God is not saving the world; it is done. Our business is to get men and women to realize it… How many people have you made homesick for God?
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in Matthew 28
The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in 2 Corinthians 5
Oh beloved, it is true. There comes for us a reality we did not expect when we came to know Him. We find, that in living as His children, we are no longer babes. We begin to take on some of the form and stature and behavior of our Father and His home.
At first, we learn that we need to go and share the good news that has saved us. And instead of this being exciting, it is excruciating in the fear that it evokes. There is still way too much of us in the way. And we are way more concerned about how people are going to react to us, than how they are going to react to the gospel we share.
Somehow though, over time, we realize that nothing we brought to the equation was really viable. And as we abandon our own sense of identity and begin to live in who we really are, something begins to happen.
Fear begins to bleed off.
And in the place of fear, we begin to find that sharing the good news has nothing to do with convincing others to begin to believe something they currently do not. We begin to understand that evangelism is making people aware of something that is already done.
For in our path, what we have come to understand, is that there truly is a Love which has pushed out across the oceans of eternity. And this Love did finish some things a very long time ago. So, the Great Commission that He gave us is not so much about working to get people to change their lives and be saved, as it is about simply sharing that the Great Salvation is already complete.
This knowing, really knowing, that Jesus has already done everything for our salvation then gives us a profound sense of confidence in our mission. We are more reporting the news and living the celebration that victory is complete. We are like the newspaper boys in the West after the end of WWII running down the street and celebrating the reality they were distributing.
But it goes deeper.
Along the way, something happens. We begin to see the gargantuan import of the Good News. We begin to see that the salvation He has wrought for us is not just about saving us from the just penalty of our sins, but about saving us from the brutal monster we have been fighting within: us.
Can we see it? In being saved from both our sins and our “selves” we can now allow for the True Authority in our lives to be functionally the One in control of our existence. And as this Truth grows within us, the metamorphosis begins to become evident: we are not just a little like Him, the difference between Who He is, and who we are is waning.
Love begins to dominate our thinking, and we begin to take on the very behavior of Heaven. We have become the emissaries of The King of The Universe. And we walk not just in His positional authority. We are now beginning to walk as Him on this earth.
So, are you struggling to share the good news? Perhaps the problem is not with training or motivation or anything like that. Perhaps the problem is that there is still way too much of the old man still believing the lies that got him nowhere. Beloved, that voice is dead. Ignore it. Tonight is your night to listen to who you really are in Him.
