What if we lived only for our mission?

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I need reminding of it fairly often: It's all just a part of growing up.

I don't mean growing older physically, but growing up in Christ. Some of the mistakes you make as a babe in Christ need to be schooled out of you as you grow. It is within that growth that some of the verses that talk about speaking soberly and avoiding vain babblings begin to make sense.

When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man - or woman in my case - I put away childish things.

I'm afraid there is something to the childishness in me that allows for wavering. It allows for a lot more mistakes because even I will excuse myself sometimes.

But to the honest, for reasons that I'm not even sure of it's downright scary to plunge into the solid, sober, non-vain babblings of a grown Christian. Perhaps the greatest reason to fear it is simply that I might fail, that I'll fall while grasping hold of this special maturity and be held to a greater accountability before God.

Perhaps another reason is that as I even test these waters on my own I see others watching me and I fear so greatly that I will lead them astray.

Or perhaps the greatest reason of all is simply that it's just a little bit more dead to self than I want to be.

As I pondered those ideas I found myself thinking on the words "To live is Christ, to die is gain". When Paul said them, he had to have understood that there was nothing here worth truly living for except for Gods mission for his life.
People don't like to think that way though, we make up all sorts of reasons for people to want to live - family, friends, work, things to see, dreams to aspire to - but I wondered what it would be like if we all lived our lives out only because there was still another person that needed to be reached.