on a mission from God

The Word for today:
Luke 4:14-30

mark this: Luke 4:17-20 --

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

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Stop! Look! Listen!--
Luke 4:18-19 quotes Isaiah 61:1-2. These passages are crucial to understanding the Big Picture--the overall plan--of God's Kingdom.
The Bible student should understand why Jesus stopped, in mid-sentence, as he read from Isaiah 61:2. Stand in the Rain explained the significance of this abrupt ending when we were studying Isaiah (in January, 2010).
If you are unsure of the significance of these verses in Isaiah--and the way Jesus applied them in Luke--then it is imperative for you to turn here and, especially, here.

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Churches have mission statements. You'll find them proclaimed atop their websites and their stationery.

Corporations have mission statements. Committees will meet over the course of years, parsing each word in order to come up with just the right phrasing for their statement of purpose.

Do you have a personal mission statement? Could you summarize, in a sentence or two, your life's purpose?

An old adage states that "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." A mission statement exists to combat that kind of aimlessness, to keep us heading straight toward a well-defined goal so we won't waste time by meandering among the side issues on the side streets.

I think Jesus had a mission statement. Appropriately, he used it as the text of his first sermon:

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. (Luke 4:17-20; cf. Luke 4:43)

When I first read the Bible and became a believer (which were simultaneous occurrences for me) I was struck by how "little" Jesus was in our culture--and even in our churches--when compared to the Jesus I'd just met in scripture.  So years later, when I took up Bible teaching, I constantly stressed a "bigger" Jesus, to the extent that the quintessential Q & A of my classes has become--

Q. How big is Jesus?
A. Bigger!
Q. How big is "bigger?"
A. Bigger!

For me, then, my mission pronounced itself first and I found the perfect scriptural statement of it much later. I found it in the first line of Mary's Song:

"My soul magnifies the Lord." (Luke 1:46)

That's my mission. I use that verse to remind me what the target is, because I've found through experience that it is very easy to get sidetracked amidst all the trappings--the traps--of churchiness and phony religiosity and self-aggrandizement.

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So much for Jesus' mission statement, and so much for mine. But what about yours?

I hope that you take some time to give it some thought. As you do, remember that a mission statement can differ from your "life verse" in this way:

A life verse usually says what you believe.
A mission statement says what you're going to do about it.

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