“Personal Mission Statement” 10/244

If you had to wear a T-shirt printed with a message of no more than eight words most accurately describing your outlook on life, what whould your T-shirt say?

     (If this is the first of my notes you are reading, I am drawing these questions from Ask…(Life’s Most Important Answers Are Found in Asking the Right Questions) by John L. Mason and my previous answers can be found at http://wakeupgeneration.wordpress.com/).

     You know when you’re walking down the street and you see a familiar face? You would wave, but now you realise that they weren’t the person you thought they were. Then you walk away saying, “Man, I could have sworn that was ____.”

     That’s the situation I want to be in at every turn in my daily life–so close in action, word, and thought that every person would bet money that I was Jesus. Here’s my T-shirt slogan: “I want to be mistaken for Jesus” (that’s seven words, by the way).

     Am I ready to wear that T-shirt? Well, to wear it would mean that every person I ran into would be judging Jesus based on my actions, which is a scary thought. But guess what: you are wearing a billboard saying “Compare me to Jesus” every time you wear Christian T-shirts, little cross necklaces, and little fishy bumper stickers. Look at your actions towards waiters, gas attendants, unsaved friends, and people next to you in line, and if they do not compare positively to Jesus’ life–take it off! Please, for the furtherance of the gospel, remove it.

     Let me start with waiters: leaving a tract and 50 cents is not witnessing! Complaining about the food the whole meal, forgetting the waiter’s name, and complicating orders and leaving a 30% tip is not witnessing either. Treat waiters like humans. When you’re about to pray, ask the waiter (by name) if there is anything they would like you to pray about. Doing this has brought many waiters to tears because someone they don’t know actually cares about what they are going through, and can be more of a witnessing tool than a tract that they will almost guarranteed throw away. Witness even while you are having lunch, but witness with your life.

   Gas attendants: I stopped for gas on a long trip and started just a basic conversation with the Indian cashier, just asking a little bit about where she was from and why she chose America. When she asked me what I was doing this far from my home I told her I was selling Bibles. She immediately exclaimed, “I knew it!” I was taken by surprise and asked her how she knew, and she just said, “Your face gave you away.” All I had done was smile, look her in the eye, and ask her more about herself. It was then that I pulled out a tract and asked her, “Would you like to know more about me?” Her eyes shone as she took the tract from my hands.

   We must learn to witness wherever we go and to be mistaken for Jesus as we do it.