Day 3 - Commissioned

Tony and I had a great conversation today on our way home from Angel Fire. This is admittedly a little outside of the devotional text, but my hope for this blog was that it might be a place for us to share the places in which God is challenging us and moving us forward, whether or not that followed the path on which the devotional book leads. So here’s the detour we’ve been on today. Tony asked me today if I thought we were really using our metaphorical talents to multiply the kingdom (the conversation was birthed from the parable of the talents in Matthew 25). I didn’t even hesitate. My answer (for myself, anyway) was “no”. I think that most of my Christianity, even today, is about me. I have been about believing; I have been about serving others; I have been about kindness, love, knowledge of God, and doing what is good and right, even when it costs me something, but I have never really been about multiplying. God is calling, pulling me into a deeper understanding of this part of followership today. Outside of Johnson’s devotional book, I’m also reading David Platt and Francis Chan’s Multiply. In it, they talk about how silly it would have sounded for Christ to come to his people and to have said, “Please believe in me. Please just believe that I am who I say I am. There’s nothing more; that’s it.” Instead, Christ called people to FOLLOW him, to leave everything behind because what he had to offer them was so incredibly beautiful, powerful, transformative… I asked Tony what it might look like if our lives looked more like what Jesus calls us to in the parable of the talents. Our central consensus was that we wouldn’t fear “preaching the word” or talking to anyone about God and his crazy, amazing, mad love that has pursued all people across space and time from the beginning of the human story. I found freedom today in reading Matthew. Jesus, in the great commission, doesn’t give me the task of growing a church (which is often a heavy burden on my heart). He gives me the task of making disciples. I can’t grow a church. There is no way. I am too imperfect, too self-concerned, too fearful of what others think of me (though I intend fully to have stamped that out of my life by the end of these forty days). But I can make disciples. I am crazy in love with the Lord. I want to know Him more and follow his every word better and better until I am set free from this failing body. I am excited to know him more and to invite others to do the same; inviting others to share life and Christ in that life is something I find amazingly appealing and beautifully simple. I’m going to start with those around me; my neighbors, friends, and whoever else God brings my way today. And if they don’t want to be disciples? If they want nothing to do with me and my crazy love for my Creator? This is no matter at all. I can still honor them and love them completely, all the while being totally and completely confident that I have carried out the Great Commission. If I haven’t tried, then I haven’t followed Christ in the last (and perhaps most important?) word he gave us. I haven’t truly been a follower. But as I go, I rest on the truths that my job as a sold-out follower of Christ is to go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them, and that Christ promises, he PROMISES, that he is with me always. Where has God led your heart today?