GO THEREFORE

The word THEREFORE is doing a lot of work in Matthew 28:19, and it is worth taking a cursory gaze, long enough to feel the full weight of what Jesus is saying. Jesus said, "Go therefore", which means the going flows directly out of what He has just declared, and what He has just declared is that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him. The therefore is, the hinge that connects His authority to our movement, and the commission to go, is inseparable from the reality that the One sending us holds it all together.

The reason we go is because the One who holds all authority has told us to go, and the authority that backs the command is the same authority that travels ahead of us into every situation the command leads us into. There is no place we are sent that He has not already gone before us, no door we face that is beyond His ability to open, and no person we encounter who is beyond the reach of what He can do.

Jesus gave this command to people who had denied Him, doubted Him, and scattered when things got hard, and He gave it as though He fully expected them to carry it out. They did, and the book of Acts is the record of what happened when ordinary people took a risen Saviour at His word and went. They started in Jerusalem and moved outward through Judaea and Samaria until the Gospel had reached the uttermost parts of the earth, exactly the way Acts 1:8 had said it should.

REFLECT
• Who in your immediate world, your Jerusalem, is waiting for you to go to them with the Gospel?
• What has been stopping you from going, and how does the authority of Jesus speak directly to that obstacle?

PRAYER
Father, I confess that I have been waiting for better conditions before I go, and I repent of that today. You have given me the authority, the mission, and the promise of Your presence. I choose to go. Amen.

TODAY'S READING: Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8