Empowered to go

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

MATTHEW 28:18-20 (NASB)

I want to talk a little bit about the Great Commission. Jesus said (my paraphrase), Go into all the world and make disciples. Oh, and when you make a disciple, I want you to teach them the very same thing that I’ve taught you.

Let me tell you a story that captures the importance of Jesus’ words. There was a guy who was at a job site. He wasn’t a carpenter, but he was there, and he was really excited about work. He just wanted to do something! He’s seeing all these guys cutting lumber all day. They’re building, they’re framing, and he’s like, “You know what? I'm going to be here for another hour and a half after these guys leave. What can I do? What can I do? Come on, let me do something.” So he’s adamant about doing something at the site, but he’s never really cut lumber. He really doesn’t understand cutting lumber, but he convinces himself, “I can cut a straight line, it’s easy…” So away he goes, cutting the lumber. By the time he got 100 2x4’s done, he’s got boards over 9 feet long. Why? Because he didn’t use the original pattern!

So what happens in Christianity? The original Great Commission — “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you” — is taken, and altered just a little bit (perhaps a church doesn’t put an emphasis on discipleship, or maybe they disciple, but don’t teach their disciples to make disciples; or perhaps the church once believed in the Gifts of the Spirit but fear gets in the way and they begin to restrain the movement of the Holy Spirit, and this disbelief gets passed down from generation of Christians to generation of Christians; the list goes on), all of a sudden you have somebody who doesn’t teach the same pattern of Jesus’ commands. So what happens is the gospel gets a little off, and then it’s a more little off, and then it’s a little more off, etc. So 2,000 years of “off” makes for more than a 9-foot board…

Let me give you an example. Smith Wigglesworth — the British evangelist who played a big role in the early Pentecostal movement — was a plumber. He had a stutter and could hardly even speak. His wife, Polly, was a preacher. She’d already been preaching for decades when Smith sought the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. So then it happened — boom! Smith got consumed, and he telegraphed his wife to tell her that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire. His wife replied that she was just as much as baptized as him, and so she told him he could preach on Sunday and “we’ll see...” So the next Sunday, when Smith started to speak, God took dominion. And Polly is in the back as Smith is preaching, and she’s thinking, That’s not my Smith, that’s not my husband. What has happened to my husband? Polly wasn’t baptized in the Holy Spirit because the denomination didn’t believe in it, but Smith — because he was poor in spirit — his soul hungered for something that religion could never give him.

We are so full in America. We are so used to being fed well by all these different means, and it’s caused us to disassociate our true hunger. Our true hunger for God and the things of God can only be fulfilled by God. Our hunger must be pointed at the very One who can transform our lives, the very One who can turn us into powerhouses for God. We need the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Christianity is not Christianity without the Holy Ghost! Ask Him for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, and receive it. He doesn’t deny the promise of His free gifts — they’re for every one of His sons and daughters who believe so that you can live an empowered life on this earth!

-Todd