Recently I have been catching myself
repeating one of my favorite catchy one-liners in a lot of conversations. For
those of you that know me you know that I tend to enjoy a classic one-liner.
They’re simple, portable truths that can stick with you after the meal is done.
Plus they make me feel smarter than
I really am which is a huge plus!
Back to the story, I have been
saying over and over again this statement: This
is proof that our mission is more important than ever. That has been my
tagline to a myriad of separate issues.
Someone is having marriage problems? This is proof that our
mission is more important than ever. Someone else is wrestling with identity
issues? This is proof that our mission is more important than ever. Someone
just got a negative health scan from a doctor? This is proof that our mission
is more important than ever.
You get the picture?
Honestly I haven’t been trying to flippantly respond to any
particular crisis. I have simply been reminded that our mission – Pointing
people to the love of God through personal relationship with Jesus Christ – is
more important now than ever. It is that life-giving relationship with Christ
that will ultimately sustain. Jesus came to bring healing and freedom and my
job isn’t to try and overcome your issue my job is to point you to the One who
already overcame.
Again, this is proof that our mission is more important than
ever.
People need the love and mercy of God. Every day we encounter
countless men and women who are struggling with self-worth. We are constantly
bombarded with images that tell us that we aren’t good enough if we don’t live
in a certain type of home or drive a certain type of vehicle. Media outlets
remind us that value and worth is tied to what we own so we constantly chase our
tails in an endless struggle to obtain more stuff only to find out that in the
end the stuff owns us and we don’t own it.
People are committing suicide at earlier ages now than ever
in history. Marriages are struggling and falling apart. Young girls are looking
for love and beauty and willing to pay anything to anyone who shows her a
little attention. Teenage pregnancies are on the rise. Sexting runs rampant
even in children as young as middle school. We glorify films and music that
objectify women and glorify sex in any way, shape, or form. We live in a
generation that wasn’t satisfied with the twerk
and therefore created the wall-twerk.
This is proof that our mission is more important than ever.
People need to know that there is a God who loves them and
validates who they are as people apart from anything they could do to earn his
acceptance. This world needs to hear that there is someone greater than they
that desperately desires to be connected to them in a meaningful way not in an
abusive way. Our mission – The Mission – matters and people need to be forever
made whole because we rise up and get on mission.
This is proof that our mission is more important than ever.
I’m not trying to be preachy here. I’m just struck with the
reality that if we don’t get fired up about our mission then we will never meet
the needs of humanity that is lying – even dying – at our doorsteps. I’ve found
that in the church world we would rather sing about it, talk about it, preach
about it, small group about it, blog about it (myself included) than be about
it. We like to do the above because it satisfies our guilt for not doing it
while never actually holding our proverbial feet to the fire pushing us out of
our comfort zone and actually doing what Jesus told us to do.
And in regards to our theoretical Christianity – this is
proof that our mission is more important than ever. The mission has to work on us before it will work in us. If we aren’t compelled by
The Mission then we need to reevaluate whether or not we have been touching The Mission. Don’t let a counterfeit
mission give you empty calories focus on The Mission and leave with a full
belly.
3 quick suggestions:
1. Engage
in mission everyday. That’s right. Everyday. It can be as simple as saying,
“Jesus love you” or as challenging as crossing a jungle-river to share the
Gospel with a local tribe of people in a remote corner of the third world. The
size of the external is no indication
of the size of the internal. What
matters is that we are actively seeking ways to engage in mission everyday.
2.
Do Mission Together. That has actually become a
rallying cry at our church. We plant the flag of mission in nearly everything
we do. From Sunday morning services to small groups we are all about doing
mission together. Three words: Do – Implying that we have to be active. Mission
– The reason we are all here. Together – No more “Lone Ranger” stuff. We are
doing this thing as a team. Jesus taught
and modeled that mission is at its most successful when others are involved.
He could have completed his mission alone, but he chose to take along 12 guys
in a close-knit family. Let’s take a page out of Jesus’ playbook and do mission
together.
3. Pray
missionally. God’s greatest desire is for his lost children to come home. We
will never have more of God’s power than when we are seeking to engage in God’s
mission. Peyton Jones, author of Church Zero, recently said, “Everywhere you
see the power of God in the book of Acts it is in reference to people living on
mission.” The truth is that when we pray missionally God begins to pour out his
power in ways that we will never fully experience in other ways. Praying for
God to open doors for the Gospel yield powerful times of God opening doors for
the Gospel. He wants to get his message out and he wants you to be a chief
brand manager. Begin to ask him to open doors for the Gospel in your life and
then be ready to walk through those doors when he does!
Those are three simple suggestions to become more
mission-oriented in life. There are many other suggestions and principles that
many can add to this list. The important thing is that we are doing something
to fully engage in the mission of God by serving those far from God and serving
those close to God. To quote Nike, “Just Do It!”
