Sermons

What’s Your Mission?

Do you have a PMS?  No, not that. I mean a personal mission statement. Most of us had one of those early in life. We called it dreaming, or perhaps daydreaming. I remember wanting to be a garbage man back when I was little. When I heard the trucks coming on Saturday mornings, I would rush out and help the garbage men.  They would let me toss the bags into the truck and even let me pull the compacting lever. I would then stand on the back of the truck and get to ride along for a block or two, taking in the intoxicating smells emanating from the truck.

Kids still dream. According to one survey, children today aspire to be dancers, musicians, teachers, actors, scientists, athletes, detectives, writers, pilots, veterinarians, lawyers, doctors — and, like kids of previous generations, police officers, fire fighters and astronauts.

While children dream of fighting fires or flying to the moon, businesses, corporations and even the military have been cranking out mission statements for years to help them achieve their goals. Here are some examples from the corporate world:

  • Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. —Microsoft.
  • To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. —Google.
  • To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. —Tesla.
  • To inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. —Starbucks.

Business knows the value of a mission statement.

Many churches have mission statements as well. For example, Red Rock Church in Littleton, Colorado says “We exist to make Heaven more crowded.”

Recently, however, a movement has developed to encourage personal mission statements. What’s your mission in life? What is it that drives you to get up in the morning? What legacy do you want to leave in the world?

These are key questions we all should be asking. Writing a personal mission statement allows us to put our answer in a statement short enough that we can use it to explain our whole life to someone in a brief encounter on an elevator. Because, you know, people are always asking about our purpose in life while we’re on an elevator.

Many influential people seem to think a PMS is a good idea. Oprah Winfrey, founder of OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, aspires to “be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.”

To be clear, however, a PMS is not important just so you’re not at a loss for words in an elevator. Rather, it’s a way of defining yourself and what you’re about. A PMS defines your boundaries, clarifying what you’re wired to do and unapologetically leaving out the rest. It sharpens your focus and guides your decision-making, acting like a compass for your life.

Think of it this way: a PMS is really a statement of call — it defines what God has put us on earth to do. In other words, it answers the question: “What’s your why?”

The difference between a call and a conventional PMS, however, is that the latter is something you have to generate from within. A divine PMS, on the other hand, means that your own specific call is part of God’s larger mission for the world.

In other words, God provides us with a common mission, and we discover our niche within that larger mission through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. And if we want to know how this works, we need look no further than to the PMS of Jesus himself.

Jesus’ personal mission statement was embedded in him long before he was born in Bethlehem. God used the prophets to outline the mission of the Messiah, whom Isaiah sees as the representative “servant” of Israel.

In today’s Old Testament lesson from Isaiah, the first of the “Servant Songs,” God lays out the agenda for the Servant. Notice in verse 1 that God calls him “my chosen in whom my soul delights.” This tells us right up front that this PMS is the result of a calling. God’s own spirit will be upon him, empowering him to fulfill the mission which is to “bring justice to the nations” (v. 1).

The justice that the Servant brings, however, will not be through force but through suffering love. Verses 2 and 3 indicate that one of the primary personality traits of the servant will be gentleness — he won’t display enough physical force to even break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. He will eventually be crushed, but not until he has completed his mission to “establish justice in the earth” (v. 4).

What does this justice look like? It’s a call to be a “light to the nations” (v. 6). God’s “justice” is always about setting things right, which means setting people right. It’s a mission to open blind eyes, both physically and spiritually; to liberate those who are in the prison of darkness (v. 7). In short, it’s a mission to embody and live out the new creation, the “new things [God] now declare(s)” (v. 9).

Jesus didn’t have to spend a lot of time coming up with his own PMS. Neither did his disciples. When we turn to today’s New Testament lesson from Acts, we see Peter, who has just crossed an ethnic and religious boundary to meet with the Gentile Cornelius, proclaiming that this new relationship is the result of the mission that Jesus had given to him and his fellow disciples.

Peter acknowledges that the original mission comes from God: “You know the message [God] sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ — he is Lord of all” (Acts 10:36). Jesus executed that mission, “anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power,” and “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (10:38). The disciples witnessed this mission, were taught and schooled in it, and now the mission of God, the mission of Jesus, was theirs.  Notice how the mission gets transferred.

First, from God the Father to Jesus the Son through the Holy Spirit.

Then, from Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, to the disciples.

And finally, from the disciples, via the Holy Spirit, to us!

If we’re disciples of Jesus, this is our personal mission now. You’ve been gifted with skills and abilities by the Holy Spirit. Your personality reflects the person of Christ. Your values, dreams and passions are all focused on doing the work of the kingdom: healing, proclaiming, liberating and doing all the good you can. That’s the disciples’ general PMS!

But don’t neglect the fact that all of us have been called to take on this mission in our uniquely gifted way. Spiritual gifts are a thing and not all of us in the Body of Christ have the same exact wiring.

  • Some are teachers;
  • others are healers;
  • some are outgoing;
  • some are quiet;
  • some are good with their hands; and
  • others are better suited for more cerebral pursuits.

There’s an old story of the 19th-century British scientist Thomas Huxley, who got off a train one day at the Dublin station. He was late for an important meeting of a scholarly society. Jumping into the nearest cab, he ordered the coachman, “Drive fast!”

With a crack of the whip, the horse was off and running, pulling the cab at a furious pace. Huxley called to the driver: “Do you know where you’re going?”

The coachman answered with a grin: “No, I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m driving very fast.”

That’s a pretty accurate picture of the way many of us live our days. We need a mission statement to tell us where we ought to be going.

We have our general orders from God through Jesus and through the disciples, but each of us must discover our particular calling, our own personal mission within the mission of God.

What’s your why?

Find out. Discover your mission. Write it down. And live it out.