23Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
27"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28Father, glorify your name!"
Jesus makes a strong analogy using seeds to paint a picture of the Christian life for us. It is only by dying that the seed produces fruit. Dr. Greear connected this to the idea that we must "die to self" in order to truly find life. I think the analogy goes even farther; if we can really convince ourselves to "die to self", we will see the benefits of that decision in the lives of those around us.
This is to be my goal in the coming weeks, months, and years at Union. I want to live in a way that other people see a difference; I want people to see that I have Christ living in me. I have been saved since age 9, and up until this point my faith has been an inside aspect of my life. While I refuse to go out and cover my body in tattoos and shove Bible verses at people repeatedly, I want my inner faith to be more evident in my outer actions. This is all so much easier said than done, and I know I'll run into obstacles. Christ never promised us that the Christian life would be easy; he actually promised us just the opposite. He says in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake..." But in the scope of eternity, whatever amount of suffering we endure while here will dwindle in comparison to our everlasting happiness with Christ.
Whenever people ask me what my biggest fear is, I tell them that I fear getting to the end of my life, whenever that is, and having regrets about things I did or did not do. I think a more simple way of putting this is that my greatest fear is time. I worry that I'm going to run out of time to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish, that I will be disappointed in the decisions that I have made. Dr. Greear said something today that I immediately connected with this fear, and for that reason is the thing that I will remember the most from his sermon today. He said that Christians should never say that they aren't acting on behalf of Christ because they can't find the will of God for their lives. Rather, the will of God has already been revealed to all Christians through Christ and through his lessons while he walked this earth. The will of God is that Christians do everything they can, while relying on God's power and not their own, to reach every non-believer that they possibly can for the cause of Christ while they are here. This idea hit me because I hear so many people saying that they don't know what God wants them to do with their lives. It really is incredible to think about, that God's final command to us is to make disciples of everyone all over the world. A more accurate translation of the Great Commission says that, "Therefore, as you are going, make disciples of all nations..." I found this very interesting when I heard it for the first time. This means that we are commanded to constantly be making disciples, not just when we go on mission trips to other places. I used to think that we just lived normal lives and only did evangelical work while on missions trips, but that idea has since been changed. It can be intimidating to me that I am commanded to make disciples of all nations all the time, but God promises to be with me always.
Matthew 24:14 says:
14And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
We do not know when the end of the world will be, but this verse seems to indicate that once the gospel has been preached over the entire world, the end will come. I thought this was a very interesting verse for all those who are so obsessed over when the world is going to end. Dr. Greear said that there are over 1.8 billion people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. That stat simply amazed me. Rather than spending a long time simply looking for God's will, I should constantly be making disciples of those around me and teaching them the Gospel. I know God has the plans for my future (Jeremiah 29), so I should try not to worry about that too much.
The Commission is talked about all the time when the topic of missions comes up, but Dr. Greear really put the whole picture in perspective. It was an emotionally powerful sermon that I learned a lot from. He is speaking again on Friday so I'm excited to hear that.
We sang a song called "Our Great God" at Englewood tonight, which I've heard a few times before. The chorus to this song has these lyrics:
Hallelujah
Glory be to our great God
Hallelujah
Glory be to our great God
Simple lyrics, but so powerful at the same time. These words really put everything that I've heard and thought today into perspective. We know what our job is here on earth, because Jesus clearly told us that as we are going, we are to make disciples of all nations. At the end of the day, we were created to worship God, and this simple refrain sent shivers down my spine as I felt the power of true worship. As we Christians try to live out the Great Commission the best way we can, we must always remember that we serve a great God and that he will always look after us and be with us.
Hallelujah
Glory be to our great God
Hallelujah
Glory be to our great God
No comments:
Post a Comment