It's Time to Go // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 15

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Sometimes, looking at some parts of the church today, large parts in fact, you could swear that Jesus’ great commission to His disciples was “build something and they’ll come”. Well, it wasn’t. The key verb, the key doing word in the great commission is “go”. Go is such an extraordinary word.

We are such masters of self-delusion, you and I. Come on, we are. At least I am. And I know for a fact that so often the church is too. I mean, take Jesus’ great commission to His Disciples.

All power in heaven and earth has been given unto me, therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I’ve commanded you. And remember, I will be with you wherever you go even unto the end of this age. Matthew Chapter 28.

The very last thing that Jesus said to His Disciples, notice what He told them to do. He told them to go. "Go on, get out there, get amongst it. This is what I have called you to do." And here we are 2,000 years on building massive cathedrals, sitting in our pews expecting them to come to us, Now that’s a little unfair. So many of God’s people and God’s ministries and God’s churches are out there amongst it pews in just going, just like Jesus told them to.

But huge swathes of God’s people are warming pews and cathedrals, man-made edifices, feeling all so smug and comfortable waiting there for people to come to them. Huge slabs of God’s church have turned the "go" into a "come". So, when are we going to stop building Crystal Cathedrals that come crashing down around their ears; at what point are we going to finally give up on getting them to come and get off our backsides and go.

"Oh Berni, your being a bit tough, I mean we need churches, we need to get together and learn and worship and fellowship". Of course we do, but that’s not the end of it, that’s just the beginning. Jesus didn’t invite you and me to build a country club; He called us to go out into the world and to be His hands and His feet, scarred as they are, and His voice and His heart of compassion to a lost and hurting world. To the parents of that little boy in the soccer club whose marriage is falling apart; to that guy out there who sits on that bench in the Mall all lone each day, he’s a bit on the nose and needs a good wash.

When I was at Bible College studying my ministry degree one of the things I was required to do was to spend 2 semesters with a ministry doing practical field training. The ministry I went to as a raw wet-behind-the-ears seminary student was Christianityworks – this very same ministry that I am still involved with today. It kind of leaves me speechless that at a time when I knew so little I was already writing and producing radio programs that were being heard by quite a lot of people back then.

What was the Principle of the College thinking, what were my lecturers thinking and come to that, what was Jesus thinking unleashing me in my ignorance to preach the Gospel of Christ? Scary thought. Surely I needed to graduate first, surely I needed to become a much deeper theologian, surely there had to be something more. I wonder.

Not long into His public ministry Jesus sent His Disciples out to do some field ministry training. He sent them off completely without Him and without anything much else either it would seam. I mean, these guys were just fishermen and tax collectors. They were seriously uneducated, unqualified, unreligious dudes with absolutely no experience to do what Jesus was calling them to do. I seriously wonder sometimes if Jesus really knows what He’s up to. Come on, really. Have a listen to this. Matthew Chapter 6 beginning at verse 6:

Then He went about among the villagers teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out, two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in their belts – but to wear sandals and not to put on a second tunic.

He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and they proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Now just stop and imagine that that had been you that Jesus sent out like a sheep to the slaughter. He gives you authority to cast our demons. I mean, you’ve know Him for like five minutes at this point. Are you feeling confident? And by the way, don’t take any food, don’t take any money, don’t take a change of clothes because you won’t need them. Is He dead set crazy, this Jesus? Maybe He’s on the same stuff as that John the Baptist lunatic in the wilderness not so long ago.

Do you see how easy it is for us to think in conventional terms? Do you see how easy it is for us to sit in the comfortable pews in our comfortable church buildings and complain that the air conditioning isn’t working properly, or that the pastor’s sermon wasn’t up to snuff, or that the guitar was a bit out of tune, or those kids in the third row were too fidgety, or that …

To us "conventional" equals comfortable, "conventional" equals convenient, "conventional" is all about us enjoying the experience, in any case we’re not qualified enough we need to sit in those safe comfortable pews just a little bit longer before we get our hands too dirty. But let me tell you something my friend, and this is for me as much as it is for you, if we’re someone who believes in Jesus then Jesus has given us the authority to cast out demons, He has given us the authority to minister His love in His compassion and His power to those around us. And not only has He commissioned us, He’s commanded us to go.

Conventional wisdom that I should never have been allowed to go out back then when I was so green and tell people about Jesus through these radio programs, but that led on to me now being involved in something that reaches far wider to many more people than I ever, ever could have imagined back then. Because when God calls us and when God commissions us, His power flows in us and through us and overflows out of us through us to achieve what He’s always planned to achieve.

It’s the same with those early Disciples. Conventional wisdom says they should never have been sent out on their own until they graduated from the Jesus Theological College. But they weren’t on their own. You see the power and the presence was in them and around them and ahead of them and behind them through the Holy Spirit. And as a result they went out and they proclaimed that all should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

You know what I get out of this? A lot of greatness is simply about going. Simply just get up and go. Go where Jesus calls you. Go where Jesus leads you. Just take those first few steps, and as wacky and as weird as it may seem to you, just as it seemed to those Disciples, just as it seemed to me back in those early days, because when He gives the authority to us to do what He’s called us to do then watch out. His authority gives us the power to prevail in what He’s called us to do; His authority gives us the power to lay down our lives to Him through what He’s called us to do.

There are many comfortable, suburban, pew-sitting Christians who will live a very ordinary life, then there are those crazy disciples who dare to go, who dare to accept the authority given to them, who dare to live out a truly extraordinary life. For whoever wants to save their life is going to lose it, but I tell you, whoever is prepared to lose their life for Jesus will find it.