Mission

Karl Helvig: Youth and Young Adults 

Mission impossible.  Mission accomplished.  Mission: Put a pony tail in my daughter's hair and convince her to leave it there (which, for a dad like me sometimes feels like mission impossible!).

This past Saturday the students of Studio72 talked and learned about God's mission.

More importantly, we sought to JOIN in his mission and steer our lives to BE missional.  

 Every day on mission.

It strikes me that Advent and the whole Christmas season is really quite timely for a conversation about mission.  Sometimes we can be easily tempted to believe that Christmas is about all sorts of things that it really isn't about: shopping, tinsel, reindeer with red noses, ugly sweaters, egg nog, movies with heart warming themes and lots of fires in fireplaces.  None of those things are bad (I plan to include many of them somewhere during my Christmas season), but they are most certainly not the center of what Christmas is about.

Rather, thousands of years ago God made a promise to a guy named Abram and said he would bless the whole world through him and his kids.  Some time went by and God made another promise to save and redeem his people (which, is actually part of the first promise to bless others through his people).  Then, all sorts of God-followers spent lots of time talking about how this would happen and when this would happen and who the Messiah would be (Messiah being the anointed one of God who would accomplish the thousands of years old mission that God set in motion with a guy from a place called Ur... [feel free to peruse Genesis 11-25 for more on the guy from Ur, also called Abram, also called Abraham]).  So, God has been on a mission for about as long as anyone can tell and that mission is simple, He wants to bless the world.

 

Christmas is the season when we remember one of the
central, major, history-altering moments in God's mission.

 God decided to move his mission forward by coming to earth.

 That is what Christmas is about.

 

God moved his mission forward by coming to earth.  God included Abram in his mission, Abram lived on earth.  After Jesus grew up and was crucified and resurrected he told his followers he would leave his Holy Spirit with us here on earth.   
 

God's mission gets moved forward by people on earth.

 

This Christmas season: be invigorated as you continue to join in God's mission; be reminded of the miracle of God's coming to earth to accomplish his mission with us; be encouraged by the friends and family and tinsel and ugly sweaters that ideally remind us of the reason we celebrate so thoroughly every year.

How are you joining that mission this Christmas?

 

Merry Missional Christmas!