Be Mission Ready
What does it mean to live mission ready? Why should we even care, especially if we find ourselves in the third 3rd of life? Why not just kick back?
As a working 63 year old husband (40 years) and father of 4 adult children and grandpa to 2 grandchildren, I get these questions.
I still find myself these days working 50+ hours per week amid tremendous challenges and complexities, with lots of personal financial pressures, and there’s no retirement in sight. Through my own struggles to live a focused, God-centered life in the midst of much suffering, challenge and complexity, I am discovering more of what being mission ready means for me in my everyday life.
I’ll share more of my story in a different post. For now it’s enough to say that struggle and suffering is real in everyone’s life, and my life has been no different. The point is not that my suffering is more or less than yours. Everyone suffers. It’s how we process that suffering that makes the difference.
God has used this suffering to make it clear that helping people become mission ready is my life calling.
God is not done with me, or with you. I’ve been on the table for a long surgery. Some of you have too. To whom much is given much is expected and required. He has plans for us. He’s waiting. He wants to make us mission ready.
For me, it became more real on 6 January 2021, when God called me to embark on one of the hardest journeys of my life: losing weight and getting in shape.
I’ve struggled with my weight all my life and it still can be a struggle today. But God had mercy on me and opened the pathway for me to begin to work through some of my addiction related to food. By His grace, I lost 50 pounds.
In 2021 He also called me begin building a company, Be Mission Ready, to help other people discover their mission and answer their own call.
So what does it really mean to be mission ready? That’s a big question, one that I will unpack in future posts, but for now let’s start with a simple definition:
To be Mission Ready is to be prepared to hear and answer the call of God whenever it comes, wherever it leads and whatever it costs.
Supporting this definition are some foundational principles:
Everyone has a mission.
Completion of that mission requires a lot of faith, humility, courage and wisdom.
Everyone leads someone, even if it just themselves.
Being Mission Ready means being prepared to lead yourself and others toward true success.
Approaching life as an integrated whole (spiritual, physical, intellectual/mental and social) results in deeper and more sustainable change.
I recently illustrated some of these basic principles in a devotional centered on a brief unpacking of the first chapter of the Bible book of Joshua.
I believe Joshua was already living his life mission ready, and so he was good to go when the call came to recon the promised land, give an inspirational report that was not well received, and then take charge of what by any estimation a stupid-hard mission.
He knew God, and trusted Him. This is key. You cannot be truly mission ready without examining and allowing God to reshape your life. And that means reaching the place that you are willing to undertake the intense training that is part of learning to be mission ready - one day at a time.
Are you ready to begin? If so, please subscribe to this blog for more content that will help you Be Mission Ready.