Your Personal Mission Statement

National best-selling author, Laurie Beth Jones, in her book, The Path: creating your mission statement for work and for life, wrote about an incident in WWII where an unidentified soldier suddenly appeared in the dark and could not state his mission… he was automatically shot without question. She wonders what would happen if we reinforce that policy today. 

 

I suppose being confronted with life and death would force us to reexamine who we are and what we are really about. People leading unfulfilled lives would burst forth with possibility and power. Our mission statement is in essence our written-down reason for existing. This is the key to finding your path in life and identifying the mission you choose to follow.  

 

Jesus had a mission statement. “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) or perhaps, “I have come to seek and to save those who are lost.” (Luke 19:10). So, every activity he understood was a result of that mission statement.  

 

Laurie Beth goes on to give three guidelines in developing a personal mission statement:

  1. It should be no more than a single sentence in length
  2. It must be easily understood by a twelve year old
  3. You should be able to recite it by memory at gunpoint

 

Abraham Lincoln’s mission was to preserve the Union; FDR’s mission was to end the Depression; Nelson Mandela’s mission was to end apartheid; Mother Teresa’s mission was to show mercy and compassion to the dying; Joan of Arc’s mission was to save France; Nehemiah’s mission was to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Forgetting one’s mission leads to getting tangled up in details that will take you completely off your path. 

 

My mission statement? To know Christ and make Him known. It’s not an astounding treatise or even original. But I get my mission statement from Mark 3:14, where Jesus called His disciples to first be with Him, and then He sent them out to preach the gospel.  My challenge to you is to seriously consider why you exist on this planet, or where you live at this time in history. How will you impact eternity for those around you? Focus on your mission so you do not get distracted.

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