Have you heard any bad news this week, we are inundated by them. The media blasts us with waves and waves of them. Our friends and acquaintances peddle them. We live in a very large world, that is filled to the brim with unpleasant news. History is replete with tales of them, the present teams with them, and many do not believe in the possibility of a future that is not devoid of them.
The Book of Job puts it this way, man who is born of woman is a few days and full of trouble. It is almost as if a day cannot go by without troubling and distressing news in one form or another, but in the midst of all these negativities God has given us good news. The gospel of his Son, Jesus Christ. God has reached out to all of humanity with the great news of his love for them. The light of the message of God's great love is shining into all of the vast darkness of gloom and doom which surrounds us today. As Believers, the Father has entrusted us with this good news to be proclaimed to every precious Soul he created on Earth.
Today, my goal is to emphasize the urgency and sensitivity of this task God has given us at the point of his Ascension to Heaven. Christ gave a command to his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples of all Nations in these simple. Yet profound words are buried, the heartbeat of God for Humanity. God deeply loves people, and that is why he sent his only begotten son as a substitute to die for their sins on the cross. He paid for all their sins and opens his arms wide to receive as his beloved child everyone who comes to him through the propitiating work of Jesus Christ. God loves every soul, equally, Believers and unbelievers alike. Sadly, not everyone responds to his love in faith. Notwithstanding God's scope of planned salvation covers all men.
This is why the word all is used in the Great Commission. Again, the Bible says that he desires that all men are saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. This all-inclusiveness is a recurring and emphasized theme in scriptures and thus reveals God's deepest longings. He wants to save, heal and restore all people to himself. Frankly, this is an amazing thought to ponder and a glorious truth to contemplate that God wants beyond anything else, to do good to people, but that is not all it even gets better.
Did you notice the vehicle which he has chosen to communicate his saving truth? Did you realize the vessels he has prepared to bear this message to the world? It's clear that God has not chosen angels to bear this message to our ailing World. Neither will he proclaim it from the skies by himself. He has chosen to send us to our world.
His method is to use the frail mortal lips of men to proclaim his eternal gospel. What an honor God has anointed and authorized us to go into the entire world to declare his truths to the diverse people groups. Therein contained you are the one on whose shoulders the weight of this responsibility rests. God trusts you to go. He commands you to go, realize that you are the one God has chosen and enabled to do this divinely ordained task and get at it.
You are God's Ambassador on the earth, his mouthpiece to a world that cannot hear him speak and His Image to a world that cannot see him now. I Am Not oblivious of some things that deter us from representing the kingdom. I am not ignorant Of some of the challenges that may inhibit us from witnessing the Lord to the world. For instance, it is possible to be discouraged by that feeling of insufficiency that plagues us all. The great Apostle Paul himself also had this challenge.
He saw and recognized himself as insufficient when he says in second Corinthians, Chapter 3, Verse 6, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves. The solemn truth is that nobody is really qualified to stand in Christ's stead as his representative on the Earth. We are only made qualified by God's grace working within us. The second part of that verse reads: our sufficiency is of God, how Sublime our sufficiency resonates at the same frequency as God's, because he works in and with us Philippians chapter 2. Verse 13 reads: it is God who works in you both to do will and to do of his good pleasure.
God is working in us, it's okay, to feel insufficient in ourselves alone, but it's absolutely wrong to feel insufficient totally, for God is our sufficiency together with him, we can provide salvation even to the hardest sinner ever known to humanity. If you truly desire to be God's healing hand to the sick, his loving heart to The Sinner and his supplying hand to the poor, then God will partner with you and inundate you with the grace and strength for the task. Do not fail to run by disqualifying yourself, God has qualified and embraced you for the work. Another prevalent notion that discourages people from preaching the gospel is that people will never respond. There is a certain inexplicable demoralizing influence that comes after you have been turned down by numerous people on your evangelism attempts.
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