With huge blazes tearing through bush, woodland and national parks across Australia one church minister is braving these dangerous conditions to serve his local community as a volunteer firefighter. This crisis has brought churches across the community together in prayer for an end to these fires and Reverend Jodie McNeill says it’s also provided many opportunities to share the love of Christ with people hurting during this disaster.

With large parts of the country devastated by the worst wildfires in decades senior minister at Jamberoo Anglican Church the Reverend Jodie McNeill, is part of a strike team to help protect and defend people and properties in his local community.

Here during one of his shifts Reverend McNeill calls for local people to come together to pray during this crisis.

“A great part of the community that we love to be in and we’re just praying that this light rain you can probably see around me might continue and increase a great deal and that the Lord might continue to spare us from the disaster.”

Back at his church McNeill went on to explain what kind of opportunities his volunteer work has provided for him to share his faith in Christ.

“Well when people have shared me with about personal challenges I’ve often told them that I’ll pray for them, which they’ve thanked me for and when we’ve had conversations as we’ve driven back from fighting a fire or as we debrief at the station I’ll share my thoughts about life and spirituality and things and I’ll try and talk about Jesus when I can. And in this recent fire disaster our village held a special prayer meeting with the other churches and it was great to see some people come along who we haven’t seen before in church. Not to mention the fact that it’s just so good to pray to our Lord in this time of fear and trouble, knowing that he’s both sovereign and gracious even in the face of this fire.”

McNeill concluded by encouraging people across the world to pray during this difficult time.

“The big thing it to pray that in the crisis people would know Christ. We want people to be comforted and assisted in their grief and all their suffering and we want people to be strengthened to rebuild their shattered communities and we want the Lord to bring long drenching rain to our land to put out these fires. But above all we want this crisis to be the thing that leads people to think about eternal reality so that they are not only fire ready but heaven ready.”

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