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Mission – Part 1

Here is some truth for you. If you know Jesus, your entire life is a long-term mission trip… and every single week is a short-term mission opportunity.

That means when I’m home, I am on a short-term mission trip in Dallas. Every day. Everywhere I go.

Can you imagine how radically different our lives would be if we were to apply the same mind-sets about foreign mission trips to the mission trip we are on every day? Can you imagine how our cities would change? How our expectations would change? How our communities would change?

Imagine that every day, just as if you were in some exotic foreign land, you lived with a desperation for God’s provision, an expectation of God’s power, and a sense of being overwhelmed in all the right ways with the same responsibilities David Livingstone, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, and others carried “over there.” Imagine that your life was filled with the same courageous engagement with others and prayerful expectation that God is going to use you as part of His plan to rescue, serve, and lead out of darkness the land in which you live.

Is that your mind-set? How have your last seven days of mission been? Have you been on mission? Anything worth reporting to the home office? Ready to give an account of the days and resources used to provide for you as His ambassador? Just imagine how much God has invested in you where you live. How many other missionaries are part of your city—your church. How many of your “mission dollars” are being used wisely? Would you support yourself if you were a mission agency?

Living missionally—maintaining a concern for those not yet rescued and caring for those in your land—is almost always the first place a believer’s heart begins to grow cold. Somewhere along the way of “doing church,” we forget that “being the Church” is being on mission. Jesus came to seek and save the lost and He has left us here to follow in His steps.

It is not an overstatement to say that every single act of God since the fall of man has been a missionary act. Every word and deed has been and is being done to reconcile people to Him. It is why you are here. It is why you are alive.

So instead of thinking of “mission” in terms of involving foreign lands, exotic places, or expensive trips, try thinking of mission as it truly is meant to be: life.