This week I want to talk about mission and missions, I want to propose a model for how we look at everyday life as Christians in whatever context we find ourselves.

I remember growing up in church, and sometimes on Sunday nights or even on a Sunday morning, we would have a missionary come and they would tell us about what work they were doing in some far, distant place where people didn't know God, but needed to. They would tell us that our offering dollars had helped support their work of spreading the gospel.

I think the impression I got growing up is similar to the default, implicit impression many of us have today, which is that missionaries are certain types of people who go to different far away places and it's a specific type of thing that we don't do. They're doing something different. Now I think, at least with that last part, that's right. For most of us, they are doing something different than we are doing on a daily basis, but should that be the case? Should there be the type of Christian who is a missionary and the type of Christian who is not a missionary? I would say no.

In fact, Charles Spurgeon actually said, "Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor." There is no middle ground. To be a Christina is to be one who has been redeemed by grace through faith and has been given a mission to go. To say, "I've been saved, but I will sit here and be content to go to heaven by myself," does not accord with anything in scripture. There is no middle ground. You're a missionary in some form or fashion, maybe a bad one like many of us are (sadly) or you're an impostor.

If we need to be a missionary, well, what does that mean? How should we think about life? You might be thinking, "Well, I can't be a missionary. I'm a school teacher.” “I work for the state." "I'm a stay at home mom, I'm not a missionary." Let me propose a way of thinking about daily life that may alter and flip the way you think about living. This is what I would suggest: While we go to work each day where you're a software developer, maybe you're a teacher, but we shouldn't think about ourselves that way.

Maybe that's what you do for the majority of your day, but God has called us all to primarily be missionaries. God didn't call me to be a software developer. He has called me to go in to all of the world and make disciples and tell them about Jesus and baptized them in the name of the Father and teach them everything he taught them. We see that in the great commission. That's something I'm told to do.

We're also told in scripture that God is reconciling the world to himself. He does that through a specific means. We, as Christians, have been given the ministry of reconciliation. We are the ambassadors of God who go and tell people that there is peace, there is forgiveness. We are the emissaries of our Sovereign King. We must represent Him well. That is our calling as Christians.

Now, how does this relate to my work? I still have to get up tomorrow and go to work. Well, what if you thought about each day as if I was going into the mission field, as if I am a missionary who happens to be a public school teacher. That is my mission field. Or as if I am a missionary who happens to work in the governors office. What if we thought about it that way?

I would suggest that that is a much more biblical way to think about life because we will always be missionaries if we live in accordance to the scripture, but we will not always be teachers and public servants and stay at home moms We will always be missionaries. That is the overarching calling of the Christian life. It's to be a disciple and a missionary. We may find ourselves in different places. You may move halfway across the world, you may switch jobs just down the street, or you m…