I started writing this post a week ago. I wrote one long, deeply complex explanation of what I thought God had been teaching me about what it means to be missional, and somewhere in the middle of writing that long explanation I had a giant "Ah-ha" moment.
My entire life has been missional; it is missional. It's not something I do, it's who I am in Christ.
"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. 12 Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation." 1 Peter 2:9-12
You see, according to Google, mission can be defined as "an organization or institution involved in a long-term assignment in a foreign country." Which means from the moment I accepted Christ into my heart at the age of four, I not only became a new member of the body of Christ--the institution of God's church--but I have been on a mission for Christ ever since and didn't even know it. (Hebrews 11:13-16, 13:14, Philippians 3:20). This world is not my true home. I have felt this in every part of my inner being since I was eleven and old enough to decide Christ is who I wanted to follow, He was what I wanted to pursue.
Every day after that for me has been one missional day lived after another. Because to be missional means to live for Christ. "Ok, ok," you're thinking, "I hear you. Being a Christian is a mission in itself, but aren't we called to more? What about our dreams, our passions, our gifts? Don't those play into our mission?" Yes! Absolutely! Take a big picture look at your life, then look closely at the details. What do you see?
Google also defines a mission as "a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling." This is where it gets tricky because I think God sends us on many different missions within the big mission of simply being His child.
At the age of eleven, my mission was being an obedient child to my parents and a growing seeker of Christ. (Isaiah 30:21)
At fifteen, my mission was to discover the truth about who God says I am. How did He see me? (Psalm 139, Ephesians 1)
At eighteen, the mission became to discover who God says He is. Do I relate to God correctly? (Isaiah 55:8-9)
At twenty-one, my mission became to be a godly wife. Do I exemplify how the church should love Jesus Christ in my relationship with my husband? (Ephesians 5:22-24)
At twenty-seven, God added the mission of being a godly parent. He gave me the responsibility of shaping young hearts and minds that were created in His image. Do I represent God in a such a way that is honoring to Him and appealing to my children? (Deuteronomy 6)
At thirty-four, God sent our entire family on a mission to move across the United States from east coast to west coast in following of a call He had clearly laid on our hearts. (Exodus 14)
And now at thirty five, as if all those missions aren't large enough as it seems, I can feel Him stirring my heart for something more, something deeper. (Isaiah 43)
If people looking from the outside in, see my journey, my life, as being missional, then to God be the glory!!! I'm praising God in writing this blog because He's shown me my life HAS been missional; it IS missional. Living for my Jesus has required deep sacrifices in all areas of my life--physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It has required that I hold nothing back from Him. I have learned to bare my soul to Him and for Him. (Psalm 62:8) I have to practice living life with open hands, and it is not easy. Because open hands means my husband, my children, my dreams, my anything are in those open hands. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. (Job 1:21)
Will God still be enough? To be missional, the answer has to be yes. That is both a terrifying and freeing place to live depending on the day of the week and whether I'm experiencing a flesh-filled or Spirit-filled kind of day.
And friends, I am a nobody by the world's standards. I have no books, no speaking engagements, no cause to promote, no ministry calling (at present) except for being a child of God, a wife, and a mother. Don't you think that's a pretty BIG "except for"? I believe God is teaching me that if I live out the missions I already have, faithfully, He will continue to add to those missions in His time, in His way, slowly building me toward those hopes and dreams He's given.
I don't have a name for my next mission, but I can feel the Holy Spirit preparing me for it. I can see God's handwriting all over the pages of my life. He's uprooting old dreams, long dead and buried, and breathing new life into them. He shows me even in the stillness, the seeming nothingness of life, that He sees me right where He's placed me. He proves that He hears me because my prayers have never been more alive or answered.
Being missional means doing life with Jesus. Not like He's some distant religious god or statue or figurehead. No, being missional means Jesus Christ is as real of a relationship in my life as my husband lying breathing in bed next to me--warm, close, and intimate. Being missional means living like I value that relationship so much, I don't want to do anything intentional to screw it up.
It means I spend my life seeking after the heart of God. Whatever that looks like, whatever that takes, wherever the Spirit leads and God calls--that's where I am to be, and that is being missional.
Moses was missional.
When you read the life of Moses recorded in Exodus through Deuteronomy, you start to see the depth of how much Moses just wanted God. God asked him to do hard things, and Moses had to answer some hard questions about himself. He screwed up and still kept plugging away at his relationship with God. In the end, it didn't matter that he would never get to experience the Promised Land for himself; it was enough that he was on a mission with God together, doing life God's way.
Do you really want to be missional, to live life mission-minded with great purpose? Because I have learned and experienced that God will ask you the hard questions and your answers will determine the direction of your mission, whether you head back to Egypt or toward the Promised Land.
Are you aware of all the areas in life you fall short? Can you identify them, admit them, own them? Can you lay them all out at God's feet and let Him equip you anyway? (Exodus 3-7)
Will you go where He's leading? Who or what is your Pharaoh? Will you face him? Who are the people God has called you to passionately intercede for? to lead? Who or what breaks your heart for God? (Exodus 8-14, Exodus 32, Numbers 14:13-16)
Are you willing to brave the wilderness with them whatever that may look like? Trusting God to be your Protector, Provider for every need, to be your ever-present Guide, and you only move when He moves? (Exodus 16, Numbers 9:15-23)
When the people around you that you serve and/or lead, when they inevitably complain, moan, groan, grumble, question your authority, your decisions, will you complain also? Will you take matters into your own hands? Or will you go directly to God with all your complaints, all your concerns, all your everything? Will you seek God's forgiveness and favor not just for yourself, but for those grumbling people as well? (Numbers 11-19)
And when you inevitably screw up, when you take matters into your own hands, when you forget that God deserves all the glory for anything and everything you are, and God seems to come down hard, will you accept His discipline? Will you accept that your sin has consequences just the same as the people you serve and lead? Will you continue on your mission anyway? Will you serve faithfully, following God despite the fact you may never set foot in the Promised Land this side of heaven? (Numbers 20-Deuteronomy)
Will God be enough?
God must be enough. He must be simply all you need. To be missional, you must consider these questions and be able to answer them honestly.
The point being, we can be missional anywhere at any point in time as long as we accept and believe the grass is never greener anywhere else--we're not going to even look. Your satisfaction with where God places you in life, where He leads you, shows how much you truly desire God's will and plan for your life. Are you satisfied with the place, the time, the season, the circumstances in which God has you currently living life? To be missional, you must be able to answer that question with yes!
He knows my dreams. He knows my heart. I trust His plan, so for now, one seemingly, insignificant day at a time, in this stillness--maybe for you it's a hardship--we just need to take the next step of obedience toward Christ, whatever that is. I have learned there is more forward progress in our lives toward the heart of God in the seeming nothingness of daily obedience out of love to our Lord than in a lifetime of mountain top, dream-fulfilling experiences.
I want to live my life with steady forward progress toward my Jesus.
And while as the body of Christ, we have one mission in common--to be His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20)--how He goes about accomplishing this mission looks very, very different in each one of us. We all have different dreams, passions, gifts, talents, hobbies, interests, personalities, backgrounds, cultures, families, environments, etc., etc., etc. The differences among us are as vast as the heavens itself! How then can we expect to find a cookie-cutter, three-step answer on how to complete a mission no one else has ever embarked on because no one else has ever been you?
The answer is actually surprisingly simple. You choose to live your life to glorify God in everything you say, do, and think, and then you tell God's story about your life when the opportunity comes or more often, you just live out God's story for others to see. (1 Peter 2:9-12)
You say. "Yes," to God. Every. Single. Time.
He says, "Pray without ceasing." You say, "Yes." And you practice saying prayers in the grocery aisle over which cereal is the best use of the money God has given you. You practice praying about everything and anything, no matter how small or ridiculous. You pray expecting answers. You're listening and looking for God to answer. And He does! You hear God's voice! (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; John 10:27)
He says, "Take every thought captive." You say, "Yes." And you practice being aware of how your thoughts influence your attitudes, and you begin to separate the lies from the Truth. You choose to cut things out of your life that are feeding you lies. You experience freedom! (2 Corinthians 10:5)
He says, "Believe all of My words to be truth." You say, "Yes." And you practice seeking God's point of view first, on everything. Before your friends, before your mom, before you google or check Facebook, you begin checking Scripture first. And despite all the horrible, ugly things in the world, you fall in love with Jesus and realize you have the Pearl of Great Price, and you will sell everything you have to keep it! (2 Timothy 3:16, Matthew 13:45-46)
Being missional means you say yes to God in everything because He is enough. And if you look carefully at those examples above, you will see that most of the doing is taking place inside your own mind and heart, it's not happening on the outside where people can see. You have to be missional on the inside first for people to experience Christ in who you are on the outside. If you try to forcefully reverse that process, people don't see Jesus; they see you striving to be something you are not.
Missional people don't complain, they don't manipulate, they don't negotiate. They don't have their own agenda. They are not fake, and they are not proud, and they have nothing to hide. As soon as I find myself living in one of these categories, I have a choice to make. Repent, making progress toward the Promised Land or live in sin and keep plodding back toward Egypt.
God says to repent and missional people say yes to God.
Because the truth is if God isn't enough, then you must have some idea of what would be better, of what could be more fulfilling. For the first forty years of his life, Moses had all of that, and that era of his life ended in murder. No, I'd rather learn from Moses' mistakes instead of live them--at least the best I can--because in the end, Moses died in sight of the Promise Land, having seen the backside of God's glory, having spent countless hours in personal conversation with the God of creation, and God personally defended and honored His servant. (Exodus 33:22, Numbers 12:5-8)
I wonder if Moses looked back on His life in the end and saw the big picture of the mission he had accomplished through God's power or rather if he simply viewed his life as saying one yes after another to his Lord, no big deal, just a simple life of obedience. You get a sense of his heart in Psalm 90 that even at the end of his life, he still felt like it wasn't enough. Maybe that's the truth I need to embrace...my mission will never feel complete until I'm rested in glory with my Jesus, sitting at His feet.
What is God calling you to do? What is He asking of you, right now? It may seem very insignificant, small, pointless, or meaningless, but GOD is asking you to do it. Will you say yes? Make that phone call, send that text, smile at that random person? Remember, this is the God of the Bible who breathes life and meaning and symbolism into the simplest of things like a lamp stand or salt. (Matthew 5:13-14)
Will you say yes to the big, scary, difficult thing God is asking of you? Will you stop ignoring His voice, putting Him off, and telling Him to wait for you to be ready? Who do you think you are anyway?!? Will you be missional and say yes to God, no matter what?
You are always simply one yes away from living the missional life God has called you to live! Decide now! In what way can you say yes to God today, right now? Your missions in life are dependent upon your yes to the only Person in all of History you can fully trust. It is His story after all. We just have the opportunity to be the messengers to tell it. Will you say yes?
And for those of you that are saying yes to God in the daily little things that seem insignificant in a world that always wants to put people in a spotlight, be encouraged!!! You ARE living a missional life. You ARE making a difference. You may not be on a stage with a microphone in your hand, but is that really what matters? God is enough for you. Claim that promise and truth for yourself. Put it on a t-shirt and wear it for the world to see. God is enough.
And I am convinced that one day, all of us missional children of God will look back on our lives, just like Moses, and feel like we didn't do enough, but that--praise Jesus!--living life for Him and with Him was worth every moment. And friend, you will have lived a life like Moses, accomplishing great things for God, and never even have known it. But those watching will know it, and by your life of saying yes, they will learn to live a life of saying yes to God, and that is maybe the greatest legacy any of us can leave behind, that is mission accomplished.
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