons carry to buckets, a bucket of water & a bucket of gas & they have to know which bucket to throw at which time. He said sometimes there are fires in the church and the deacon will need to throw the water to put out the fire & then there are times when the church is on fire for God & doing great things & in those times they should through the bucket of gas to keep the fire burning. He said sometimes they through the wrong buckets & can fuel those fires (conflicts) that need to be put on & then they throw the water on the fire when things are going good and put a stop to it.

I believe this true for a lot of people in the church, not just deacons. A lot of times instead of fixing the problem we like to make it worse or instead of encouraging Christians to be on fire for God we discourage them. What if all Christians lived according to the guidelines for deacons outlined in 1 Timothy 3? We wouldn't have to worry about throwing the wrong bucket.