Saturday, January 28, 2017

Charging up our Mission

By Dale Shumaker

The Scriptures say we overcome evil by doing Good. When we live a life in our mission as designed by God, we defeat darkness through letting the light of our mission shine.

"Let your light shine so it can be seen among mankind," Jesus (Matt. 5:16). I am all for living as this. If we all did what we were born for and did it zealously with all our gifts through God's Power, we would be lights shining in a dark world...(dark as the Scriptures define it). "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it "(John 1:5). Do what you are born for, and let your light shine.

Ever so often we need to a reset our mission. Holidays, sports, too many activities, too much politics and watching too much news. We have a calling, mission to fulfill. We have a commitment to God our Creator to be diligently at work in it. We all need more praying time, interaction time with God and His Spirit to get His Intelligence in all we do. God is Spirit and the core strength of our existence is living through Spirit.

I faced a close call in my late thirties... came close to dying. But that event changed my life. I experienced a glimpse of Heaven. It is much better than achievements of earth. So I focus on things of Heaven not on earth (Col. 3:2). Mission has a greater reward beyond the now and natural. There may be rewards here, but our Spiritual investment in Heaven yields an unexplainable return. What the earth can bring can seem pretty good or it can be not so good, but mission in heart takes us beyond earth's rewards to something much greater. Living our mission is just so much better.

How I came to what I feel I am called to do...

Bigger is not always better. Today a person may have two or three they are really close to. This will become more common. The big followings will dwindle as fewer will have them. There is power though in being small, but close-knit. Spiritual strength, stamina, ingenuity is in the quality of relationship, not the number of. Actually, the more we have relationships with, the lesser the quality per each relationship we have.

Jesus promoted this. He had three He was very close to, then the twelve, then the seventy-two. This is where His Power originates from... quality of a relationship, although these relationships connect with others. It is like a web, or network of interconnecting small hubs.(You may note here, the three were part of the twelve, and the twelve were part of the seventy-two. The were all intertwined and connected in Spirit.)

When we enter our mission, we start where we are, with what we have, and grow out from there.

As we charge up our mission... we become lights to brighten a dark world around us.

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