CommissionedSample

Words hold lots of power.  We look to leaders to use words to determine the direction, coaches use words to encourage greater performance from their team, friends use words to bring us comfort in time of distress and heartache. The words that especially hold power are the last words someone says.  Many great men and women throughout history have gathered their followers to share with them one final piece of wisdom before their death.  Sometimes what they have to say surprises people.  Socrates, the founder of western philosophy, reminded his dear friends on his deathbed that he owed a man a chicken and wanted to make sure he was repaid.  Not exactly the wisdom and insight into the meaning of life they thought they would be receiving but an important message none the less.  

Before his ascension back to Heaven, Jesus had some famous last words to his followers. He gathered the 11 men who were closest to him in life and told them that they would be His witnesses to all they had seen while he was on Earth.  He told them to remember all that they had seen and commanded them to go and tell the whole world about the good news of His life, death, and resurrection.  In one account of this event found in Acts, Jesus tells his followers they will be his witnesses starting in their home base of Jerusalem and eventually, they would spread the Gospel to the ends of the world.  That’s quite a daunting task for a group of fishermen with no formal education or training.   

You are reading this today, 2000 years later, on the opposite side of the planet from where this command was given because these men faithfully believed that Jesus would be with them as they went and accomplished this task.  They believed that Jesus’ last words were important and that because it was his last command to them that they would spend their lives dedicated to accomplishing the task.

God may not call you to go to the ends of the world to share the good news about Jesus but He has called you to your own Jerusalem.   You are created for the purpose of helping fulfill the Great Commission to tell people in your city, your school, your circle of influence about the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.