"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 28:18-20 (NIV)"
After a recent discussion on a the Great Commission with my camp comm, it made me realised that maybe I do not fully understand it totally to actually teach it or share it. When i thought I have so internalised it during my involvement in my campus crusade days till today. And those uncertainty had compelled me to a whole week of constant reading up, praying, reflection and discussion with other Christians just to find the Truth & Meaning behind the Great Commission as i believe is so much more than what we know of just evangelism & discipleship.
My sharing is adapted from readings & sermons from reknown writers such as John piper, Rick Warren, Dr Bill Bright, Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones and one from a very reformed view by Rev Brian M. Schwertley.
Bill Bright founder of the Campus Crusade for Christ and probably a person who is an epitome of the Great Commission said this...
"If I had the privilege of writing a news story about the greatest events of all the centuries, one of the most important would be a meeting on a mountain near Galilee where a small group of men were given a global strategy for carrying God's love and forgiveness to a lost and dying world. On this mountain these men received that greatest challenge ever given to mankind, to which I referred, by that greatest Person who ever lived, concerning the greatest power ever revealed and the greatest promise ever recorded."
As each of us develops a personal strategy, God can use us to play a vital role in helping to fulfill the Great Commission.
It all boils down to this simple equation:
GOAL - PLAN + ACTION = DREAM
GOAL + PLAN + ACTION = REALITY
Taking from Bill bright equation, this is how i would translate it...
GOAL (To Fulfil The Great Commission) + PLAN ( The strategy of carrying out disciplership & evangelism) + ACTION (With the empowerment of the Holy Spirit we carry out our plan in action being that witness for our Lord)= REALITY (The Restoration of God's Kingdom & Where The Great Commission is complete, and the witness to Christ has been planted among all the unreached people groups of the world)
You do not have to design your own strategy; you are simply discovering the plan that God has already designed.
Read the full article here to graspe the entire thesis of Bill Bright vision of the Great Commission.
All this gave me a bigger picture with renewed revelation & insights of not only the essence of the Great Commission but also the follow up of what happened after that commission, especially in Acts when the power of the Holy Spirit came in the picture which i will talk about next.
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Acts 1:8”
Extract of Sermon from "You Shall Receive Power Till Jesus Comes"- John Piper
An Illustration from Lloyd-Jones
Let me use an illustration from Martin Lloyd-Jones in his book Joy Unspeakable to describe the difference between common Christian living and what happens when the Holy Spirit "clothes" a person with power or "comes upon" a person with this unusual power.
He says it is like a child walking along holding his father's hand. All is well. The child is happy. He feels secure. His father loves him. He believes that his father loves him but there is no unusual urge to talk about this or sing about it. It is true and it is pleasant.
Then suddenly the father startles the child by reaching down and sweeping him up into his arms and hugging him tightly and kissing him on the neck and whispering, "I love you so much!" And then holding the stunned child back so that he can look into his face and saying with all his heart, "I am so glad you are mine." Then hugging him once more with unspeakable warmth and affection. Then he puts the child down and they continue their walk.
This, Lloyd-Jones says, is what happens when a person is baptized with the Holy Spirit. A pleasant and happy walk with God is swept up into an unspeakable new level of joy and love and assurance and reality that leaves the Christian so utterly certain of the immediate reality of Jesus that he is overflowing in praise and more free and bold in witness than he ever imagined he could be.
The child is simply stunned. He doesn't know whether to cry or shout or fall down or run, he is so happy. The fuses of love are so overloaded they almost blow out. The subconscious doubts—that he wasn't thinking about at the time, but that pop up every now and then—are gone! And in their place is utter and indestructible assurance, so that you know that you know that you know that God is real and that Jesus lives and that you are loved, and that to be saved is the greatest thing in the world. And as you walk on down the street you can scarcely contain yourself, and you want to cry out, "My father loves me! My father loves me! O, what a great father I have! What a father! What a father!"
What Happened at Pentecost
I think this is basically what happened at Pentecost. And has happened again and again in the life of the church. They were so filled with the fullness of God—they were overwhelmed with the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of Christ—that they began (as Acts 2:11 says) to speak "the greatnesses of God." Their mind was full of a fresh, new, breathtaking vision of God and their mouth overflowed with prophetic praise—sons and daughters, old and young, slave and free. I believe that this kind of experience is what Jesus meant by the "witnessing" in Acts 1:8 that will be able to extend the gospel to the end of the earth. "You will receive this power . . . and you will be my witnesses." You will no longer be merely advocates who can prove like a good lawyer that Jesus rose from the dead. But under the influence of this power—this experience of the Spirit of the risen Christ—you will speak with the unwavering assurance of one who has tasted and knows the reality so immediately that all doubt is gone. You move from being an advocate of Christianity to being a witness of the living Christ. You move from simply deducing Christian truths from valid premises to proclaiming them boldly as experienced realities. This is the power and the witness that will take Christ to the end of the earth. My Personal Account:
Reading that illustration from Martin Lloyd-Jones and John Piper adaptation of it really reminded me of my personal account of how God changed & transformed my life after my first personal experience of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit at my first youth ministry camp on 9 December 2005. If not for that initial encounter of that empowerment of that Holy Spirit, and prophesies that were prayed over me that very day. I would never understood what Being that Witness for Christ really meant. I would have missed all the opportunities to share that beautiful Gospel to the friends & people I met along my path from my St.Gabriels sch mates, Catholic Junior College (the first 3 mths in 2006), to Temasek Design School (2006-2009),Mission Trip to Selangor (2007), Internship at White Space Living (2008), Days in the Army(2009- 2011), I would have never had that opportunity to be trained & equipped, to internalized & carry out that Great Commission from my involvement in TP Campus Crusade for Christ (2006-2009),to see the power of God becoming a reality in my life and outpouring of His Love & Unspeakable Joy in my heart and how that conviction overflowed to the many others that was place along my path.
And most of all, it was only that very day I can say the verse from Romans 8:16 to be a reality in my life as well. "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." As I had this deep utter and indestructible assurance, so that I know that I know that I know that God is real and that Jesus lives and that we are loved, and that to be saved is the greatest thing in the world.
References:
John Piper
John piper sermons derived from Martin Lloyd-Jones Theology
Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ Founder)
AllAboutGOD.com
Rev Brian M. Schwertley (A Reformed view of the Great Commission)
