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My awesome daughter, Gemma, is eight months old. She is absolutely the greatest part of our lives and my wife and I find something new to laugh at as she makes fresh discoveries everyday. ”What can I put in my mouth? Can I move my hands like that? Is that the dog making funny sounds? What else can I put in my mouth?” Lately, G has been pulling up on the furniture to stand up, mostly to grab for the forbidden remote control or iPhone or something else too valuable to get baby slobbered, which are apparently the vary things that attract said baby slobber. Nonetheless, this latest discovery has been interesting to watch. She puts so much effort into accomplishing her goal and it makes me wonder what is going on in her head. I imagine it goes something like this: forbidden object spotted, army crawl to the couch, figure out how to get from my stomach to my knees, reach up as hiiiiiigh as I can and grab on tightly to as much material as I can, pull with all my strength and try to avoid the head bust if I slip, now that I’m semi-up work my feet to where they are underneath me, whew… now to that remote!
A couple of thoughts about this whole process of watching my daughter learn to stand and walk make the wheels in my head rotate a little faster. Firstly, it is ironic how she always wants the things she cannot have. If I put one of her toys, decked out in all sorts of colors, shapes, noise-making devices, and all other supposed baby-attracting bells and whistles, up on the couch, she will look at it with half a glance and then look for something else that is more interesting and usually, more forbidden. Why does she work so hard to pick up something that she knows she will get in trouble for grabbing, chewing, consuming, or playing with, especially when her dad has given her a toy that was made for her to play with and enjoy in all its fullness? Secondly, I do not expect her to walk on the first attempt at a step. I have no doubt that soon she will be hauling on all two’s going ninety-to-nothing, but I know that it will happen with many falls, scraps, bruises, and scars to vouch for her accomplishment, and I will be proud of every single attempt that she makes. The craziest part is this makes scary sense to most of us. Do we not go after things we know our Father has forbidden us to chase with laborious effort and a crooked smile? Do we not skip over the great blessings and gifts that He gives us only to run to things that feed our sinful nature and lead us into destruction? At the same time, the Father loves our every attempt at the next step, whatever that step may be. We will undoubtedly stumble and fall and sometimes we might get scrapped up or even scarred, but with each fallen attempt we are one step closer to getting it right. But also undoubtedly, our Father is proud of every single step. He is good. He is loving. And He calls us His own. He looks on us as proud parent looking upon his child learning to walk, looking past the falls and bruises to the end result. His love overcomes us, overwhelms us, and sustains us. Let us chase after the good things our Father puts in front of us, learning to walk in His ways and in His truths, overcoming the failed attempts by getting back up and taking another step, eventually to run towards Him with all of our effort going ninety-to-nothing.
This is just one story of many from my recent journey across the Americas to Chile. About a month and a half ago I felt God saying to me that He wanted to stretch my heart for the nations. I simply just said, “Sweet God! Let’s do it!” and didn’t think much more about it. A few weeks later I felt God was urging me to go to Chile with a friend of mine who has a ministry that partners with foreign missionaries and church planters offering whatever kind of help they need. I tried to push it out of my mind because, quite honestly, I did not have the time or the money to take such a trip without planning or notice. For the next week I went to bed with Chile on my mind and woke up with it on my heart. I finally mentioned something to my wife about it and asked her to pray with me about whether I needed to go on this trip; if it was just me I didn’t want any piece of it, but if it was God I wanted to be obedient. A few days later, she said, “Kyle, I gotta talk to you about something.” In my head, I thought, “Oh no, what did I do?” Then she totally surprised me and said, “You are suppose to go to Chile.” I knew it was true, I knew it was God. So I tapped into our savings (don’t tell Dave Ramsey), bought a plane ticket, packed my bags, and left two weeks later.
The country itself is absolutely gorgeous, with the Andes Mountains standing proudly to the East, their summits still heavily capped with winter snow, and the endless bliss that is the Pacific to the West. It is very chilly there (pun totally intended), and the food is overwhelmingly exquisite with juicy steak, cooked-to-perfection potatoes, and boiled, seasoned clams and shellfish being some of the main dishes. I was super stoked to find that some of the finest coffee I’ve ever had was served at every one of the four meals a day. More beautiful than anything else were the people. Their hunger for God was apparent as soon as I engaged in attempting conversation, they with their broken English and me in a less-than-poor adventure in speaking Spanish. We had a team made up of my friend, a Chilean missionary, a few translators, a husband and wife who lead worship, and me. We traveled from the very Southern-most city that is reachable by vehicle called Puerto Montt, to the nation’s capital city, Santiago, within the 10 days I was there, totaling over 650 miles. Every evening we preached at a different church in different cities and brought the message of the faithfulness and provision of God. After the message we prayed and ministered to whoever needed or wanted prayer. I have never seen the power of God fall so strongly on a gathering in my life.
I’ll share one example of what God was doing throughout the week. We were at a church where many people came down to receive prayer after the message. We begin to pray for many of the people as God lead us and God began to move in the most powerful ways. As my translator relayed the things I was speaking, God began to speak to me more specifically and with more detail than ever in my life. I prayed for healing over a woman and watched her physically change. I prayed for healing over another woman and as I did my chest started burning with intense pain, which I initially assumed was caused by the mysterious shellfish/clam thing I ate the night before. As the pain increased, I wasn’t sure what was wrong so I jumped out on a limb and asked her if something was wrong in the middle of her chest. She exclaimed that she had had an operation in that exact spot two months ago and that it didn’t heal right and something was still wrong inside of her; it caused her much pain. I prayed for God to immediately heal her and as I did I felt the burning sensation go away and apparently she did too as she began to weep and cry out, “Gracias, Señor!” She said the pain was gone and that God had healed her. God is absolutely amazing!
I prayed over many more people for all kinds of different things and God continued to do miraculous things. One of the most incredible experiences happened late in the week as the service we were at was almost over. I had been praying for some people in the back of the room and was walking back up to the front. I past a young guy of probably 16 or 17 years old whom I noticed earlier in the evening. I knew earlier that I needed to pray for him and I kept waiting and waiting for him to come forward but he never did. As I past him, I called Francisco, my translator, to come over to him with me, and I said to the kid, “Can I pray for you?” He nodded slightly and I said, almost without thinking, “You knew you were suppose to come up earlier for prayer but you didn’t.” He looked down at the ground and nodded again. I told him that it was okay and that God wanted to move inside of him. I put my hand on his forehead and it was as if I immediately knew the core of who this kid was: his deepest insecurities, his internal thoughts, his secrets that he had never told anyone before. I began to speak the things that were going through my mind. I began to explain with uncanny detail the hurt and pain that he held inside of his heart and how he hid this all internally, shielding it from his friends and family. I revealed the outburst of rebellion within him and the sinful things he had been doing over the past year or so. I told him about his dysfunctional relationship with his dad and how he absolutely could not stand to be around his father. I knew it was because his father had emotionally and verbally abused him growing up and that he felt no love from his dad at all. I said that I saw him shutting the door to his room at night, pretending everything was alright, and then weeping in his brokenness and depression in his bed, crying himself into slumber. This was scary territory for me to be trudging through and I finally asked him if all of this was true. He finally looked up from the spot on the floor that he had stared a hole through and peered deep into my eyes, trying his hardest to hold back the tears. He nodded his head and said that every word I spoke was exactly right; it was all true. I then said something that I knew was the reason I was praying for him, “You hate God because you hate your dad. You think God is a father like your father. I am here to tell you that God is not like your father. He loves you more than anyone on this whole earth, from Chile to Texas, ever could. He is not mad at you. He doesn’t want to throw you in hell. He is madly in love with you and wants to know you, and He wants you to know Him.” At this, the boy broke down. The coldness rushed from his eyes in the form of ever-swelling tears holding the emotions of years and years of loneliness and brokenness. With streams forming vertically down his desperate face, I began to tell him the miraculous Gospel of Jesus, and his gaze never broke mine. I explained,” Jesus took all of your sin, all of your loneliness, all of your emptiness, and all of your brokenness to the cross where He died the most gruesome and horrific death in the history of the world. He went into the grave taking with Him all of your junk. Three days later He arose from the dead, the only person in history to have victory over death, and in the pit of the tomb He left all of your sin and brokenness. He is alive today. He wants to give you life. He is here now and wants to bring you life –real life, abundant and full life, joyful life where He is your Lord and your Lover.” I told him that Jesus is real and that the reason I knew all the stuff about him was because His Spirit was in me, speaking to me, and leading me as I spoke and prayed over him. ”Jesus has given me life, He has rescued me from death, He has rescued me from my brokenness and pain, He has saved me from the mess I got myself into. Do you want Him to do the same for you?” With the puddle of tears on the tiles below growing larger, he said, “Yes, I want Jesus!” I lead him to the Lord, telling him to pray to God and ask Him to forgive him, ask Him to save him, ask Him to live in him, and ask Him to grant him life. As the boy prayed, I watched the Spirit of God fall on him, moving deep inside his heart and restoring life and hope and love within the almost forgotten depths of this kid’s soul. I was a spectator of the amazing grace of God rushing over a wretched man, as the Creator of the universe stole back what was rightfully His to begin with–the life of this teenage boy. God did many incredible things during this journey and it was an awesome blessing to join Him in His work. I pray that this testimony of His grace and truth and Spirit and power would fall deep upon your heart, bringing encouragement and refreshment to your spirit. May God bless you as you seek Him and as we are obedient to the things He calls us to do, may He bring light and grace and truth and life to the ends of the earth.
Several months ago, I went fishing for the first time in a long while.
This was mostly because the guys I work with are outdoor enthusiasts, much like myself, however, they lean more toward the fishing/hunting aisles at Academy whereas I roam the camping/kayaking/outdoor sections. I enjoy doing most anything outside and have recently picked up hunting as a hobby, partly to join in the badgering of my co-workers and partly for the experimentation of a new sport. The talk of hunting in our office is probably on the top 5 Frequently Talked About topics and so I couldn’t help but loading up and jumping on the old bandwagon.
Fishing is up there too, but not anywhere close to hunting. Something happened a few months back that boosted fishing in the rankings. I never really paid attention to the conversations on the matter because fishing to me is… well its boring.
Maybe this is due to my memories as a kid making a fishing pole out of a long stick, rolling up Frosted Flakes mixed with Big Red into little pieces as bait, and hiking back to the little tank behind my grandparents house in the country. The construction of this rod was pristine, as I had whittled the bark bare with my trusty Swiss Army (thanks Mac), carving a loophole in the end, and even using duck tape for the grip. As I put my homemade bait on the rusty hook at the end of the line I thought to myself, “This is gonna be great. I’m going to catch the big one!” For the next hour I stared with intent at the mocking red and white bobber, ready to yank the heck out of the rod the moment it went under. Either all of the fish in the pond were brilliant and knew this was some sort of trick, or possibly they all could not stand the taste or smell of Big Red Frosted Flakes, or God forgot to put fish in this tank where fish should naturally be. At the end of that hour I found myself thinking, “The best part of fishing is building the pole. Maybe I could go back and make another rod….”
Nonetheless, fishing has never really been my thing. So when the guys at the office started rambling on about there fishing adventures, I never really paid much attention. This changed, however, with the addition of one adjective.
Kayak fishing!
This culmination of two completely separate activities, one of which I absolutely loved and the other that I hated with equal enthusiasm, somehow struck a melodious chord in my outdoorsy soul. I thought that this was something that I needed to try. I could handle fishing with the guys as long as it was coupled with paddling out on my kayak and the sound of waves breaking out on the banks.
And a strange thing began to happen at the office. Kayaks began to show up everywhere. I was being asked what kinds of kayaks were good? Which ones sucked? Which ones could track well? Which ones had good storage capacities? Kayaking jumped to the top of FTA list in a matter of days, and I loved it. By the end of the week, our whole staff had kayaks in the backs of their trucks and had made plans to kayak fish within the week.
One day, I decided to go out with them and give this newfound sport a try.
I packed my kayaking gear in the back of my Xterra, threw the boats on top, and headed for the lake. One of the guys I worked with lent me a rod and reel because, naturally, I did not own one. We met at the lake and unloaded our massive boatloads of gear. As we put in and began to paddle to the far cove, I found myself so far enjoying kayak fishing. We spread out in the cove and began casting. A few of the guys had several lines dropped in the water and their rods were in custom rod holders attached to their boats. This impressed me as I fumbled around with the one rod I had, trying to figure out how to make the little worm look real as I violently shoved the hook through its fake head. After making sure the weight was at the end of the line, the hook was properly attached, and the “real-looking” fake worm was in place, I began to cast it out and finally sort of got the hang of the motion. I began a contest with myself to see how far out I could cast the hook. After thirty minutes or so, and not even a nibble, we paddled to the next cove hoping more ambitiously hungry fish were ahead. To no avail, the fish remained full and refused to take the bait. At one point I thought I had one when I was reeling it in and my pole started to bend. I pulled and reeled as your suppose to (at least on Wii fishing), and my kayak began to move towards the fish. In my head I thought that it was the big one from back in the day that I always planned on catching, but as I moved closer I realized that my big fish was really a big branch right under the surface of the water that my hook was caught on. That remained to be the most excitement I had all day. We paddled back in and despite not catching a thing I actually had fun kayak fishing.
A few weeks after that adventure, I was at a prayer gathering with a few others and God was really speaking to us and drawing us closer to him. I was praying for a friend of mine who has a ministry that reaches out to several communities across Central America and God began to speak clearly to me what to pray for him. God was pressing on me to pray for my friends “burden,” which sort of confused me. I kept saying to God, “No Lord, you say that your burden is light and your yoke is easy. How can I pray for you to increase his burden? It just does not make sense.” Then God began to assure me that this burden was not a bad thing, although it was both necessary and heavy.
And then almost immediately, God took me back to that memory of fumbling around with the fishing lure. He highlighted in my mind the weight at the end of the line, and I suddenly realized what God was saying to me for my friend. The weight is necessary to catch fish and without it the hook is completely useless. It has nothing to make it sink. For my friend, God was showing me that Christ is the bait and the hook and the reason to fish in the first place. But there has to be weight on the end of the line to make the hook sink. What the Spirit was teaching me was that God sometimes allows our hearts to be burdened, to be heavy, and to feel weighty for the sake of the Gospel. It is not burdensome. It is certainly not condemning. And it is not to load us down with worry, regret, anxiety, or whatever else. Jesus does say, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”1 But I believe God does let us feel pain for other people. He allows us to be touched and moved by the broken hearted. He gives us hearts to feel pity and mercy for other people. And he allows us, in a sense, to be burdened in order to bare each other’s burdens. He gives us the heart, or the weight on our heart, we need in order to go out and cast our line and fish for the sake of the Gospel.
As I told my friend what God was showing me, he shook his head in agreement and was deeply moved by what God was saying to him. He was affirmed in his calling and encouraged in his spirit.
What is God putting on your heart? What areas is he weighting, not weighing, you down in order for you to cast your line in HIS name?
1 Matthew 11:30.
We got a new pup a few weeks ago. His name is Bauer and he is a Brittany Spaniel. Captain has adapted well to Bauer and they are getting along better than I had imagined. I thought Captain might just gobble Bauer up, thinking that this was his new toy to destroy. But he seems to enjoy his new, little friend.
I love these dogs. But what trips me out is how much these dogs love me. Captain, who by the way has found he enjoys peeing on Bauer’s head, absolutely is beside himself when I come home. He has separation anxiety when I leave or when I am not around, which is the primary reason we got Bauer. He screams and howls in complete disarray when he knows I am inside and he is not. And the moment the back door opens he runs at speeds dogs should not run just to be as close to me as he can. His routine is to come rub his noes somewhere on me (often times in the last place one would want a dog to be near). He then shakes a few times to try to outlet some of the overwhelming exuberance flowing within him. He circles himself and then me and then himself again, and then must shake as quickly and fiercely as possible. He cannot wait for me to rub his head so he can try to lick as much of my skin as he can before I say, “No Lick, Captain.” If I drop to the ground, he clammers over me trying to lick my face or just rub his head in my hair. This dog loves me.
Seeing this makes me wonder a few things. I wonder what it would be like to be this excited when spending time with God. For me to be fully elated when Christ is near me, when I hear him, when I feel him, when I sit in his presence in awe of his majesty. I want to be that way–altogether crazy in love with Jesus to the point of uncontrollability. What is even more difficult to understand is the possibility that, not me but, God is like my dog (which is sorta weird because dog is God backwards). Is it true that Christ is utterly beside himself when he sees me? That the moment I turn away, he sits at the door staring until I come back? Does he cry out when I leave or develop extreme anxiety when I am separated from him? This God of the universe loves me. And when I turn to him, when I open that door to spend time with him, he becomes completely crazy for me. He is overwhelmed with excitement, joy, jubilation, and delight, in an almost euphoric expression of praise.
His delight is in me. His desire is for me.
This God loves me.
Some call it The Great Commission. Others say it is Jesus’ Famous Last Words, which is strange considering Acts 1. Regardless of what people call the passage, the final verses in the Gospel of Matthew are ones of which we should pay close attention.
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” - Matthew 28:16-20.
This is a relatively popular passage, especially in evangelical circles. We love to put parts of it on t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers and use it as a slogan for our upcoming mission trips and outreach events. But how many times do we stop and meditate and marinate on the concepts Jesus is saying? I mean, there is so much going on in this passage, not to mention that these are some of Jesus’ last words before leaving earth. Let’s dive into this text and reflect on some things Jesus says.[i]
So everyone goes through the awful death of Jesus. Three days later, the stone was rolled away. The women had already seen Jesus and told the guys that he’s going to meet them up on the mountain. There is a rumor circulating that Jesus’ body was stolen by his disciples, which they knew was entirely untrue,
and they are wondering what exactly they are going to see on top of this mountain.
They make the journey to Galilee, climb the mountain, and there he is.
When they saw him, they stopped in their tracks and worshiped him.
What did that look like? I honestly have no idea. I don’t know if it they counted to three and sang a song together, or prayed, or if they bowed down, or raised their hands, or if they only raised one hand because they thought two hands would be too distracting to others. All the same, the bottom line is they worshiped. It would be incredible to know what that looked like but the fact remains, we don’t know.
But some doubted.
Some of the guys simply could not wrap their minds around Jesus resurrecting from the dead. Did they lose their ‘disciple’ status for that? NO. They just didn’t think this thing that was happening in front of them was possible – something just wasn’t right about a guy coming back from the dead.
Then Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”[ii]
The word, “authority,” is the Greek word, exousia. Everything on heaven and on earth – which is, in the Jewish mindset, everything, everywhere, all places both in this world and in the heavenly realms – Jesus has control. His power to control all of this was with him throughout his entire life, through he chose not to rule by force.
“The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.”[iii]
Everything is in Jesus’ hands.
Jesus has a way of turning things upside down. In his day, there was this superpower that ruled a good chunk of the world called the Roman Empire. They held the authority everywhere they went. Their way of authority was coercion. They simply forced people do what they wanted them to do because if they didn’t, that person or group of people, would get the living daylights beat out of them…literally. Death was a completely reasonable option for dealing with people who wouldn’t do what the Roman Government wanted them to do.
So Jesus comes along and says, “I have all authority.” Jesus’ way of authority was not coercion; it was not force. He did not come with a sword and an army, but with a towel. He did not come on a chariot and a white horse, but on a donkey. He did not come triumphantly into the world in a shiny castle, but with humility was laid in a manger inside a stable. Jesus’ way of authority, or exousia, is through servanthood, not coercion.
Jesus even said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”[iv]
His kingdom is not of this world. The word world is the word kosmos in Greek. It is this earthly world we live in.
Coercion forces people to live a certain way. Most of the time, that way is unnatural and uncomfortable for those people. Jesus said, “My way is from a different place. It is not of this kosmos. My way is not to push people around, but to find those who are being pushed around and help them back to their feet.
Then Jesus says perhaps his most famous post-resurrection words; “Therefore go and make disciples.”[v]
The word, “Go,” here is an imperative verb in the aorist tense. This means a few things for us. The fact that it is an imperative means that it is a command, not a suggestion. Jesus commands us to go. The same is true for the word, “make disciples.” In the Greek, there is also this idea that we are already going. So literally, it could be translated, “having gone keep making disciples.”
All of us are already moving in certain directions. We all have circles of friends with whom we interact and experience life together. It is not like we stand still in an ever-moving world. Jesus knows that we are already going so he says, “As you go make disciples.”
Making disciples, or mathetes, carries the idea of Talmudim, in the Hebrew Scriptures. A Talmid was life long students who followed everything that his teacher did. His whole life was dedicated to learning the ways of his teacher—learning how to live a certain way of life.
Humility is a main factor in this. You know what a good disciple would never say? He would never say, “I know all the answers.” That would put him above his teacher and would be the ultimate offence. It is so contrary to the western way of learning in which a student must know all the right answers and fill in all the blanks in order to be in good standing with the teacher. The first century, Middle-Eastern way of thinking is exactly the opposite, encouraging students to ask more questions, have less answers, and to not even worry about the blacks. Central to understanding discipleship is this idea of saying, “I don’t have the answers. I don’t know.”
Many times in sharing our faith, our greatest fear is what? Not having the answers. We think we are suppose to know it all and wonder what will happen if we don’t know all the answers that someone asks us? We think we need to know everything there is to know before we can tell people about Jesus. There is a great statement that every Christian needs to memorize. It’s complex and deeply theological. It is, “I don’t know.” You can’t be a disciple if you have everything together and you know all the answers.
So Jesus says to go (or having gone) and make disciples of all the nations. The word nations is the word, ethnos. People many times take this verse and slap it on a t-shirt and go on a mission trip to the other side of the world. There is nothing wrong with doing that but I think there is something way deeper here that we can get from this.
Ethnos means people not like you. People who live differently, look different, and are different than you.
So what is Jesus saying? Go and make disciples of the people who aren’t like you.
Jesus assumes that in our going, we come across people who are not like us. He reasons that we are in circles and have connections with people not like us. He’s saying, here, to the people of the first century, “You have it completely backwards.” They believed the savior would come to save them and them alone. It was this idea of, “Rescue us. Save us. Redeem us.” The religious people of that day even had a slang word for the nations that they often used. They called the other nations that were not like them, “dogs.”
Jesus turned that idea upside down. It wasn’t, “Hey guys, avoid those people with everything you have because they are unclean and are pretty much equal to dogs!” It was, “Alright guys, go and hang out with those people who are not like you. Don’t avoid them. Engage them! Talk to them. Don’t walk away from them, but try to get closer to them.”
If you spend all of your time with people who are just like you, you never engage the ethnos. If all you do is hang out in the Christian circles and go to Christian clubs and only participate in Christian events, you cannot get closer to the ethnos. If you never get away from people just like you, then you cannot make disciples.
Jesus even prays that we not disengage from the ethnos. He says, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.”[vi]
Jesus prays for his disciples. He does not ask God to take them out of the world, but that God would protect them from the evil one. The intention was never, “I’ll take all of you and put you over here so that you will never have to deal with anything and you wont be infested by the heathens of the world and you’ll never ever deal with sin or sinful people again.” It was always, “Hey, I am going to put you into this heathen crowd and let you show them what I look like.”
This might come as a shock to some, but it is perfectly okay to be in the presence of “the bad people.” It is alright to be around someone who is smoking a cigarette, or someone drinking an alcoholic beverage, or someone who uses inappropriate adjectives. It is even okay to be at a place where those smoking, drinking, descriptive-word-using people hang out with no intention of distributing religious tracks or shouting turn-or-burn fraises from a loud speaker. We are to engage people not like us. And yes, other people will talk about us. We will risk damage to our religious reputations. We will be the point of interest during gossip sessions at the prayer meetings and people will question our morality and ethics and even our backsliden hearts. And all of that is perfectly okay.
There is an interesting concept I noticed in the fifteenth chapter of Luke. The first few verses say, “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered…”[vii]
Notice the different people in these few verses. Jesus is with the public outcasts. The-people-who-must-not-be-named. These people are completely opposite of those whom Christians would expect Jesus to be around. And yet, “these people” are the ones gathered around Jesus.
And the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered.
Which brings an interesting question: do outcasts, sinners, and people not like you flock to you? Do people whom society runs away from want to hear the things you have to say? Do the religious people and Sunday school teachers mutter about you? If the answer is yes, you may look more like Jesus than many people think.
So Jesus says that as we are going, we are to make disciples of people not like us. Then he says two things to do: baptize them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything he has commanded.[viii]
The word “baptize” is the word, baptitzo, and literally means to immerse or submerge. In evangelical circles we would define this verb, to dunk. In many churches that practice baptism by immersion, the pastor or dunker says something about baptism being a tangible picture of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Water is like death, being immersed into it is like being buried, and we are raised up to walk in newness of life. It is an illustration of the death of our old self and the resurrection of our new self. And what are the words we use? “I baptize you, _________, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
This passage could be a literal demonstration in which Jesus tells us what to do: “Say these words whilst dunking new believers.” Nonetheless, I think there is something more here.
In John 17, the same prayer as mention earlier, Jesus prays for every believer that will ever exist. He prays for unity between them. He says, “Let them be one as I and the Father are one.”[ix]
There is this perfect unity that exists within the Trinity: Father-Son-Holy Spirit.
Three-in-one.
The Holy Trinity.
One God, yet three separate entities.
All different rolls, yet all the same One, Triune God.
So there is this perfect relational flow that exists within the Trinity; three parts that are all in relation to another, all the same God.
This brings up and interesting idea.
We were created in whose image?[x]
God’s.
Our creator created us to be like him. How many social networking tools do we use on a daily basis. How many friends do we have on MySpace? How many times a day do we check FaceBook? We talk to people via Instant Messing, SMS text messaging, and video chat rooms. Most everyone we know has a cell phone and many of us have unlimited texting. We have blogs, Twitter, Bebo, and whatever else just came out in the last few minutes that you spent reading this. The fact is that we are the most well connected generation ever to exist. We can hardly exist outside relationships. We can’t wait to get home to check our comments, posts, messages, or who wants us to be a pirate? Or a ninja? We can’t stand it when we get a text in class or in a meeting and we are unable to check it. We are close to death whenever our phone dies or, God forbid, is lost or broken.
The bottom line is we were created to be in relationship with each other.
We were created to be in relationship with our God.
When Jesus says to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, maybe its not just a suggestion of what to say when you baptize someone. Maybe it is an instruction to show the people around us what living relationally means. Maybe it is an order to immerse these people in a Trinitarian community. Maybe Jesus is saying to show them what it is like to like in a community of people that love God, love each other, and love other people. A community who lives in this relational flow with each other, doing life together, embracing hardships as a group, crying when ones hurt, rejoicing when one is glad, and trudging through the most difficult situations life throws at a person.[xi]
I have experienced this first hand. Several years ago, Jade and I met a girl. She had lived a life of drugs, sex, and running off chasing after everything under sun. She met Jesus, began to experience life-changing grace and became one of our really close friends. We took her into our community, which at that time was our small group of our friends trying to do life together, and loved her through a lot of tough times. There were moments where she would slip up and fall back into some of the old things that use to drag her to the very bottom pits of despair, yet we still showed her love. And there were times when I wanted to be completely done with her altogether. But God, in relation with all of us, showed us how to love her as we loved each other. We accepted her in her loneliness. We accepted her when she slipped up. We accepted her when she was completely out of life. That was awfully difficult to do and I would argue that it is only through the grace of God that we are still close friends to this day. We helped in her seeing life from a new perspective. We lived life with her and helped her get back on her feet again. And she helped us see life from a new perspective (and helped us learn patience, love, and Christ-centered understanding along the way). That is immersing someone into a Trinitarian community—a relationally based family living out the things that Jesus said.
So Jesus says to make disciples, baptizing the ethnos in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he has commanded.
Jesus uses the word, didoxo, which means to teach them how to live as one says to live. In other words, don’t leave them hanging. Don’t just introduce them into this community, but teach them how to be apart of this community so that they will be able to go and make more disciples.
What does it look like for the Shalom of God, which is when everything is as it should be, to come into someone’s life? What does it look like for the Shalom of God to rest on a community of believers? Demonstrating to each other how to live the way Jesus taught us to live? That is what Jesus is saying to do. “Look, immerse these people who are not like you into a world that is focused entirely on me, and teach them how to live the way I taught you to live. It’s a better way of life! It is not about not breaking a lot of rules. It is about living in a way that changes the whole entire point of living itself.”
When we go on our “mission trips” or try to build relationships with the lost, people tend to ask, “So when do we bring up Jesus? When is the right time to bring the gospel to them?”
I started reaching out to these freshmen boys a few years ago. I met them at school a when they were in seventh grade, and over time, something connected between us. Gradually, I started hanging out with them, taking them out to eat after football games, and just sitting with them when I visited the high school. I had no agenda for these boys. I wasn’t trying to get them to come to my church, and I wasn’t trying to “save them.” I was doing what I felt like Jesus clearly said to do: LOVE THEM.
Several months into this new relationship that had developed with these boys, I was asked the question, “So have you told them about Jesus?” It was a question that I wrestled with for a few weeks. I had not presented the gospel to them, and honestly, I didn’t want to. I didn’t even feel like I should, which was a little disturbing, considering I am a youth pastor and that is pretty much my job. After doing some study, and much dialogue with a few friends, I started to understand something. In thinking about the question, “when do I share Jesus with these boys?” the answer I came up with was I already AM. The truth is that I am sharing Jesus with these boys. I give them food when they have no money. I give them a ride home when their parents are doing something they think is more important. I talk to them when their world comes crashing down. I was telling these kids about Jesus in the things that I was doing.
So the issue isn’t, when do we share Jesus with these people? The issue is what are we saying about Jesus to these people? What are we saying we believe about God? If we are not hanging out with the ethnos, we are saying exactly what we believe about Jesus: that he cares about people like ME, but doesn’t have time for people like you. Or maybe worse, Jesus looks at them with the same look we give them when we see them.
It isn’t when we tell them that is important, but what we are saying. It is what we are communicating we believe about Jesus. How are we communicating the gospel in the way we live? What are we saying that we—as believers, followers, Christians, disciples—believe about Jesus in how we live and interact with the world, the nations, the ethnos?
When you hang out, study, lead a group, party, eat, reach out, engage, etc., what are you saying about Jesus? What are you teaching about Jesus?
Jesus sums everything up by saying, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”[xii]
EGO METH HUMON EIMI! Which literally translates, “I with you am!”[xiii]
Central to being a disciple is that we do not have to fear. Jesus says I am with you, always, even to the very end of the age. In the Jewish world, forever isn’t even a concept that you would talk about because no one can understand forever. A good Jew would never say anything about forever because it is uncertain. Jesus says with certainty, I am with you now, and will be with you till the end of the present age. In other words, as far as we can possibly see, I will be here with you.
We have nothing to fear because he is with us.
This is an interesting and brilliant way to end the Gospel of Matthew. In the very first chapter, it is said, “‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us.”[xiv]
Immanuel—God with us. Matthew’s gospel has sort of this inclusion statement about Jesus. He introduces Jesus as God with us, and brings us back to the same things at the very end. “Surely I am with you always.”
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THOUGHTS:
A disciple is someone who is done pretending. They are done acting like everything is ok. They are done pretending like they have it all together. They are finished thinking that they have all the answers to all the questions.
Making Disciples is asking other people to step into community with you so that both of you don’t have to go it alone. A disciple is past trying to figure things out and desperately desires God to put back the broken pieces of your life.
In making disciples, who is your ethnos?
Are you in circles of people not like you?
Are you immersing them in a Trinitarian community that longs to see the love of Jesus restore lives?
Are you living in fear? Or allowing the truth of the gospel to rest in you with no fear?
Remember, Jesus is with us always, to the very end of the age.
[i] Some of the ideas in this chapter are completely original to me. Most however are things I have heard taught or picked up on by someone else who was probably way smarter than me. I cannot remember who all of those people were so I give credit to anyone reading who thinks their idea is in this chapter.
[ii] Matthew 28:18.
[iii] John 3:31,35.
[iv] John 18:36.
[v] Matthew 28:19.
[vi] John 17:15.
[vii] Luke 15:1-2.
[viii] Matthew 28:19.
[ix] John 17:21.
[x] Genesis 1:27.
[xii] Matthew 28:20.
[xiii] This is Exodus 3 language. With ego eimi there are several drawbacks to all the times God is with his people.
[xiv] Matthew 1:23.
