Motivational Mission Quotes

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

Your greatest self has been waiting your whole life; don't make it wait any longer.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what "little" acts have done for our world.

Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general.

You've been given the innate power to shape your life...but you cannot just speak change, you have to LIVE change. Intent paired with action builds the bridge to success. You can't just want it; you have to do it, live it...BE it! Success isn't something you have, it's something you DO!

Every game is winnable if you change your mind about what the prize should be and your perspective about the players at the table.

Any day above ground is a good day. Before you complain about anything, be thankful for your life and the things that are still going well.

You start to live when you commit your life to cause higher than yourself. You must learn to depend on divine power for the fulfillment of a higher calling.

Find something you love and go for it with all your heart. No excuses, no plan B. Never settle for anything less than you know you can do. It will be hard, but I promise it will be worth it.

No matter how dysfunctional your background, how broke or broken you are, where you are today, or what anyone else says, YOU MATTER, and your life matters!

God can deliver you so well that some people won’t believe your testimony.

Your mission: May you continue to shine no matter the storms you have been through.

It is great to do what you love but greater with the great team.

The “Warrior Ethos” emphasizes placing the mission first, not accepting defeat, and being disciplined physically and mentally. Why? Because an American Soldier is a “guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

Don't worry. You'll find your message in your mess.

Legacy accounting: Will you have been an asset or a liability on the world's balance sheet?

Leaders must get across the why as well as the what. Their people need more than milestones for motivation. They are thirsting for meaning, to understand how their goals relate to the mission.

What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This, more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission.

Do not be obsessed with expensive things. Instead, be obsessed with excellence. Things don't make you excellent. However, excellence will make you expensive.

A man worth being with is one… That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another’s life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.

people who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.

At a basic level, your personal mission has to be rooted in the story of you, the sum of your life experiences, and what you want to achieve in the future. It is like a blueprint for your life that is filled with action verbs and themes that you associate with achieving a sense of abundance, and which extends beyond material resources.

Self-education is open to all but it is taken only by those who refuse to live a small and purposeless life.

The world needs great inspires, who will encourage every living soul to reach their highest potential. You can be one.

We can do more than we imagine by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The black, the white, the brown, the red, the yellow, the hetero, the homo, the trans, the poor, the rich, the literate, the illiterate, the weak, the strong – all are my sisters and brothers. My life is their life. And till the last breath in my body, I shall be serving you all with all the power in my veins. And beyond death, my ideas shall be serving you for eternity.

The willingness to challenge hardships taps the power within human beings to transform even a place of tragedy into a stage for fulfilling one's mission.

If you fulfill the wishes of your employees, the employees will fulfill your visions.

May God guide you on the new travel path.

So in this letter I am yours. Not Garden’s, not your mission’s, but yours, alone. I am yours in other ways as well: yours as I watch the world for your signs, apophenic as a haruspex; yours as I debate methods, motives, chances of delivery; yours as I review your words by their sequence, their sound, smell, taste, taking care no one memory of them becomes too worn. Yours. Still, I suspect you will appreciate the token.

Life is not about our personal missions through God, it's about God's mission through our designed purpose.

Being a fool is a billion times better than being blinded by the illusion of intellect.

You are worthy of a great life. Desire, dream and seek it.

A man who has come to the full realization of his responsibility to men won't stick to one man. It will be foolhardy if he does that.

Monday is for people with a mission. Those who favor vacations, not weekends.

Look yourself in the eyes in a mirror each day. You can ignore the small voice still inside you, but your reflection will always have something to say.

If truth be told, the easy road is nothing more than an armchair in clever disguise. And if you look around, it seems that there are a whole lot of people in the furniture business.

Don’t despise your contributions to Humanity. Every little kind deed counts.

The brevity of life is grace to walk on your own path.

Believe is confident hope. Hope is faith. Faith is timeless possibility. Possibility is spiritual. Spiritual is divine

The courage to dream, the courage to act.

Leadership is influencing people—by providing purpose, direction, and motivation—while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization.

You've got to know what your magic is. How else will you fully share your gifts with others and enrich the world for these precious years that you live?

When you can see the stakes, when you realize the true purpose of your mission, it motivates you. It makes you focus. It makes you push away the distractions. You gain clarity of purpose. You gain strength.

Leading people is about communicating a mission and then letting them take part in it. If you want to motivate a colleague, empower a team, or inspire a friend, all you have to do is figure out how to give them ownership.

In stark contrast, China’s startup culture is the yin to Silicon Valley’s yang: instead of being mission-driven, Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective. That mentality leads to incredible flexibility in business models and execution, a perfect distillation of the “lean startup” model often praised in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t matter where an idea came from or who came up with it. All that matters is whether you can execute it to make a financial profit. The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.

I work to make human beings out of human bodies. I work to make conscience out of mindlessness. I work to make Gods out of obedient worshippers.

Salvation not shared, is salvation wasted.

Man is not merely born to make money. But to fulfill is mission.

The world isn’t changed by people who are ready.

The more you give of yourself, the more you find yourself.

O Lord, thy will be done in my life as it is written in Heaven in Jesus Name. Amen.

At the mercy of grace; My mind renewed. My soul restored. My spirit rekindled.

Although you may not know where the road will end, you dare travel on it.

The Lord’s gracious hand is upon us. We will begin the good work.

Every great soul had a great mentor.

Definite purpose, absolute commitment.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do what needs to be done.

Do all the work you can in your youthful days while you have the greatest strength.

You aren’t meant to fit in. Your fierce warrior spirit is meant to tear down old systems that lack integrity.

Make dance the mission every moment seeks to accomplish.

Going overboard on a quest for perfection leads to life suckage and backsliding.

Evidently, then, a not-so-subtle shift had occurred in the original love motive; compassion and solidarity had been replaced by pity and condescension.

Passion is about the calling. Passion is the motivator behind the mission. Passion focuses us on “being” and not on “doing.

Planning and perseverance will bring your mission to fruition.

I devote my life in service of humanity.

Don't apologize for expressing passion. Don't back down when it comes to your integrity. Don't let anyone undermine your standards for the sake of ease. Be a character of excellence, NOT excuses.

Success is secondary to impact. Success is a list of what you win, gain and attain - it may pass it may remain. Impact is the test; the hearts, minds and lives you touch, enhance and forever change...

In life, Lincoln’s motives were moral as well as political—a reminder that our finest presidents are those committed to bringing a flawed nation closer to the light, a mission that requires an understanding that politics divorced from conscience is fatal to the American experiment in liberty under law. In years of peril he pointed the country toward a future that was superior to the past and to the present; in years of strife he held steady. Lincoln’s life shows us that progress can be made by fallible and fallen presidents and peoples—which, in a fallible and fallen world, should give us hope.

Lord I thank you for the gift of breath, eyes to see, ears to hear, tongue to taste, nose to smell; mouth to speak, face to smile, voice to sing, body to dance, legs to walk, mind to think and hands to write.

I am a scientist, and as such I am proud to say that being stupid at times is a very human thing. Be proud to be stupid, be proud to be fool. Being a fool is a billion times better than being blinded by the illusion of intellect. I admit I am a fool, but at the very least, with each passing day I do my best to get lesser fool.

Just get to lunch,” I muttered to myself. It was the only way I could control my anxiety. In 1998, I’d made it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, or BUD/S, by focusing on just making it to the next meal. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t feel my arms as we hoisted logs over our heads or if the cold surf soaked me to the core. It wasn’t going to last forever. There is a saying: “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is simple: “One bite at a time.” Only my bites were separated by meals: Make it to breakfast, train hard until lunch, and focus until dinner. Repeat.

What you love will find a way to draw you in to its space; your purpose will captivate you and stimulate your soul into action. It will not come from a noisy place where fears and worries can reign supreme; it will come from a place of silence, a place of hope, faith, and free of limits. Your purpose becomes your compulsion; your great ambition.

The world is full of uncertainty and the road you are traveling may be a bit scary at times, but don’t ever lose faith. Let go of the scary things that are holding you back and start noticing the great realities unfolding around you. Most of all, believe in yourself and never give up on what’s important to you! Life is always going to present you with unexpected changes. But if you keep an open mind, look for the goodness in every situation and are able to adapt in any of life’s misfortunes, you will always prevail.

Religion arose as an effort to explicate the inexplicable, control the uncontrollable, make bearable the unbearable. Belief in a higher power became the most powerful innovation in late human evolution. Tribes with religion had an advantage over those without. They had direction and purpose, motivation and a mission. The survival value of religion was so spectacular that the thirst for belief became embedded in the human genome.

We spend so much time trying to change others – in part – because we do not deeply believe in and embrace ourselves as we already are. And so more often than not we do not learn to trust and utilize our gifts and power whole-heartedly enough to pursue and fulfill our own passions, purpose and possibilities.

Naysayers can’t prevent your brilliance and purpose from entering the world. It will seep under doors like water flooding into a room. Its shafts will beam through windows like the dazzling rays on a bright, summery morning. Within the sunlight are galaxies and constellations filled with opportunities for you to take. Your radiance will materialize, even when you least expect it. All you have to do is create the environment for its manifestation and keep striving, keep going toward your mission.

John Stott says, ‘The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God), but rather zeal – burning passionate zeal – for the glory of Jesus Christ.’4

Don’t let your problems push you. Let your dreams lead you! The lens you choose to view the world determines how you feel about yourself and everything around you. Optimism attracts goodness into our lives and gives us strength to overcome obstacles. You can’t live a positive life with a negative attitude. Heaven on earth is not a place we must find, it is a choice we must make. Let every day be a love you can feel. Let every day be a dream you can touch. Let every day be a reason to live. Life is too short to be anything but positive!

You can choose how things affect you, and you can choose how you affect the world. The happiness that surrounds you is greatly affected by the choices you make every day. So be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t tell others how to live their lives. Lead by example and let them follow you. Don’t let your problems push you. Let your dreams lead you!

Everything you say, everything you do and every decision you make comes back to you. If you want to make friends, be friendly. If you want to be rich, be generous, if you want to be understood by others, take time to be understanding of them. And if you want to be heard, then listen. Life is what you make out of it. So If you want the world to change, start with the one in the mirror. What you give is eventually what you get. Whatever it is you hope to achieve in this life, give it, nurture it, be it, and you will enjoy a lifetime filled with it many times over.

You should never be afraid to give yourself a chance to be everything you are capable of being. If you think you’re not good enough, you’ll surprise yourself if you keep trying. No one can ever tell you you’re doing it wrong. Everyone has their own dreams, their own struggles and a different path that makes sense for them. Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the mountain you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t.

The next time you have the urge to complain, stop and ask yourself what it is you truly want. Do you just want to complain or do you want to improve your situation? Somewhere within each complaint is a genuine desire to improve things, but the complaint by itself is never enough to make it happen. So make the choice not to aggravate a bad situation with your complaints. Choose instead to improve it with your positive thoughts, ideas and actions.

Our respondents also told us they’d encountered church planters, missional pastors, and on-campus religious groups who had utilized a “relationship first” model in which they were exhorted to make friends with people, gain their trust, and then invite them to church. Our respondents found these “shadow missions” abhorrent. The idea of pursuing relationships or conversations with an ulterior motive was anathema to them. They rejected the goal of shadow missions: to get people to come to God and/or the church.

Throw in the valley’s rich history of computer science breakthroughs, and you’ve set the stage for the geeky-hippie hybrid ideology that has long defined Silicon Valley. Central to that ideology is a wide-eyed techno-optimism, a belief that every person and company can truly change the world through innovative thinking. Copying ideas or product features is frowned upon as a betrayal of the zeitgeist and an act that is beneath the moral code of a true entrepreneur. It’s all about “pure” innovation, creating a totally original product that generates what Steve Jobs called a “dent in the universe.” Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

With religious nonconformists outnumbering Anglicans after 1700, and economic motives eclipsing any sense of a religious mission, the colony adopted a moderate religious stance where all Protestants, and even Jews (but not Catholics), were tolerated. But as in North Carolina, religious toleration was a response to circumstances rather than a commitment to principle.

It’s not always easy to find the motivation to push yourself to higher limits. But when you surround yourself with people who inspire you, you’ll find that their attitudes and their outlook on life are contagious. You will learn from their mistakes and their successes. You will gain a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, which will only help you grow and get you closer to your own goals.

Definitely, some will doubt you, but don’t doubt yourself. Surely, some will hate your mission, but don’t hate your vision. Truly, some will envy your vision, but don’t change your vision. Surely, some will mock at your direction, but don’t neglect your focus. Surely, you shall meet obstacles, but learn to overcome all obstacles with wit. Frankly, some will say what they want to you, but say what is inspiring to yourself. Obviously, you shall meet fear, but learn to shake your fears. In fact, there shall be moment of drought, but learn to go with tenacity and an indomitable staying power. You may meet the rocks, but climb the rocks with fortitude to the apex, and you shall feel the fresh air! Truly, you shall hear so many things, but know what to listen to. Surely, some will misunderstand you, but learn to understand yourself. You may definitely have so many things to do, but mind what is more important and weightier. There is no great journey without issues, but learn to overcome all issues, and get to the end of the journey with distinctive footprints and a good sense of fulfillment. You were born for a purpose! Live it; achieve it! God is waiting for you at the finishing line; get there with a pleasant story for a glory!

Non-violent resistance to evil is a quintessential element of the character of a real human being. If someone does wrong to me, I may be physically capable of breaking his jaw with one blow of my fist, but such violent reciprocation does not define the strength of my character as a real human being. If I succeed in resisting my limbic urge to do harm in return, then only can I be hailed as human being of real character.

He had come to prospect the intentions of Charles towards the French and the Anglo-Austrian coalition, and even if Charles had thrown his jack-boot at his head, it would not have disturbed him from his mission. Marlborough was a slow negotiator. He was never in a hurry to make propositions or ask questions, preferring under cover of a banal conversation to use his extremely acute faculties of observation, and his art of unraveling other men’s motives, as it were, sideways. The ablest diplomat will never boast of understanding a man, but only his intentions.

I have talked with many pastors whose real struggle isn’t first with the hardship of ministry, the lack of appreciation and involvement of people, or difficulties with fellow leaders. No, the real struggle they are having, one that is very hard for a pastor to admit, is with God. What is caused to ministry become hard and burdensome is disappointment and anger at God. We have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with the peacetime mentality. Permit me to explain. The fundamental battle of pastoral ministry is not with the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is not the struggle with resistant people who don't seem to esteem the Gospel. It is not the fight for the success of ministries of the church. And is not the constant struggle of resources and personnel to accomplish the mission. No, the war of the pastor is a deeply personal war. It is far on the ground of the pastor’s heart. It is a war values, allegiances, and motivations. It's about the subtle desires and foundational dreams. This war is the greatest threat to every pastor. Yet it is a war that we often naïvely ignore or quickly forget in the busyness of local church ministry. When you forget the Gospel, you begin to seek from the situations, locations and relationships of ministry what you already have been given in Christ. You begin to look to ministry for identity, security, hope, well-being, meeting, and purpose. These things are already yours in Christ. In ways of which you are not always aware, your ministry is always shaped by what is in functional control of your heart. The fact of the matter is that many pastors become awe numb or awe confused, or they get awe kidnapped. Many pastors look at glory and don't seek glory anymore. Many pastors are just cranking out because they don't know what else to do. Many pastors preach a boring, uninspiring gospel that makes you wonder why people aren't sleeping their way through it. Many pastors are better at arguing fine points of doctrine than stimulating divine wonder. Many pastors see more stimulated by the next ministry, vision of the next step in strategic planning than by the stunning glory of the grand intervention of grace into sin broken hearts. The glories of being right, successful, in control, esteemed, and secure often become more influential in the way that ministry is done than the awesome realities of the presence, sovereignty, power, and love of God. Mediocrity is not a time, personnel, resource, or location problem. Mediocrity is a heart problem. We have lost our commitment to the highest levels of excellence because we have lost our awe.

Complex operations, in which agencies assume complementary roles and operate in close proximity-often with similar missions but conflicting mandates-accentuate these tensions. The tensions are evident in the processes of analyzing complex environments, planning for complex interventions, and implementing complex operations. Many reports and analyses forecast that these complex operations are precisely those that will demand our attention most in the indefinite future. As essayist Barton and O'Connell note, our intelligence and understanding of the root cause of conflict, multiplicity of motivations and grievances, and disposition of actors is often inadequate. Moreover, the problems that complex operations are intended and implemented to address are convoluted, and often inscrutable. They exhibit many if not all the characteristics of "wicked problems," as enumerated by Rittel and Webber in 1973: they defy definitive formulations; any proposed solution or intervention causes the problem to mutate, so there is no second chance at a solution; every situation is unique; each wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. As a result, policy objectives are often compound and ambiguous. The requirements of stability, for example, in Afghanistan today, may conflict with the requirements for democratic governance. Efforts to establish an equitable social contract may well exacerbate inter-communal tensions that can lead to violence. The rule of law, as we understand it, may displace indigenous conflict management and stabilization systems. The law of unintended consequences may indeed be the only law of the land. The complexity of the challenges we face in the current global environment would suggest the obvious benefit of joint analysis - bringing to bear on any given problem the analytic tools of military, diplomatic and development analysts. Instead, efforts to analyze jointly are most often an afterthought, initiated long after a problem has escalated to a level of urgency that negates much of the utility of deliberate planning.

This message, that Jesus is now ruling, had particular significance for believers in Rome. Caesar, the emperor who lived in Rome, was the most powerful man in the known world. His titles included ‘son of god’, his birthday was celebrated as a ‘good news’, or ‘gospel’, and he ruled the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Yet Paul declares that Jesus is descended from a royal house far older than that of any Roman Caesar, and that Jesus’ resurrection has established his kingdom reign with power – a power that no other ruler can match. This message was a challenge to the whole cultural and political system of the Roman Empire. And this is the message that we must announce – that Christ is ruling. Gospel messages can so often be somewhat less than this, with a focus on Jesus as the answer to our needs rather than Jesus as the King of kings. Paul envisages the apostles being sent throughout the world to claim people’s obedience to King Jesus and bring them under his kingdom rule, rather as the Roman legions were sent to bring tribes and peoples into the Roman Empire in submission to Caesar’s rule. We can hardly imagine Caesar’s generals going through the world inviting people to have a ‘Caesar experience’ where their needs would be met! Rather, they commanded people to obey, and in our proclamation of the gospel we, likewise, must let people know that Jesus is reigning, and must call people to obey him.

The Three Lives We all lead three lives: our public life, our private life, and our deep inner life. Our public life takes place in a community setting, where we interact with others. Our private life is away from the public—we may be alone, with a friend, or with family members. But our deep inner life is our most significant life. It is where our heart is. It’s where we have the capacity to explore our own motives, to examine our own thoughts and desires, and to analyze our problems and our needs. We can go into this deep private life—we could call it a secret life—even when we are in a public or a private setting. Our secret life is where we are able to tap into the power of the four human endowments: self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will. When you are dealing with the development of a personal mission statement, you need to go into the deep inner or secret life, which influences the other two. It is the part of you where you decide the most fundamental issues of your life. As the psalmist put it: “Search your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of your life.” It truly is a secret life. No one knows the thoughts and intents of your heart. You alone have that awareness, and you can step in on your own deep inner life; you can examine, explore, and change it. Many people, unless they are in pain because of something they care about that is not being fulfilled, will not go into their deep inner life at all. In a sense, they’re not living. They’re just being lived, publicly and privately.

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate. The great white hope meets the great black hole; the mission to the heathen blends with the comforting myth of Florence Nightingale. As ever, the true address of the missionary is to the self-satisfaction of the sponsor and the donor, and not to the needs of the downtrodden. Helpless infants, abandoned derelicts, lepers and the terminally ill are the raw material for demonstrations of compassion. They are in no position to complain, and their passivity and abjection is considered a sterling trait. It is time to recognize that the world’s leading exponent of this false consolation is herself a demagogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.

Critics are also overwhelmingly male—one survey of film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes found only 22 percent of the critics afforded “top critic” status were female.14 More recently, of course, we have become accustomed to a second set of gatekeepers: our friends and family and even random strangers we’ve decided to follow on social media, as well as “peer” reviewers on sites like Goodreads and IMDb. But peer review sites are easily skewed by a motivated minority with a mission (see the Ghostbusters reboot and the handful of manbabies dedicated to its ruination) or by more stubborn and pervasive implicit biases, which most users aren’t even aware they have. (The data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com found that male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, but the reverse isn’t true.)15 As for the social networks we choose? They’re usually plagued by homophily, which is a fancy way to say that it’s human nature to want to hang out with people who make us feel comfortable, and usually those are people who remind us of us. Without active and careful intervention on our part, we can easily be left with an online life that tells us only things we already agree with and recommends media to us that doesn’t challenge our existing worldview.

A drone is often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft.” PROLOGUE The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four bolt locks and the windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like big fake eye-lashes held up with a notched adjustment bar. This was a factory building on the near west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known in Ohio as The Flats. First a sweatshop garment factory, then a warehouse for imported cheeses then a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio and training facility. Her name was Cosita, she was eighteen looking like fourteen. One of nine children from El Chorillo. a dangerous poverty stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months ago, he was thirteen and beautiful. Cosita had a high school education but earned here degree on the streets of Panama. Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, had recruited Cosita at seventeen. She was smart, street savvy, motivated and very pretty. Just what Interpol was looking for. Cosita would become a Drone!

What are some of the concerns regarding the penal substitutionary metaphors? Some of this debate is theological and exegetical, often centering upon Paul and the proper understanding of his doctrine of justification. Specifically, some suggest that the penal substitutionary metaphors, read too literally, create a problematic view of God: that God is inherently a God of retributive justice who can only be “satisfied” with blood sacrifice. A more missional worry is that the metaphors behind penal substitutionary atonement reduce salvation to a binary status: Justified versus Condemned and Pure versus Impure. The concern is that when salvation reduces to avoiding the judgment of God (Jesus accepting our “death sentence”) and accepting Christ’s righteousness as our own (being “washed” and made “holy” for the presence of God), we can ignore the biblical teachings that suggest that salvation is communal, cosmic in scope, and is an ongoing developmental process. These understandings of atonement - that salvation is an active communal engagement that participates in God’s cosmic mission to restore all things - are vital to efforts aimed at motivating spiritual formation and missional living. As many have noted, by ignoring the communal, cosmic, and developmental facets of salvation penal substitutionary atonement becomes individualistic and pietistic. The central concern of penal substitutionary atonement is standing “washed” and “justified” before God. No doubt there is an individual aspect to salvation - every metaphor has a bit of the truth —but restricting our view to the legal and purity metaphors blinds us to the fact that atonement has developmental, social, political, and ecological implications.

Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure. For instance, you may take on a business project, work at it for several years, and then suddenly find yourself totally disinterested. You know that if you stayed with it for another few years you would reap much greater financial reward than if you left the project now. But the project no longer calls you. You no longer feel interested in the project. You have developed skills over the last few years working on the project, but it hasn’t yet come to fruition. You may wonder, now that you have the skills, should you stick with it and bring the project to fruition, even though the work feels empty to you? Well, maybe you should stick with it. Maybe you are bailing out too soon, afraid of success or failure, or just too lazy to persevere. This is one possibility. Ask your close men friends if they feel you are simply losing steam, wimping out, or afraid to bring your project to completion. If they feel you are bailing out too soon, stick with it. However, there is also the possibility that you have completed your karma in this area. It is possible that this was one layer of purpose, which you have now fulfilled, on the way to another layer of purpose, closer to your deepest purpose. Among the signs of fulfilling or completing a layer of purpose are these: 1. You suddenly have no interest whatsoever in a project or mission that, just previously, motivated you highly. 2. You feel surprisingly free of any regrets whatsoever, for starting the project or for ending it. 3. Even though you may not have the slightest idea of what you are going to do next, you feel clear, unconfused, and, especially, unburdened. 4. You feel an increase in energy at the prospect of ceasing your involvement with the project. 5. The project seems almost silly, like collecting shoelaces or wallpapering your house with gas station receipts. Sure, you could do it, but why would you want to? If you experience these signs, it is probably time to stop working on this project. You must end your involvement impeccably, however, making sure there are no loose ends and that you do not burden anybody’s life by stopping your involvement. This might take some time, but it is important that this layer of your purpose ends cleanly and does not create any new karma, or obligation, that will burden you or others in the future. The next layer of your unfolding purpose may make itself clear immediately. More often, however, it does not. After completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your life. You know that the old project is over for you, but you are not sure of what is next. At this point, you must wait for a vision. There is no way to rush this process. You may need to get an intermediary job to hold you over until the next layer of purpose makes itself clear. Or, perhaps you have enough money to simply wait. But in any case, it is important to open yourself to a vision of what is next. You stay open to a vision of your deeper purpose by not filling your time with distractions. Don’t watch TV or play computer games. Don’t go out drinking beer with your friends every night or start dating a bunch of women. Simply wait. You may wish to go on a retreat in a remote area and be by yourself. Whatever it is you decide to do, consciously keep yourself open and available to receiving a vision of what is next. It will come.