Jesus is an outward-facing, outgoing, outreach-oriented, on-mission kind of Savior. When you said yes to Jesus, you said yes to living with Him on mission, because you and I are being conformed into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). If we're following Him, eventually we're going to live life on mission too. And here's the good news: Jesus says in John 10:10, "I came that you might have life, that it might be full and abundant and meaningful." The most fulfilling life you'll ever have is a life that's lived on mission.

What Does It Mean to Live on Mission?

Living on mission is living out the priorities of God, in the character of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Living out the priorities of God means we're going to live according to His Word. God has given us commands. He's told us what matters most to Him. If we're following Jesus, we're going to do what God wants us to do. It's not "my will be done," but "Your will be done."

We're also called to live out these priorities in the character of Christ, which means you can actually do the right thing for the wrong reason. You can do the right thing with the wrong motives or in the wrong way. Think about it: have you ever asked a teenager to take out the trash? They go off grumbling, banging the trash against the wall on the way out. They did the right thing, but the mode wasn't right. The way they did it wasn't right. You can do the right thing in the wrong way.

When Jesus was on this earth, He was full of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is the character of our Savior. You can do the right things, but you need to do them in the character of Christ.

And then there's the power of the Holy Spirit, because the Christian life is impossible to live in our own ability and our own flesh. God gave us the Holy Spirit as a deposit, and the Holy Spirit comes into our lives to convict us, to counsel us, to encourage us, to build us up, and to help us see the right way. When we live out the priorities of God, in the character of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, there is an incredible picture of what it means to live on mission.

Jesus: Our Example of Living on Mission

The good news is we have an example. His name is Jesus. All through Scripture we see Him living this life on mission. In Matthew chapter nine, Jesus has healed a paralytic, called a tax collector to be His disciple (which means anyone could be a disciple of Jesus), had a conversation with a woman who suffered from bleeding for twelve years, raised a little girl from the dead, dialogued with John the Baptist's disciples about fasting, and given sight to the blind and healing to a mute, demon-possessed person. Jesus is teaching, proclaiming, and healing. He's doing all of it.

You get to verse 35 at the end of the chapter, and it's a summary verse of everything that's been happening. Matthew 9:35 says, "Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness."

What we see over the next few verses are four things Jesus did that He expects us to do, four choices Jesus made that He's asking us to make.

The First Choice: Jesus Went

The first choice is this: Jesus went. He was an initiator. He didn't wait for the other person to make the first move. He stepped out in faith. He stepped out in love. Romans 5:8 says, "God demonstrates His love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God didn't wait for us to figure it out. He didn't wait for us to get our act together. He didn't wait for us to get it right. He initiates. He makes the first move.

He Is an Includer

Look at the verse again: Jesus was going through all the cities and villages. That word "all" means no one was left out, that everyone mattered. Everyone matters to God, so everyone should matter to us. That cranky neighbor who's always complaining? They matter to God. That coworker who's just not your kind of person, the one you don't want to spend any more time with than you have to? They matter to God. That driver on the road who cut you off, or drove too slow, or drove too fast? They matter to God. The grocery store clerk, the waiter or waitress; they matter to God, and they should matter to us.

He Is Intentional

The verse tells us Jesus was doing three things: teaching, proclaiming, and healing. He was opening up the Word of God and talking about who God is, what God has done, and who we can become in Him. He was proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, the good news. Some people proclaim the gospel, but their version sounds more like cursing the darkness than proclaiming the light. It's only full of bad news. If the gospel you're preaching has no good news, it's either incorrect or it's incomplete. We don't just curse the darkness; we proclaim the light.

And He was healing, physically and spiritually. There was help, hope, and healing happening in Jesus' ministry. If that was happening in His ministry, it's supposed to happen in ours too. Everywhere you go, whether you're a student or a teacher in a classroom, an employee or a boss in a workplace, or wherever you find yourself in your family, you should bring help, hope, and healing to a world that's lost without the gospel of Jesus Christ. His good news was always accompanied by good deeds, and ours should be as well.

This was not a one-time thing for Jesus. These exact same words appear in Matthew 4:23: teaching, proclaiming, and healing. This wasn't just something He did once; this was a lifestyle for Jesus, and it needs to be a lifestyle for us.

When One Apology Changed Everything

A number of years ago, my church merged with another church. We invited them into our fellowship. We were probably average age 25 and they were probably average age 65, but they were declining and we were growing, so they joined us. It was quite a mix bringing those generations together. I was over at the campus one day and I met Gary Merrill. Gary was a junior high science teacher and the leader of the Fellowship of Light Sunday School class. He had been leading that class for 27 years. They were the young marrieds when they started, but by then they were all retirees.

Gary came to me and said, "Scott, you've been talking about living on mission and being a witness. How do you do that?" This guy had been leading a Sunday school class for 27 years. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I've never actually invited anyone to church, and I've never shared my faith. How do you even begin?" I told him, "You begin by putting a face in your mind. Don't just say, 'Yeah, I should invite somebody.' Put a face in your mind."

So he thought about it and said, "I have a neighbor across the street. Her husband died a couple of years ago, and Linda and I have been taking care of her, encouraging her and helping her." I asked how long she'd been his neighbor. He said six or seven years. I told him, "Why don't you just apologize to her?" He looked at me like I was crazy. I said, "She's been your neighbor for six or seven years. You love your church, right? And you've never invited her? You should apologize."

He thought about it and said, "Yeah, that might actually work." So the next weekend, he was working on her porch, and he looked up at her and said, "Hey, I just need to apologize to you." She was taken aback. "What? Why would you apologize? You and Linda have been so kind to me since my husband passed." He said, "Yeah, but I've been keeping a secret from you. I have a fantastic church. I love my church, and I've never invited you. I'm sorry. Would you like to come with us this weekend?"

She was so taken aback she said okay. She showed up the next weekend, and we had a women's Bible study sign-up. She didn't know, as a nonbeliever, that typically only Christians sign up for Bible studies. She thought, "I'm not a Christian. I don't know the Bible. I should probably sign up for the Bible study." So she did. A few weeks later, she gave her life to Christ in that Bible study. About a month later, there were Gary and Linda baptizing her. All because they chose to make the first move. They didn't wait for the other person to figure it out. They knew they were perfectly positioned in the life of their neighbor.

The Second Choice: Jesus Felt

Verse 36 says, "Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited, like sheep without a shepherd." The second choice Jesus made was that He felt.

How many of us can be in a crowd and not actually see the people? Maybe you're like me, running through an airport just trying to get from gate to gate, and you're just weaving around people. Or you're at the mall trying to get to a store. Or you're in your neighborhood, but you're really focused on your own grass, and you don't actually see your neighbors. You can be around people and never truly see them.

But Jesus saw them. He saw that they were distressed, dispirited, harassed, and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Consider what Israel was like in that day. Food was scarce, jobs were difficult, medical care was nowhere to be found, and the Romans had occupied the territory for generations. The people were depressed and oppressed. It was in this environment that Jesus' light came in and began to shine.

When Jesus saw them, something happened inside of Him. It was a welling up of compassion. Compassion is a word with Latin roots: "com" means "with," and "passion" means "suffering." It means being willing to enter into someone else's pain. We have enough pain of our own, so why would we want to enter into someone else's? We look at our neighbor or our coworker and think, "That's a mess. If I get involved, that mess is going to spill on me." But ministry is messy. The reason it's messy is because it involves people. If your ministry isn't messy, you're probably not really doing ministry. As long as it involves people, it's going to be messy. And yet we have to enter into their pain. We have to let compassion well up in us.

Teaching Our Families to Feel

I've been trying to instill this in my family. My kids are grown now and out of the house. More importantly, they're out of the wallet. They live around the country. But when they were young, we all lived in Arizona, and we would go across the border to Nogales. I wanted my kids to experience what it was like to have no power, no water, and to make friends with people in those circumstances.

When they got older, I did some other things. My daughter Ashlyn and I went to Fiji when she was 14. We didn't go to surf; we went to a village where we were working with Homes of Hope, a ministry that rescues girls out of the sex slave trade. These girls were between 11 and 14 years old. Most of them had two kids already. Their fathers had sold them into slavery, and we were ministering to them, trying to help them back into society. There was so much shame involved. My daughter, at 14, was the same age as these young moms. She talked about how she has an earthly father who loves her desperately, and that didn't quite connect. But what really connected was this: "You also have a Heavenly Father who loves you." She got to share the gospel. It changed her life.

My son David went to Cambodia the summer he graduated high school. My son John, who is the adventurous one, worked in a food pantry with me when he was 12. He would take the box, put it up on the countertop, and tell the family, "This may not be enough for the week, but hopefully it's enough. If it's not, just come back and see us. We just want you to know that God loves you, we care about you, and we hope you have a great week."

One day, John put the box up on the counter and the family took it, said thank you, and walked out. He turned around, and he was just distressed. I asked, "Buddy, are you okay?" He said, "Dad, that family." I said, "What about them? They seemed like every other family." He said, "The oldest kid in that family, Dad. He's in my class."

And it just broke his heart. What if our hearts broke for what breaks the heart of God? What if what we care about is what God cares about? If we see what God sees and feel what God feels, we'll do what He says. If we see what He sees and feel what He feels, we will live on mission. Hopefully, we're willing to get into the mess and allow compassion to well up in us as well.