What Is My Mission?

The Mission of God’s People

Do you have a life mission statement? Are you on a mission? God has a specific mission for his people – one that can transform the way you look at your daily work.

God has called you from death to life, from darkness into his glorious light, for a reason. Part of that reason is what he wants you to accomplish in the here and now. To know what God wants you to do with your life, go back to where God’s grand story starts – Genesis 1.

When Moses wrote the opening chapters of Genesis, he was trying to prepare God’s people of his day for the mission they were created to fulfill, a mission we are still called to accomplish today.

God created man in his own image to care for and rule over the earth. He assigned this mission in the very beginning of creation for all of humanity. We have the same responsibility of Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over the earth.

This is man’s original calling. The gospel call is a redemptive return to a lost and forfeited calling: to being God’s image bearers in the world, a calling that has never had anything less than the entirety of God’s original, good creation in view.

In Genesis 1, God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo, out of nothing, and all he made was good. It is clear that God delights in the work of his hands.

As man made in the image of God, the process of creating is a form of worship, a way for creatures to express the divine image in them by creating something out of something. Through our work we are called to be creative and productive, imitating our Creator. We should enjoy not only the work of God’s hands, but also that of our own.

Work in different forms is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. Work is what you were created to do. The work in your daily vocation sustains the mission for which you were intended.

We should be on a mission, and that mission is to be who God intended us to be as we live and work in his world for his glory.

Do you delight in your work? What are the implications of today’s devotional material on your view of work?

Genesis 1:1-2

The Beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”

7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.

8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so.

10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.

12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,

15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so.

16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth,

18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 

19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”

21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”

23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.

25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

We would like to thank Hugh Whelchel and the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics for providing this plan. For more information, please visit: www.tifwe.org

link: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/2170-what-is-my-mission