Are You Going? The Great Commission Revisited

This Sunday we took a closer look at the Great Commission.  Our teacher asked, “When Jesus says Therefore go and make disciples of all nations..” what does the word “go” mean to you? Someone jokingly said it’s what you pass to collect $200 in a Monopoly game!

All kidding aside, God has been speaking to me a lot about going lately and what that actually means. I think it’s connected to one’s call but isn’t specifically the call. We might receive a call of God but then we don’t go.

When you look at the Greek translation of the Great Commission, the word go translates to “traveled.” So when we go we must “travel,” and that’s when it gets complicated.

Not all of us are willing to do that, are we?  We will go to church or go to do a service project, but are we willing to go or “travel” wherever Jesus asks us to go?

Just about all the greats of the Old and New Testament had something in common.  They “went.”  God said to Abram, Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. So Abram left, as the Lord had told him.  When Jesus called Peter and his brother Andrew, At once they left their nets and followed him.

I confess I am more like Moses, who tossed a number of excuses at God why he couldn’t go to free the Israelites from captivity, but after some arm twisting, he eventually went.

When God put a call on my life to do Christian motivational speaking in 2002, I was not ready to go and I put boundaries on when and where I would go. My kids were too young. I didn’t want to leave my husband on the weekends. I agreed to speak, but only if I could get there by car in a half-hour or less. I put parameters on the Great Commission!

But three months ago, the word GO became increasingly louder in my life and I finally released the stranglehold I had on my comfort zone. I asked the Lord to expand my territory and agreed to go, even if it is outside my self-imposed thirty-mile radius.

I believe Jesus wants us to have a willing heart and sacrifice our agenda for his. He wants us to be willing go wherever he calls us to go.

In Matthew 19:29, Jesus promises to bless us for going. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

Are you willing to go in the way Jesus wants you to go? What does go mean to you?