When We Go Wherever We Go.

The command to “make disciples of all nations” means the Glorious News of Jesus’ finished Work, of the availability of His Kingdom here and now to ordinary men and women just like you and I, the proclamation that entrance into it and relationship with the One who rules it is open to any and all, is to “go” forth into “all” the world.

When we “go” we’re fulfilling the first participle of Matthew 28:19-20, the initial ‘means’ of executing the King’s Commission. “Go” is a fairly simple concept. It means ‘Don’t get too content here... in this place, in this time, in this culture of corruption.’ Don’t sink your roots too deep, cause everything you see around you which is not rooted in the Kingdom of Eternity is going to be “shaken” and sifted one Day, never to return {Heb. 12:26-28}. You, my friend, are to be active and engaged, a man ‘on the move,’ a woman ‘in motion.’ That’s “going.” Waiting, without laboring, is not what the promise of Jesus’ Return is designed to produce!

You hear people sometimes say, “I’m waiting on God.” In some cases the only legitimate response to this is, “To do what exactly?” Make His Commission any clearer? The other side of this is also true, and that is God is waiting on you. I can tell you what Jesus is waiting on. He’s waiting on us to choose a deliberate action to our days; He’s waiting on us to choose an intentionality to our lives in His Kingdom. There is no substitute for this if we intend to “make disciples” and bear the fruit for which we were saved— Ephesians 2:10. And bearing fruit through apprentice-making, by teaching flesh-and-blood human beings with passion, training them in genuine experience, initiating them into the Life of the Spirit, is precisely what God has “prepared for us to do.”

The idea is not complicated. Let me flesh it out for you. “As we’re going, when we’re going, wherever we’re going,” we fulfill the King’s Commission = we “make disciples” and ‘disciple-makers.’ Jesus is not looking for more ‘church-members,’ Jesus is not looking for more ‘small-group attendees,’ for more faithful ‘tithers’ or ‘devotional readers.’ He is looking for men and women who will lay down their lives for the sake of His Kingdom. Their lives from beginning to end, not just their life when it comes to an end! Cause martyrdom, without having lived a life of love, is little more than suicidal vanity.

So, we come back to the question. What are you willing to give, or give up, for the sake of the Son of God? “Aaannnhhhh, not much, to be honest. I kind of like what I have: the way I’ve arranged it, the control I exercise over it. I’m rather fond of it, actually. I consider it mine, and myself its exclusive owner.” Yeahhh... you might want to be careful with that. What you think you ‘own’ when all is a gift of grace; and whether what you think you ‘own’ doesn’t end up owning you!

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org