by Jackie Houchin

#Bloganuary is a month of blog prompts/questons that WordPress uses to get us bloggers off to a good start in the new year.

Day 9 – “What is your mission?”

Mission.

A lot of things come to my mind, like the old TV show, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and NASA’s Space Missions. “Mission Accomplished” means that what you planned to do, you did. Another possibility is the 21 Missions that stretched from San Diego, California, northward to Sonoma.  Which is MY mission of these?  (Well it has to be San Juan Capistrano, of returning swallows fame, because I live just 10 minutes away from it.)

But I think WordPress meant something else in asking this question.  What is MY mission, MY raison d’etre (reason to be), what I want to accomplish today, this year, or in my life.

For me the word MISSION has to be connected to COMISSION, which is a mission that someone else sends you on.  And that immediately sends me to Matthew 28:18-20 in the Bible, which is known as “The Great Commission.”  At the end of Jesus’ time on earth, after his death and resurrection and just before ascending back into Heaven. he told his disciples (then and up until now and beyond) these words.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 

Mark 16:15 says it succinctly, “And He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”

Luke 24:46-47 adds details, “And (Jesus) said to them, “Thus it is writen, that the Christ shold suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

And immeditely before Jesus ascended, He said, “…and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  Acts 1:8b

Christ’s commission to all believers? Go throughout the world, proclaim the good news, be witnesses of what was accomplished in Jesus’s death and resurrection, teach everyone Jesus’s commandments (love one another and serve all), and that repentance and forgiveness is available to all who believe, and baptise them in the name of the triune God.

Wow. Big Job.

So…. and here is the question at the beginning…. what is MY MISSION?  It is to follow through on what Jesus said. I can do that by sharing the good news with my family and neighbors. I can teach children at my church the story of Jesus, I can go on short term mission trips to other countries, hold Bible schools, and tell about the salvation that Jesus “bought” with his own life on the cross.

How am I doing?  Not as much as I should.  But, well, this is a tiny bit of it.  If you repent of your sin, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be forgiven and saved from eternal death in hell.  Do it!