Up & OutSample

TO BEAR HIS IMAGE, LIVE OUT HIS MISSION - Devotion with Ps Chris Hodgman

Regardless of how your past year has looked, God has a grand narrative that He has been rolling out since the beginning of creation. No disease, government, ideologies, or doctrines of this world can stop it. It is to see heaven come to earth through Him establishing His image (Imago Dei) and mission (Missio Dei) in humanity. The wild part about the Imago & Missio Dei is He calls us to look up to God, bear His Image & be set ablaze, missional minded, looking out to others.

His Image. His Mission. Have been given to us.

Scholars articulate this passage as understanding that, as humans, we can mirror God's very divinity and nature. Unveiling that Christ came, not that He would only reveal your sin but to pull back the curtain on who you’ve always been.

The original language for the ‘Image of God’ is IMAGO DEI, defined as a copy, likeness, and imitation of God Himself. One modern-day theologian says, “The theology of the image of God in Genesis was, and still is, subversive and stunning. It claims that all human beings — not just those of royal blood, not just the oligarchy of society, not just white men — all of us are made in the image of God.” With this all as a foundation, if we have a skewed theological framework and view of Imago Dei, we will see His image as not one to bear but rather, behaviours to follow. It will lower a life following God to a set of rules, standards, and examples that should be followed as servants. This creates limited, fear-based, one-dimensional faith that completely neglects the fullness of life He has available for all of humanity through His Son and as His son.

God desired that you would look like Him, and Christ came to model what the full human experience was meant to look like, not simply as an exception but as an example.

A.W Tozer says, “The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world’s greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little besides ourselves.”

We have been set free, but sometimes can still lead as if we are carrying chains. And often, those chains never just stay isolated to the individual but seem to flow through everything our fingerprints land on within our community, influence, and the people God has entrusted us with. But as an individual begins leaning into His Word, intentional discipleship, and His Holy Spirit, a spiritual framework can start to shift and form into a clearer view of who God is and how inherently attached His image is to His mission.

For you see, God has a mission, AND it began with Him. His mission came before the Bible. He gave His mission a Bible. His mission came before people. He gave His mission ‘a people’. God's mission is to establish heaven and His Kingdom.

Prayer

Let us pray. Holy Spirit, I thank you in 2023 that Your image and mission haven’t changed. But more than ever, You are inviting us into the most radical adventure of being conformed to the image of Your Son and to be set ablaze for the mission of seeing heaven established on earth. Lord, would You stir us, convict, and challenge us again to answer the call of God and position our lives afresh, not that we would invite You into our story but that we would accept the invitation to be invited into Yours. Amen.