shadow mission

One of my favorite people in the world often talks in front of people. He has stories that are classically memorable and others that are ridiculously overused. Nevertheless, the point always comes across, the plane always lands, and often the crowd is left thinking a little bit deeper, a little more profoundly once the talk has concluded. One such story that slips into the category of classically memorable has to do with purpose. With great insight and ponder, he ventures the idea that everything in the room has a purpose. The light makes it possible for us to see, the chair is made sturdy to hold our weight so we can sit down, the door allows us to come inside the room, the door knob… well, you get it. He talks of how everything in the room knows its purpose, except us. Humans were built with such capacity, such complexity and such brilliance and yet have no answer when pressed with, ‘what’s your purpose?’

I am not the first to write of purpose. Nor the first to write of a life mission. But this is the first time that I’ve written of my own mission with a mark of unmistakable assurance. I’ve come to realize in the last few weeks with blazing clarity that the reason I feel so disconnected and terribly unused as of late is not just because I’ve moved to a new place. It’s because I’ve stepped away temporarily from my sweet spot. My purpose. My life mission. If you’re a follower of Christ and yearn to serve him wholeheartedly you should know your mission (spoiler alert- it’s at the end of Matthew.) But in the grandness of God and his incomprehensible creativity, he’s made every single human a little bit differently. So even though it’s my mission to spread the gospel, what does that look like in Kristin’s life specifically? How am I wired, molded and created to bring the most glory to the one who breathed life into me?

  I believe it is my purpose to find my own worth only in the presence of my creator, and bring others to know the value, grace, and perfect love freely available in exchange for a life carved by relentless inadequacy. 

Here’s the sticky thing about a life this side of heaven though. For every flawless purpose God has divinely woven in us, there is an equal pull from the conflicting side that I’ve heard to be called a shadow mission. Dangerously lurking in opposition, the enemy knows how we’re wired, molded and created enough to present us with a different choice on how to live. Often, he places it on a shiny platter and dresses it up to look an awful lot like our divine mission. In my own life, I’ve come to find that evil does it’s best work in me when I’m looking for my own worth in the temporary things and opinions of this world, and when I’m somehow prevented to encourage others to move towards an unshaken faith in Christ.

Needless to say, in the past couple weeks there have been several days when my shadow mission out-lived and out-worked my divine one. And candidly… those days suck. They’re lifeless, confusing, lazy and tiring. So if those words have ever been synonyms of your own life, seek the one truth, the one Father, the one savior that can transform years of insecurity, pain, and confusion into a steady, focused mission of peace and ultimate fulfillment.

Seek your mission, pray with renewed passion to do his work, and arm yourself with the light of Christ because it’s only in his marvelous light that those lurking shadows cannot exist.