According to the dictionary, a mission statement is “a written statement that sets out one’s personal goals for the future.” Most of us have goals or some sort of vision of which direction we want our lives to go in. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that “where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law is, happy is he.”

Vision and direction are very important, but I think that it is very important that before anyone of us goes anywhere or does anything that we do self-introspection to find out who we are. Knowing who we are is the best foundation to having a good mission statement. In this post, when I refer to know who you are, I am referring to, who do you look like? Whose image do you bear?

Who are we a spitting image of- our Heavenly Father or the alternative, the evil one? As a child many people would tell me: “You’re a spitting image of your father. He could never deny you because you look just like him.” I still hear it to this day, so everyone who knows my parents and I, knows that I’m surely my father’s child. Maybe you too have heard similar things about looking like a family member. But, in this post I’m not talking about whom do you look like physically. I’m asking you to look at yourself and decipher whom do you look like spiritually and internally.

Who we are a spitting image of is really what’s inside our hearts our root system. By heart I mean our emotions, the thing(s) that drives us, the thing(s) that propels us to act or not act, our love for something, the good we do, the evil we do- if we forgive, if we hate, if we surrender our lives to God, if we’re jealous towards other, etc.

What is in your heart? Who does your image mirror? Are the words out of your mouth or the actions that manifest out of you in the form of your behavior, do they mirror God or the evil one?

When we look around us we see a chaotic world and though it’s not our place to judge another, we can tell which image a person most likely bears by the fruit they produce. We can assume whose image Mother Teresa, the leaders of ISIS, Hitler, or Jesus Christ bore. What was in the hearts, or is in their hearts [ISIS reference] of these people shows the kind of fruit they bore. What kind of fruit are you bearing?

In order to be used God, He wants to see Himself in us. He wants to see His Son and His Word oozing from our hearts. Though we are human and still sin, God is looking for people with the spitting image of Himself, people who love the broken and who can go out and withstand the pressures of a broken world to shine the light of Christ. Let’s be cognizant of what’s really in our hearts and remember that a spitting image of God is the best one to bear. So that when we have the image of God oozing out of us, our personal mission statement will be clear to ourselves so that we have a clearer direction of where we’re going and what we’re doing.

Happy Friday