Discovering your mission for life

Tom Harper

Discovering your mission for life

If I were to ask you what your organization’s mission and vision are, what would you say? What about its purpose, goals, values and strategic plan?

While many leaders can run successful businesses and thriving churches without clear answers to all these questions, it’s helpful to take the time to think them through and create a formal document that can be shared and taught to all your employees.

But it’s not the best thing you could do as a leader, at least not until you’ve figured out something else beforehand.

The first thing to do is start with you. Your personal mission. Your life vision. What has God called you to do, to be, to strive for?

Once you sense God’s personal calling on your life, your picture gets bigger. You start looking at the horizon, not just the moments that occupy your days. As your vision expands and your horizon stretches, your job and leadership responsibilities will assume their rightful priorities.

Along the way, though, you might discover a slight incongruence that gnaws at you. If your work mission doesn’t support your personal calling, you likely will feel a tension in your heart.

Though I love my job, I’ve felt this tension for almost 20 years. It’s slowly intensified year after year. What I’ve found is that the tension has given way to a passion that won’t leave me alone.

My passion is rooted in the Great Commission. Many Christians will find their own passions intersecting with this general calling in some way. After all, Jesus commanded us to do it wherever we go in life:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you….”  – Matthew 28:19-20a

This was the disciples’ mission after he was gone. If you’re a Christ-follower, you’re also one of his disciples, and this mission beckons you, too.

I want to make disciples in all nations, teaching them to obey Christ. It’s what BiblicalLeadership.com is all about, it’s what I try to do in every one of my books. I’ve chosen specifically to reach out to Christian leaders, as well as non-Christian leaders who are seeking deeper truth beyond the grind of their job.

If you don’t know what your individual calling is, why not start with Matthew 28:19? How might you execute this command—this Great Commission to make disciples – in your own life? If not in your daily work, perhaps you could serve in your church, help a ministry, mentor young people, teach a Bible study?

Whatever it is, I pray the Lord will bless you mightily as you accomplish his will. I pray he will infuse you with joy and faith as you discover and act on the calling he’s whispering into your own tension-filled heart.

Photo source: istock 


Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022).

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