What is my Mission?

Are we truly disciples if we are not making disciples? My heart wants to ponder this a while. Can I look more like Jesus and not become more like him?

Two commands he said were the most important. First this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37 ESV). I read it in the TPT (The Passion Translation). The words swell in my heart: “Jesus answered him, ‘Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is within you.’ This is the great and supreme example” (Matthew 22:37-38). Every passion of my heart. All the energy of my being. Every thought within me.

That’s all of me. Nothing withheld. Nothing off limits. An open invitation for him to expose all the raw parts of me to his light.

The second command I see can’t happen without the first, the greatest one, penetrating deep. I continue reading in the TPT: “And the second is like it in importance: ‘You must love your friend in the same way you love yourself’” (Matthew 22:39). I must first love God, because I can’t truly love people who are normal in a million different ways without my heart being awakened to Love Himself.

The ESV version uses the word “neighbor” instead in verse 39. Friend. Neighbor. I put them together: neighbor-friend. Maybe there is something more here, beckoning me to unpack it.

When I lose the distinction between my neighbors and my friends, my neighbors in essence become my neighbor-friends. It’s a both/and, not an either/or.

First I love God. Then I love people. Like my neighbor-friends.

I read this morning in A Field Guide for Everyday Mission that “in rural Israel, like much of the world today, people lived in the same city—if not the same house—their whole lives. So even without specifying whom ‘neighbor’ refers to, hearers likely thought of those in proximity to themselves” (59). Loving my neighbor is a call to treasure those right in front of me, those who live near me—my neighbor-friends.

“Why does this context matter?” I continue reading:

Because God sends His people on location-based mission: in fact, as small as Christian communities were, and the fact that many people never moved away from their hometown, that was likely the only kind of mission many early Christians knew. If, as we saw last week in Jeremiah 29, God sends us exactly where He wants us for the sake of His mission, then that mission involves those in close proximity to us. The call is more literal than we often consider it: wherever you live, whoever you are, “love your [actual] neighbors.” (59)

Mission. What is my mission?

I begin to mull over the last command Jesus gave as this one must be important too. “Now wherever you go . . .” I stop here. Wherever I go? The place I most frequently am is my neighborhood. I continue reading. “Make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19 TPT). Make disciples. Wherever I go. Everywhere I go. I pick back up in verse 20: “And teach them to faithfully follow all that I have commanded you.”

So that is it, my purpose on this earth in a nutshell? Love God. Love people like he does. Teach others to love God and love people like he does. It sounds like there isn’t a way around this discipleship thing.

Discipleship used to sound like an ambiguous term that sent my heart into palpitations. Exactly what did I sign up for when I decided to follow Christ? Anyone with me? I thought I needed a church leadership position, or at least more gray hairs, to be qualified to disciple anyone else. What if I mislead someone because I’m still learning? What if I am just no good at it?

And yet, I wrestle with this. If God commanded it, he must think I can do it. He must believe in me. He must know this work he is doing inside me is not meant for me alone, but to help others help others help others help others love him more and look more like him. Because when we love him, we love the people he loves, and that means everyone. As Bob Goff writes, “everybody, always.” That surely includes those in my neighborhood—my neighbor-friends.

The truth seeps in that I am to be discipling others in my home, my neighborhood, my social groups, and my workplace—those I spend time with. Robert Fulghum counsels, “Don’t worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” I wonder how true his statement is of our neighbor-friends as well.

Perhaps I need to lose the distinction between discipling my children and being a disciple who makes disciples in my neighborhood. Perhaps, like neighbor-friends, it’s not an either/or in a given moment, but more often a both/and.

When we invite our children into missional living in our neighborhood, we become a family on mission. We share priorities, like getting to know our neighbors, loving them, and sharing through the everyday interactions how we are being shaped to look more like Christ. We don’t see discipleship as something that begins with a capital letter and ends with a hard stop. Instead, it’s the flavor of our lives. It infuses everything.

When we handle sibling rivalry when we are playing outside or conflicts arise when our kids are playing with their little neighbor-friends, we are discipling. When we offer grace in unexpected or undeserved situations, even if they are not the direct recipient, our kids are watching, and some of our neighbor-friends may be as well. When we open up about our pressure points and how the Holy Spirit is creating something new and good inside us, we can infuse a casual conversation in the driveway with discipleship. We become true friends, authentic friends, the kind that are truly there for each other through the thick and thin, when we choose to see our neighbors as not just neighbors, but neighbor-friends—in this, too, we are discipling.

I accept my mission, my family’s mission, to love and disciple within our neighborhood even when I feel imperfectly ready. I commit to letting God have his way inside me so the life I am living is worth imitating. I grow and read and learn how to better disciple, but I don’t wait to start until I feel like I have it all figured out. I stop seeing discipleship as something I start and stop, like a water spigot I can turn on and off, and begin to see it as overflow of my loving God with every passion of my heart, all the energy of my being, and every thought within me.

Dear Father, thank you that you created us for love—to receive your love, to love you back, and to love others the way you do. May love burn within, make these sleepy hearts of ours alive. May we listen and respond to your Holy Spirit promptings as you teach and guide—disciple—us in how to be disciples who make disciples in our own homes and neighborhoods. We love you. Amen.

Connelly, Ben and Bob Roberts, Jr. A Field Guide for Everyday Mission: 30 Days and 101 Ways to Demonstrate the Gospel. Moody, 2014.

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