Recast the Vision: How to Really Live on Mission

** Affiliate links are used for book mentions. Thank you for your support!

It’s near the end of the month, though it feels it’s barely begun. We’ve sent the kids off to school or begun learning at home, and those thoughts we’ve untangled, somehow they’ve become messy again.

Perhaps it’s time to recast the vision. To clarify what missional living looks like today, for us, for our family and neighborhood and community.

It’s hard to live something we can’t define.

It’s hard to go hard in a direction when we don’t know the way.

It’s hard to see purpose in the little steps if we don’t see where they are taking us.

And it’s hard to know whether we are growing if we don’t know the goal.

Time to recast the vision

If you’re new to hanging around here, you may have missed the definition I’ve shared before on what missional living is. So here it is—for you if you’re curious about this way of living that includes our actual neighbors in the day-to-day rhythms of our lives so that what God is growing inside us can ripple out beyond us.

Missional living begins in the heart because all that ripples beyond us first grows within us. It’s a heart posture of openness that sees those around us, because noticing precedes valuing. It’s a movement towards friendship and community and connection and realness.

It’s about an open heart that leads us to invite our neighbors into our home. It’s about breaking down the barriers that keep us from showing our own messy. It’s about pointing all the glory to God for the ways He is faithful, for the things He is walking with us through and working out inside us. It’s sharing our real questions and our non-airbrushed moments. It’s dropping the façade so others can be in close enough proximity to us to be impacted by the ripples expanding from what God is cultivating within us.

Missional living is not something we do. Not something we tack on to the end of our busy days. Not another box to check on our list of what Christians do. It’s actually not about doing at all.

Instead, it’s about learning first to be—be wholly His—because His nearness, His kindness, His goodness, His grace, and His mercy, it overwhelms us and changes us. We can’t live in the presence of God unchanged.

In the near-Him place, we see how it’s not us who works, but Him who works in and through us. The Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Cor. 12:10 carry a potent truth: “For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power” (TPT).

It’s not about what we can do, but what we can’t do so it’s obvious that it’s Him doing it through us.

It’s not about being on a glory-ride, but giving Him all the glory as we ride in the passenger seat.

It’s about Him carrying us so we can carry the fragrance of Christ everywhere we go.

The both/and commission

Jesus spells it out in Matthew 28:19-20, the greatest purpose of our life. It’s our call. Our mission. Often we call it the Great Commission:

Now wherever you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And teach them to faithfully follow all that I have commanded you. And never forget that I am with you every day, even to the completion of this age.”

TPT

I’ve had a heart that’s been tugged in the direction of foreign mission for as far back as I can remember. And for a long time, I thought this verse was solely about the going. To far-away places. To people who were dearly loved but didn’t yet know it.

But the more I learn about missional living the more I realize it’s a way of life—everyday life—that includes both the near and far places. It’s a both/and, not an either/or. And that’s the way Jesus meant it when He said “wherever you go, make disciples of all nations” (emphasis mine).

This both/and commission to be disciples who make disciples, it’s our essential mission. It’s why we are here. It encapsulates the great love of a great God for a world created by Him that finds the fullness of its purpose in Him.

When mission becomes a trip around the world once a year—or once in a lifetime—we reduce missional living to something we do. More truly, missional living is who we are. We are missional people who belong to a missional God who loves and draws everyone, everywhere.

How aptly Greg McKeown’s description of essentialism describes the missional life too. He writes,

There are two ways of thinking about Essentialism. The first is to think of it as something you do occasionally. The second is to think of it as something you are. In the former, Essentialism is one more thing to add to your already overstuffed life. In the latter, it is a different way—a simpler way—of doing everything. It becomes a lifestyle. It becomes an all-encompassing approach to living and leading. It becomes the essence of who we are.

Missional living simplified is proximity to God plus proximity to people. 

Discipleship is not just for the few and well-trained. It’s not just for pastors and preachers and ministry leaders. It’s for you and I—everyday people learning to walk in faith in the everyday moments of our actual life. And discipleship is nothing more complicated than living a life that ripples. It’s a mentality shift to see how what God is teaching and growing in me is not meant for just me.

Proximity to God plus proximity to people sets the stage and the rest falls into place, because when we place it in His hands, it turns out right.

Missional living. It’s a lifestyle. A way of life for each of us, if only we are willing to lean in and let Him have His way within us.

Let’s pray.

Lord, in our greatest moments of weakness, Your glory shines brightest. Oh, that we may “celebrate [our] weakness,” our not-enoughness, (as the Apostle Paul did) so we can “sense more deeply the mighty power of Christ living in [us]” (2 Cor. 12:9 TPT). You call us to mission, and You empower us to live missionally. Please guide us ever deeper into proximity with You and proximity with people so the things You are growing inside us can ripple out beyond us. In the precious and holy name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

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!