In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers the main characters Jake and Elwood said they were on a mission from God. They weren’t, but we are…
In our last post on The Four-Chapter Gospel, we said there is an important practical reason to read the Bible as one narrative: it enables us to understand our identity and significance as God’s people as we see our role in His story. From this perspective we clearly see our call to participate in His redemptive mission.
Chris Wright in his book, God’s Mission: The Key To Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, summarizes this missional Biblical narrative:
The whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of God’s whole creation.
Thus the mission of the people of God, he says, is
our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation…
This is The Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going.
Our identity as God’s people comes from our missional role in the Biblical story, which is not future, but in the here and now. By recovering Scripture’s storyline we rediscover our true identity.
As we go through our lives in this world we must realize we are truly on a mission from God. Our mission goes beyond evangelizing far-off places or teaching a Sunday School class. It defines the meaning of our entire lives, which necessarily means that it encompasses our vocational work.
Faithfulness to our identity as God’s missional people allows us to not be conformed to the cultural idolatry of this world but to be transformed by the gospel of Christ (Romans 12:2).
By answering the call to fulfill our roles in God’s redemptive drama, we find meaning in even the most mundane activities. Along with meaning we find peace and satisfaction which transcend our greatest expectations.
Question: How can you live out this mission from God right where you are today? Leave a comment.
