Thank God the USA has several special forces units! Special forces train for special missions, like raids, capture, reconnaissance, terminating high-profile targets, demolition, tasks few others could accomplish in places nobody else wants to go. Yet strip away the elite label, and every soldier who ever wore a uniform shares one mission: advance the cause of the nation they serve.

John the Baptist was special forces. With camel’s hair, wild honey, a voice crying in the wilderness, his assignment was singular: “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,” (Mark 1:3). No one else could be the forerunner. That mission was his alone.

But look closer. John says, “after me comes he who is mightier than I” (1:7). He points away from himself, toward Someone greater, Jesus Christ. And that pointing to Jesus is not John’s mission alone. It’s every believer’s. We all are called to point people to Jesus Christ.

Beloved, we won’t prepare people for Christ’s first coming, but we can still decrease so He increases, still declare that One who came baptizes in the Spirit, still make crooked paths straight for people who need to see Him, the only one who can save them. Let’s all join John the Baptist in his mission of proclaiming the good news of the first coming of Jesus Christ! His mission is our mission.

Change begins in you!