Identity vs. Activity: How to Actually Live Mission

It’s easiest to see the ways we are not qualified for missional living—how we haven’t been and it feels awkward to now start, or we know the hot mess below the surface and doubt our lives can actually point others to Jesus. We see how we’ve held back or drawn assumptions or tried and failed hard, and this starting on a new path is safer to just be for someone else. How do we actually live on mission when we are just us?

I’d like to take you back a few years to when I was asking these same questions. Home for us was a small, 2-bedroom house we’d been renting for years, and in multiple areas of our life we felt stuck. We’d been learning about the concept of missional life and felt pulled towards starting a missional community with a neighborhood focus, but we had lived in this little house for years already and hadn’t made much effort to connect with anyone besides our direct neighbors on either side.

And everything seemed to hinge on the house. We’d downsized during a relocation for my husband’s job and chosen to rent until we could sell a rental property that was now over an hour away. But the duplex property looked like an impossible situation. Not only was it unlikely we could sell it and even break even, we’d had a string of everything going wrong that possibly could have.

So here we were. The dream in our heart to share meals around our table and host a neighborhood missional community didn’t seem to line up with our square footage, and so we placed it on a shelf and waited. And waited.

Perhaps today you too feel like you are in a holding pattern of endless waiting—for a pandemic to end, for your job or living situation to change, for you to have less on your plate. The things that need to shift might appear to be impossible situations.

But maybe they aren’t. Maybe, just maybe, the things that need to change are internal, not external.

Perhaps if our mindset can shift, we can see that there is a way to embrace a missional lifestyle in the middle of who are where we are today.

Measuring with the wrong stick

When I let my vision fill with the size of our house and the small amount of time I could carve out of my schedule for the things I thought I needed to do in order to actually live on mission, I always came up short.

But mission, I’ve been learning, is not so much about what I do as it is who I am. It’s an identity, not an activity.

Activities look like blocks of time on a calendar. They have a start and end time. They have an end goal—win that game, connect with that friend, learn that new skill, check-off that to-do list items—and a prerequisite—time, money, space, and/or skill.

Our identity, on the other hand, is our internal make-up. It’s who we are, regardless of the exact activities we are doing in a given moment. It’s who we are before we earn anything, prove anything, pretend anything. It’s who we were created to be—who we are called up into being.

When I assess my readiness to live on mission by how well I think I can do mission, my focus becomes consumed with the wrong things. I see how my external circumstances limit me from embracing mission. My mind fills with self-doubt, and my mental checklist of what needs to change before I will be ready will block me from ever beginning.

It’s time to pick up a different measuring stick.

One that doesn’t measure the external, but the internal—not what we do but who we are. Not the size of our house but what’s inside our hearts. Not the things we do for God but the things we do with Him.

Activity flows from identity

This morning I read words from Psalm 139, line after line reminding me that God saw who I was before He made me, He sees me now—every single thing about me, and He never has and never will stop thinking about me:

You formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside
and my intricate outside,
and wove them all together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex!
Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking.
It simply amazes me to think about it!
How thoroughly you know me, Lord!
You even formed every bone in my body
when you created me in the secret place,
carefully, skillfully shaping me from nothing to something.
You saw who you created me to be before I became me . . .
Every single moment you are thinking of me!
How precious and wonderful to consider
that you cherish me constantly in your every thought!
O God, your desires toward me are more
than the grains of sand on every shore!

vers. 13-18

When I am fueled by the way God sees me and thinks about me, I find it easier to see His sufficiency over my inadequacy. I see how the raging love He feels for each of us fuels his desire to pursue us and make Himself known to us—and how the ways He reveals Himself to me are not meant for just me. His gentle work cultivating my heart can spill out into the rest of my life, spreading love, hope, and truth like a light.

The things I do when I live missionally are the byproduct, not the source. Missional living begins within, in a heart soft and open. It’s nurtured as we abide with Christ and shared as we invite others to do life together with us.

Adding more and more activities to our schedule will leave us overwhelmed and weary. But living out of the identity won for us on the cross empowers us to make mission a way of living. Missional living doesn’t have to be any more complicated than a ripple effect, where the things God is doing inside us ripple out beyond us.

If you’d like learn how to live out of your identity rather than the activities you do, I invite you to spend 30 days with me as I guide you through rhythms that will cultivate a missional mindset. In less than 5 minutes a day, you will discover how simple and doable missional living is when it becomes an organic overflow from the inside out. Learn more about my devotional, Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors here.

Remembering who you really are

How I wish I could reach through this page and take your hand right now. I’d listen to the list of what you’ve felt like you needed to do or change before you could actually live mission, and together we’d bring it to God. We’d ask Him to meet you in the middle of your questions—meet you in the middle of where and who you are today—and show you how He longs to grow things within you that will ripple out beyond you.

But the truth is that you don’t need me next to you because God is already closer than you and I often realize. He feels the pain you feel. He knows your questions before you ask them. And nothing can stop Him from thinking constantly about you.

Maybe today it’s time to surrender the should’s and the if-only’s and the not-me’s. Release your hold on the things that you’ve thought you must do to actually live mission, and let God show you who you are.

Let’s pray.

Lord, you see where I’ve felt weary or discouraged. Show me the ways I’ve gotten it backwards by trying to earn who I am through what I do. Settle in my heart that in You I belong, in You I have purpose, and in You I have all that I need. I don’t have to be enough because You already are. Thank you that Your sufficiency overshadows my insecurity and inadequacy. With Your help, I can live from the overflow of what you are doing inside me—so meet me here and help me, Lord! In your holy and precious name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

P.S. Did you know The Uncommon Normal is also a podcast? Tune in on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or Spotify.

Change your actual life in less than 5 minutes per day!

You can change your actual life in less than 5 minutes a day because baby steps truly can change the trajectory of your life. If you want 2021 to be the year you actually start living on mission in your neighborhood, this little book (available as a paperback and on Kindle) will help you get there. Each of the 30-day devotions takes but a few minutes to read, but they will lead to lasting life change.

If you’d like to check out Part 1 of the devotional FREE and also gain access to the rest of the missional living resources I’ve created for you in the new For You library, let me know here where to send the unlock code!