What are your intentions? The Great Commission

What are your intentions here today?

What is it that you intend to do? Or intend to get?

When I hear the word “intention” I think of a father asking a young man “what are your intentions toward my daughter?”

How do you intend to treat my child? And the underlying assumption that you better not do anything to hurt her, ever.

Sometimes I think we come to worship very hesitant and very unsure of our intentions.

We come with expectation to see familiar faces. To be welcomed into the warmth of the sanctuary.

We come with suspicion that someone might want money from us. That someone might ask us to lead or to serve.

We come with a well-built wall around our emotions so that although we crave the love and assurance of Christ Jesus, we hope that no one can truly see our fear, isolation, anger, sadness or confusion.

I believe some people come looking for answers to really big questions that loom over our lives and our world.

And though, I come as a pastor, a preacher, teacher and leader. I come more importantly with the hope and the knowledge that in worship I can get a clearer picture of who I am intended to be and what I am intended to do.

You’ve heard that old line that if you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got.

Figuring out who God intends us to be and what God intends us to do just might be different today than it was the first time we stepped in this church. I know it is for me. The tasks that I feel called to do are very different than the things I was working on three years ago.

I believe that we cannot lead intentional lives if we do not come back again and again to ask God, What is it that you want me to do today? This week? This month?

A little girl asked her mother, “Mommy, why do you cut the ends off the meat before you cook it?” The girl’s mother told her that she thought it added to the flavor by allowing the meat to better absorb the spices, but perhaps she should ask her grandmother since she always did it that way. So the little girl finds her grandmother and asks, “Grandma, why do you and Mommy cut the ends of the meat off before you cook it?” Her grandmother thought a moment and answered, “I think it allows the meat to stay tender because it soaks up the juices better, but why don’t you ask your Nana, after all, I learned from her and she always did it that way.” The little girl is getting a little frustrated, but climbs up in her great-grandmother’s lap and asks, “Nana, why do you cut the ends off the meat before you cook it?” Nana answered, “I don’t know why your mom and grandmom do it, but I did it because my pot wasn’t big enough.”

Over the past three weeks, many of you have lived out the chance to be intentional about your faith. With a very small amount of money, a short passage of scripture, and a whole lot of love, you were tasked to go forth and make a difference for the sake of Christ in this world. You were given a purpose greater than yourself and challenged to get a different result than you’ve always gotten.

The whole challenge was symbolic of all of the resources that God gives us all the time and how we ought to orient our lives around the opportunities that they present.

Today Jesus meets his disciples after the resurrection and gives them three simple things to hold on to.

Come and Worship. Go and make disciples. Remember, you are not alone.

These short words are the text of the passage that is commonly known as the Great Commission. Jesus is very clear to the disciples about job that they were given and the job that we are given. To come and gather and worship. To leave this place to make more disciples. And in everything that we do, remember that we are not alone.

Some people might say—evangelism isn’t my thing. I’m just one person and I’m not outgoing, I’m not adventurous. But each and every one of us is a beloved person in the eyes of God and almost every single one of us is here because of someone else – whether it was someone in your life who showed you what faith was, whether it was a family member who brought you to church, whether it was a mailing or an invitation, someone else believed it was important enough to get you here. And so, we know it just takes one person, one disciple, to share the gospel.

Bill Hybels, says that "We have never locked eyes with someone that did not matter to God." We can choose to intentionally build a relationship with someone to share that message or we can choose to intentionally keep silent for fear of rejection or strange looks or the label as the Christian who said too much.

We can claim that we’re just a small church and that we don’t have a large evangelism scope. You know what, A tooth is small, until it hurts. A screw is small, until it is missing. A mosquito is small, until it bites you. Our size does not limit our passion or our potential.

When Jesus came to the disciples that were grieving his loss, he tells them that all power and authority has been given to him and then he transfers that power to the disciples. The Greek for this kind of power is dynamos – the origin of our word for dynamite.

Christ is full of this energetic and enthusiastic and explosive power that changes lives and this dynamite is transferred to us so that we might intentionally share this power with those who are in places of death and destruction, who don’t know of a place to come and worship and be filled and renewed and loved and welcomed.

Making disciples is not synonymous with recruitment for the church rolls. It is not the same thing as building up membership. It is not a numbers game of who has how many, but it's taking time to enter into relationship with others that is deeper than the superficial acquaintances that our culture has come to identify as the norm. It is daring to share with others the life-giving, life-liberating, death-defying relationship of God in Jesus Christ. It is inviting others into this relationship. And to go and do it everywhere.

I believe that the reason we are seated here today is because those disciples took Jesus seriously. Thousands of years ago, 12 people listened to the words of Christ and decided to live their lives with intention, with purpose, and with mission.

Come and Worship. Go and make disciples. Remember, you are not alone.

They took this mission and went and told everyone about this amazing man who was indeed the savior of the world. They had no shame, they had no fear -- john was imprisoned for his passion! And they set up their lives so that the most important thing they could do was to make sure other people heard this explosive and amazing news of grace. The news that no matter who they were, no matter how the world treated them, there was love and forgiveness for them.

Who was it for you? Who was the disciple that taught you most about Christ?

For me it was my paternal grandmother. She saw a spirit in me and she nurtured it and encouraged it and she kept inviting and inviting and inviting and she would drive to the ends of the earth to pick me up so I could be in the church play. She sent me endless newspaper clippings and stories about God while I was in college. She bought my first Bible for seminary and the baptism outfit for my son. She was deeply wounded by her church and left for a few years. But God kept working on her and I was able to return the invitations and the newspaper clippings and the letters and the prayers. And she returned to the church and has found her place again. I don’t remember a day when there hasn’t been a bible and a devotional by her living room chair. She believes that God wants her to share the good news and she keeps inviting every person she meets to worship with her.

Come and Worship. Go and make disciples. You are not alone.

Archbishop Romero, compares the church to a river, that "will meet a thousand obstacles, just as the river encounters boulders, rocks, chasms." But just as the river flows on and prevails, so will the church, because Christ is with us to the end of the ages.

No matter where you have been, if you believe that God has pulled you through and brought you to this moment, ask God what your purpose is for this day, for this hour. Ask God how you as one small disciple in a world of zillions of people can carry out the Great Commission.

In one magazine I read a young pastor felt called to do inner city ministry. He wasn’t getting paid enough to afford a house for his family, so he gathered together 2 other families and together they went in on the rent for a large old home in the city. They chose to live intentionally by having only one dining room table, one toaster, one refrigerator between three families to reduce their costs and their impact on the world. By making this decision they were able not only to afford housing, but each of the three couples agreed to pay $75 extra in rent each month and then when they saw an opportunity for mission – someone in the community who needed money, someone who could use some help with clothes or food, they had their own community fund to do God’s work with. The intentions of the three couples, to live simply and according to God’s purpose allowed them to reach out to a city that was in desperate need of the good news of the gospel.

Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at the time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter intended to pep up his teammates and distract the Milwaukee batters. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, "Henry, you’re holding the bat wrong. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.” Aaron didn’t say anything. When the next pitch came he hit a homerun into the left field bleachers. After rounding the bases and reaching home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi and said, “I didn’t come up here to read.”
Unless we know the reason behind our intentions, the purpose for which we are designed, we can so easily get lost in the big mess of a world!

How is God asking you this day to fulfill the great commission? You’ve already got part one down – Come and Worship. How is God calling you to go and make disciples. Who is god calling you to go to? Is it a certain person in your family, at your work place? Whoever it is, wherever you go, intentionally make that next step and know that you are not alone.