Call it off: Stop searching for your mission.

I finally gave up.  After twenty years of searching for my mission, I threw in the towel.  And today I’m going to ask you to do the same.  Stop searching for your mission.  I know where it is.

It’s not out there.  It’s not in the books you’ve been reading.  The podcasts you’ve been listening to.  It’s not even in the Bible.  It’s not at church.  It’s not at the next mission trip that you really are going to go on this time.  It’s not in this blog.

Your mission, your calling, is planted deep inside you right now.  Waiting, maybe even bursting, to get out.  It’s not missing.  It’s buried.  Buried under your mortgage, dentist appointments, soccer games, iPads, Facebook, and everything else that fills up absolutely every second of every day.

Each morning when I wake up I grab my Nook (stop laughing, it really looked like they’d catch on).  I power up and log on to Facebook.  I check the news websites and wonder what politicians are thinking.  I put on some music, grab a shower and get ready for work.  As I step into the living room I turn on the morning news and power up the laptop.  I check how the blog is trending, where I’m getting my traffic, etc.  I make breakfast and eat it while half-surfing and half watching the news.  I make lunch, hop in the car and get a podcast going before I even start the car.  I listen to that for the hour long drive to work and then get Pandora going once I’m settled in at my desk.  Then the river of email begins.

Never a break.  Buried in data.  Buried in input.

Pastor PJ Malin once gave me a simple tip.  Give the first two minutes of any trip in your car to God.  No radio.  No iPhone.  No podcast.  Nothing.  I don’t even like the air running if I can avoid it.  Two minutes.  Un-bury.  Un-clutter.  Find your own time to be silent.  Something happens.  Your mission starts rising to the surface.  It doesn’t even need your help.  It just needs you to stop packing more data on top of it.  Your mission is so desperate to reveal itself in your life that it will start to erupt the first chance you give it.

You never needed to search for it.  You needed to release it.

God didn’t bury your calling like a needle in a haystack.  He placed it securely in your heart, ready to go as soon as you give it room to breath.  Stop searching and let it rise to the surface.  There is a world waiting out there for that to happen.  A world waiting for what was planted in you the day you were born.  You were born with greatness.  You were born amazing.  You were born with a calling rooted deep within you.  I’m excited about the day you set it free.

We were built to be heroes.

It’s about time we started acting like heroes.