My personal mission statement

The outward focused life is the subject of another blog to which I make occassional contributions. The blog can be found here. This post will also appear there in due course.

Being outwardly focused is only part of the lifestyle to which I aspire. On the wall of my study I have a personal mission statement. It reads like this:

Prayerfully motivated; outwardly focused; evangelistically active.

Being outwardly focused is in the middle for good reason. At first it fell there because that is how I wrote out the three part statement, but as time has gone on, I now realise that it is no accident that that it falls between prayerful motivation and evangelistic activity.

I want everything I do to be motivated by my relationship with God. Without prayer I lurch from one good idea to the next without much thought about its place in the overall scheme of things. I’m often aware that too much of the time we seek to involve God in what we are doing rather than seeking to involve ourselves in what he is doing.

I pray both specific prayers and general prayers. I ask God for direction and opportunities in particular areas of life and ministry and I also ask God for what you might call his general guidance as I go about my daily life. For example, I know God wants me to notice people and demonstrate his love towards them, so I can pray generally for an open heart and for open eyes in all sorts of circumstances. This is what I mean when I think about being prayerfully motivated.

Being outwardly focused has to have its roots in a prayerful openness to God’s purposes, otherwise it becomes little more than an exercise in good will to all men. I want to be a nice person, I want to be a kind person, but that’s not all I want to be!

Being evangelistically active gives me the context for being outwardly focused. It reminds me that the ultimate goal of my outward life is to point people towards the amazing God who has loved us and who offers us forgiveness and leadership, reconciliation and hope. It reminds me that I must add conversations to my actions, I must be prepared to a give a reason for my hope to paraphrase one New Testament writer. I don’t get many opportunities to help people “cross the line of faith”, but I get plenty of opportunities to help them on their way.

The more I seek to live an outward life, the more I realise that I need to keep my motivation and context connected with the purposes of God. My personal mission statement helps me do that.