As I’ve been revisiting my relationship with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) and evaluating what it looks like to represent a missional mindset in all the different spheres of my life, I’ve had it on my heart to take a closer look at the great commission. Most commonly referenced from the end of Matthew 28, the Great Commission is a mandate given by Jesus before His ascension, that has driven all evangelistic and missionary efforts for the last two thousand years. “And Yeshua came up to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Ruach ha-Kodesh, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And remember! I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”” This is a powerful passage that gets referenced and taught on a lot, but there are still some implications here that continue to blow my mind every time I take a deeper look. Jesus starts by assuring his disciples that all authority has been given to Him. Not to them, even though they are the ones He is sending out. As someone who knows how stressful it can be to try to do things my own way and in my own power, this is deeply relieving. Jesus is sending them out to be His representatives, which carries power whenever they are in His will and wherever His authority is recognized - which is now everywhere! It would mean very little for the governor of Montana to send people out to administrate a law he declared over the Canadian province of Victoria, but we are assured that we will never find ourselves in that awkward position. We are not being asked to go anywhere where His name is not known and respected by the local spiritual government, so to speak. We are like FBI agents being dispatched from DC, and that means ALL local sheriffs have to respect the badge we carry whether they like it or not. Ok, enough of the law enforcement analogy lol... The point is that we have a lot more authority to go, say, and do than we think we do. We don’t need to tread lightly and constantly ask for permission to walk into an area that we already have a warrant for. We can enter into any situation with the boldness of the One who’s sent us. So now that begs the question, what is it we have been given authority to do? “Go and make disciples of all nations...” The modern church has taken the “all nations” part of that statement very seriously, and it’s beautiful to see every remote corner of the earth being systematically exposed to the love of the Father. Awesome!! But is it discipleship we are bringing into these corners, or just information? Are we exemplifying what it looks like to walk in the footsteps of the Master, or are we simply handing out pamphlets and hoping that written words will be enough to transform an entire lifetime of pain and brokenness? (Nothing against pamphlets, I’m just using that as an example. I actually do believe that the Holy Spirit can move POWERFULLY through the most simple introductions such as these!) I ask these questions not to be accusatory to those who have laid down everything to carry the gospel out to the nations - far from it! I simply want to encourage deeper thought and analysis of our efforts and the results we expect to gain from them. The concept of discipleship is key to the life and ministry of Yeshuah. And since it’s a concept we don’t have a very direct modern equivalent of, that’s usually a good reason to take a closer look. “The 12 disciples” were actually a close subgroup chosen by Yeshuah out of a much larger number of disciples who were quite literally following His career. (I like puns, don’t hate) In ancient times, a disciple was a student who was chosen by a Rabbi to spend years of their life following, studying, and emulating that teacher in every way possible. To be a disciple was not necessarily a position of prestige, and it required a very high level of commitment and personal sacrifice, but it did become a very big part of your resume. In fact all the credentials you needed were to cite whose disciple you were, because it was implied that you had been imparted all of their knowledge, wisdom, and insights on the interpretation of scripture. For example, Paul was held in high regard amongst the Jewish leaders of the day because he had been a dedicated disciple of Rabbi Gamaliel, a well known and highly respected teacher of the day. Paul’s reputation was based on Gamaliel’s reputation. It opened doors for him and qualified him amongst both his peers and his elders because of nothing he himself had done except to choose a teacher worth following. That is the implication of being a disciple, and the cultural understanding that Yeshuah was referencing. (This is an excellent article that goes much more in depth into the biblical meaning and understanding of discipleship, I highly recommend you check it out if you’re at all interested —> https://bible.org/article/being-first-century-disciple) Our mandate, then, is to be students of Yeshuah in every aspect of life, striving to emulate Him and His teachings in everything we do. In Hebrew society, everyone had the responsibility to know the scriptures, but it was the role of the Rabbis to help interpret the meaning of those scriptures to answer the questions of everyday life. When we let Jesus become our Rabbi, we are coming under His authority to teach us not only what the Bible says, but more importantly what it means in each of our everyday lives. And when we go out to create disciples, it’s to show what a life under His discipleship looks like so that they will want to learn from Him too! Our greatest witness is in how the integrity and consistency of our lives reflects the truth of His word. In the Hebraic mindset, belief was a concept that went far beyond a mental acquiescence of fact. You could only come to say that you believed something if it was actively reflected in the way you lived your life. That’s why James writes that “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17) In other words, preaching is great, but it carries no validity if people don’t see you living what you preach. If we are to truly believe the words of God in any way that matters, it MUST be reflected in the way we live our lives and love others. And what does that reflection look like? That’s what each of us must walk personally with Jesus to find out. ““I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you must love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” They will know we are His disciples if we love as Jesus loves. Everything in our lives - our words, our behaviors, our attitudes, our service - all boil down to how well we love. Do we emulate the heart of Christ in our daily lives, even when no one is looking? If “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks,” then who we are in the privacy of our own heart becomes the very basis of our public ministry. (Matthew 12:34) So then if we cannot genuinely love our brothers and sisters in our very heart of hearts, then the love we attempt to live by will be nothing.
And sadly many in the world today have a false concept of Christ’s love because they have observed “Christians” without that true love. Men have gone out bearing the name of our Lord, but who didn’t carry His heart because they didn’t take the time to get to know Him first. That is the danger of calling yourself a disciple but not actually being disciplined. It’s also the danger of trying to have a ministry before you’ve spent that quality time with God, allowing Him to teach and instruct you inside and out. It’s a millennia-old lie that has systematically and effectively created a bitter taste to those who don’t know the difference, and that we must daily strive to replace with Truth. The Truth in love is the Truth of love, because Love is a man and His name is Jesus! Discipleship is a slow, intentional process that’s meant to take the entirety of our lives to complete and to become so appealing to onlookers that they can’t help but join us. I think that’s what makes it the Greatest Commission we could ever receive.
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God has recently brought me back to a place that I love very dearly, and He’s been speaking to me a lot about the meaning and purpose of me being here - aside from the fact that I love it so much. Today I had the incredible opportunity to join a ministry session held by a very well known and highly respected spiritual leader. It was a total surprise to me, and was definitely a gift from God!
As I observed the young students enjoying the experience with me, an alarm was raised in my heart that many of them are defining their relationship with God by high-contact moments like these. This was something I have no doubt they would consider an “encounter” with God, but truly encountering God is not the same thing as having a “mountaintop experience.” The term is usually used in reference to some powerful evening of worship where the Holy Spirit falls and people are weeping on the floor. Limbs flail, catchers stand at the ready, prophecies get thrown left and right, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit in this context! But that does not necessarily make it an encounter. To encounter the living and holy presence of God, you must first spend time getting to know Him. Relationships are built on trust, and while His Spirit will love us unconditionally without hesitation or question, that doesn’t mean that we have gained His TRUST. Trust is built over time and through consistency. It is the fruit of two hearts being equally committed to working through life’s trials in such a way that benefits and honors both sides of said relationship. This is true no matter what type of relationship you are approaching, so why would we ever presume to approach God without the same reverence and care?! That night at the conference when the speaker was on fire and so was your heart was definitely amazing! But if that was the first time you felt that presence of God meet you, it wasn’t an encounter - it was an introduction. I say this because it is impossible to truly encounter the living God without being permanently changed, but many people walk away from these introductions without it ever impacting their life in the long term. Sadly I have seen and known many people to jump from introduction to introduction with long periods of silence in between. Many Christians live their lives chasing the high of the “mountain top experience” without actually taking the time to steward the presence of God for themselves in the quiet and real moments of life. That isn’t a friendship you’re building, it’s an addiction. Chasing a high for the happy tingling feeling it gives you is no more intimate than lighting up a joint in a parking lot. Yet still, in God’s infinite grace and mercy, He never stops introducing Himself to us. Just because we misunderstand the purpose of that meeting, doesn’t make Him any less hopeful that someday we’ll come back for something more than that. Maybe a coffee date or a simple walk in the park. Building relationship really doesn’t have to be complicated at all! It just takes intentionality and time. God is the definition of an eternal optimist. He will give us a million and one chances to know Him because He knows that any one of them might someday become the beginning of something more. Only He knows what it will take for each of our hearts to cry out and hunger for something true - something real. Something, if I dare say it, far more real than having your palms tingle when the preacher prayed for you in the fire tunnel. (Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE fire tunnels! That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.) Our relationship with God is not defined by how high we can get or how many of those conferences we can go to. It’s defined by who we are with God when no one else is looking. When things are hard and don’t make sense. When it feels like He is giving you promises without answers or bringing you into a wilderness and then going silent. Relationship is tested and defined by how we react in those situations when the chips are down and life genuinely sucks. Learning to trust God is crucial, but once you’ve gone through enough of those tests and hard seasons, you’ll suddenly find yourself in a place where God trusts you back too. That’s when you actually have a relationship, and that’s when you get to see the true depth and richness of His love at work in your life - true encounter. That’s when a fit of uncontrollable giggles goes from a supernatural ab workout to a personal and intimate moment of shared joy. It carries the sweetness of knowing and being known, tied to concrete memories and examples of how His goodness has met you in both your highest and lowest places. It’s the difference between the butterflies of a first date and the depth of love between a married couple that has gone through hell and back together. There’s nothing wrong with butterflies and first dates! But you miss out on so much if you spend your life flitting from first date to first date. At some point you have to settle in and commit if you want to share the fruit of a lifelong walk together. |
ErikaJeremiah 29:11 Archives
March 2023
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