“…Let’s start with what a mission is. It is really much simpler than many men imagine.
A mission is your best effort at wisely integrating your interests, skills, and circumstances into a personal vision for exercising dominion over what God has given you.
This dominion, of course, is exercised in God’s stead. In a moment we will walk through some dos and don’ts for taking on this task, and you will see that it is actually very straightforward. Men were made to do it, so when it is explained to them, it naturally makes sense. But first we need to caution you against [some] assumptions that might tie you in knots.
- The first is that your mission must be “spiritual.” Modern Christians, conditioned into a functional gnosticism, think of serving the Lord as something that happens in church—so the ultimate version of this service is being a pastor, or maybe a missionary (mission is even in the name, after all). If they are not called to this, they think they are called to something lesser. As you now know, Scripture has a much broader and more holistic view of service than that. All of life is worship, and however you work, you are working for the Lord. Adam is the prototypical man, and being descended from him, we are to take over his work—his (co-)mission. So what does that look like? Well, Adam’s mission was not “spiritual” in the sense that modern Christians mean. He was to be fruitful (productive), to multiply and fill the earth (reproductive), and to exercise dominion (ordering the world). This certainly was spiritual, speaking in a biblical sense, where that term means something that involves man’s spirit in cooperation with the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 2:11–14). This is important to remember, because otherwise how could “mundane” work be worship? Naturalistic reductionism is no better than gnostic reductionism. But what we mean is that the primary work Adam was given, to till the ground, was notably ordinary and physical. Quite the opposite of what most people today mean when they speak of spiritual labor, Adam’s mission was vocational. The work God gives him to do is just that: his daily job. So you, as a son of Adam, should be looking for a similarly vocational mission. The spiritual component of it will not be some kind of separate work, because ordinary labor is spiritual work when it is done in service of the Lord of Spirits, through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 12:1–2).
- The second assumption that will get you into trouble is the idea that your mission must somehow be epic. It is natural to want your mission to be the kind of thing that someone will later write a biography about, or make a movie to depict. This is, at root, a recognition that you are made for glory, that your place in God’s plan matters. But this recognition is easily twisted by sin and, in the modern day, is blown out of all proportion, because your ideals have been conditioned by movies in which larger-than-life heroes achieve larger-than-life objectives—things that, in the real world, are just absurd. You are not Superman, or even Batman or John Wick or Dominic Turetto or John McClane. You won’t be stopping any asteroids with your bare hands (or even with a nuclear bomb), or exposing any global conspiracies, or stopping any criminal masterminds. It is good to desire great things, but it is also imperative to be content with whatever lot God has given you. We must all seek to be like Paul, who learned to be content with much and content with little (Phil. 4:12). Aspire to be as great within your lot as you can be—but do not let foolish pride or unrealistic ambition blind you to the actual opportunities, and limitations, that God has placed before you. Most importantly, the very first opportunity and limitation that sets the limits of your mission is your own conformity to God’s law. Dominion over creation is pretty grand in principle, and it is true that Adam was made to rule as king in God’s stead. But remember that Adam was made to be a priest, a servant, before he could become a king and a lord. It was only by obedient service that he could enter into the grandness of the plan that God had for him. This principle is consummated in the Lord Jesus, who, unlike Adam, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself to become a servant, enduring the cross in order to attain the glory set before Him, despising the shame of it (Phil. 2; Heb. 12; cf. Matt. 4). This is why He tells us that the first shall be last, and the last first; He sets the example of it. The greatest things are generally given to those who first prove themselves worthy in the little. Even legendary journeys start with small steps—so do not despise the day of small things.”
This excerpt is taken with permission from Chapter 12 of It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook on Godly Masculinity by Michael Foster. Watch Michael’s IGTBAM documentary streaming on Canon+ now.