“And Jesus came up and spoke
to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on
earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end
of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
One of Jesus’ final commands to His disciples, and to us as His followers,
is to go into the world and make disciples. It’s called the Great Commission which
calls us to be missionaries to our world and our culture and spread the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Theologians call this the Missio Dei, or the Mission of
God. It’s God’s mission to spread His
glory by using the Church to teach and train all people to love and follow
Jesus. In the Great Commission Jesus
calls us to be a part of that mission. That’s
where we get the phrase, Living Missionally – it means to live in sync
with or to live out, the Mission of God.
Have you ever thought about the fact that God is a missionary God? He is. The
great thing about Jesus’ call for us to go out make disciples and spread the
Gospel is that He did it Himself! He leads by example! God is a sending God, with a desire to see all
of humanity and creation reconciled, redeemed, and healed. He sent Jesus for this purpose.
The greatest display of the mission of God is in John 3:16 which
says, “For God
so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life.”
Today, let’s spend some time thinking about the fact that God is a
missionary God who came into our world to reach us with His love through Jesus
Christ. His desire is to see all people
reconciled, redeemed, and healed.
Our God is the God of “all
the families of the earth?” We need
to become global Christians
with a global vision, for we have
a global God. So may God help us never to forget His four-thousand-year-old promise to Abraham, “And
in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have
obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18)
