He said what? (Part 1)

We ALL have been given an assignment…a command.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV)

While the primary verb here is to MAKE DISCIPLES, there are three other verbs here we will be focusing on this week that help us do what Jesus has called us to do.

The first is GO! In fact, if you want to be a disciple of Jesus…you have to go!

We can’t be obedient if we don’t rub shoulders with people who are far from God. We MUST be out there, connecting, serving, loving and sharing the Good News of Jesus. However, we can’t do any of those things if we just play it safe and hang out with our Christian friends all the time.

I love what John Eldridge points out in his book: “Beautiful Outlaw:” Experiencing the Playful, Disruptive, Extravagant Personality of Jesus.

“Now here is a tough pill to swallow. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus has thirty-four intimate encounters with an individual—“intimate” defined as when someone in particular is singled out for mention, or receives a word or touch from Jesus, or Jesus receives a word or touch from them. Of the thirty-four, one takes place in church. In the shorter Gospel of Mark, there are twenty-six such encounters recorded; two take place at church. Furthermore, all of the most “famous” stories about Jesus—his birth, baptism, trial in the desert, calling of his disciples, turning water into wine, raising the dead, transfiguration, walking on water, feeding of the five thousand, Sermon on the Mount, calming the storm, Last Supper, dark night in Gethsemane, crucifixion and resurrection—not one of them takes place in church. Not one. This is no coincidence. Jesus came to the most religious people on earth, and much of what he had to do in order to bring them to God was to free them from their religion.”