Blog

Within the last year I have walked through a path of change that has taken me out of the United States Army and into a season more focused on family and others. The indoctrination that you first receive when you join the military ensures that you always have a mindset that is preparing and gearing up for the next mission. That mission- a clear definition of success and the end-state you are working to achieve—provides focus and clarity as you choose what to invest your time and resources in. Leaving the military, I have had a huge and lingering question, what is my mission now?

Throughout this change, I have been especially thankful that God is a God of love and grace, but also order. In His word he has given us a clear framework to build our lives around. Before we can answer the question of what our individual mission is, we must understand the calling that has been given to us as followers of Christ. In Mathew 22:37-40, Jesus clearly answered the Pharisees when they came and asked him which is the greatest commandment, “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.””

I like to keep things simple, loving God and loving others as a framework for your entire life gives you clear, God-directed, and understandable criteria that can be applied to every moment. But it’s not just loving and following God as best as you can - God calls us to love with everything that He has equipped us with -heart, soul, mind, and strength. Until our last breath on planet earth, we are called by God to give Him our everything. I’ll be honest, walking out of a job where I was prepared to give my final breath in service to others, I have struggled to understand how I might find the same level of purpose.

Here is where I found an equally challenging response- giving up my priorities and desires each day in exchange for God’s, I am taking the risk that I will expend every part of myself without a clear, self-focused time to rejuvenate. In essence, every day we have the opportunity to lay down our lives and serve God to the point that only He can sustain us. That sounds risky and challenging, two things that activate deep and innate parts of every-man’s heart. Here is the reality, this only works if you are actively pursuing the heart of God through daily prayer, reading, and meditation which provides that opportunity for God to fill us back up. It’s almost as if God designed us to live like this…

The second part of the passage talks about others. Structuring our approach to others is critically important as there are numerous “others” in this lost and broken world. We are finite, we cannot give beyond the equipping that God has provided us. Going back to the garden of Eden, God provided Adam’s first “other,” his wife Eve. Our first “other” is our spouse. The person that we become one flesh with, establish a family with, and hopefully spend the majority of our lives with in service to God. The next step in God’s giving of “others” for Adam to serve were his kids. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” Psalm 127:3-5 ESV. I absolutely love the description that David gives to children, arrows that honed, sharpened, and launched out into the world to conduct the mission that God has given them. Between loving your wife and kids, there will be seasons where these are the only priorities that you will have time to steward.

Two other categories that God has given us are to care for our extended family (1 Timothy 5:8) and to go and make disciples of every nation. His heart extends to each and every person on earth, and so should ours. However, the expansive nature of this last group means that we could spend our entire lives serving these others and neglect the first two categories that God has established.

Back to the question that has been nagging at me ever since I started charting the course out of the military where the mission was clearly defined for me every day. The answer God has been reinforcing for me is that the mission to love God and love others always existed. Additionally, the reality that was slowly soaking in was that in one aspect of my life, I had let the world define my mission over what God had for me. How did this manifest daily? Staying at work beyond the end of the work day to try and get ahead on tomorrows tasks, choosing to take my time away from family to invest in things that helped me to be better at my job, and when I was off work my mind was consumed with the stress and challenges of the military mission. In essence, my world revolved around my job. Have you found yourself in this situation? Finding the mission that the world has offered more engaging than the mission that God has laid out for us to be faithful to our wives, father our children, and serve others with everything that we have?

There is one other person that I haven’t mentioned in the priorities above, and that’s me. There is inherent risk in orienting your life around the service of God and others that seems to put our sanity and mental well-being at risk. The question is this, do you trust God? Do you trust that if you give him your everything that He can and will maintain you?

Here are a couple verses that highlight exactly my experience in the last year as God has sustained me through this incredible and critically important change. Luke 6:38 – Give and it will be given to you, a good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Proverbs 11:25 – “A generous man will prosper, he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”

Perhaps today is the day God has called you to re-order your life. Perhaps it is at this moment that He is calling you to take the risk to put Him first, God has been the same yesterday, today, and forever…something close to eternity, I think we can trust Him today!