Choices

Tonight I got to lead worship for the Cedar Park Youth Group.  It had been a while since I lead, so I was excited to have the opportunity.  The guys in the band (Bryan, Carlee, Jordan, Pat and Paul) did awesome and it was fun to work out some arrangements and make everyone work a little harder tonight.  It was a blast!

Jay started a new series tonight addressing the Mission.  Jay is one of my closest friends and I love him and his family very much.  I enjoy listening to Jay speak and tonight was no exception.  Jay brought up some ideas that captured my attention.  One of the things he talked about was Choices.  The statement he made that struck me was "without choices, there would be no love."  I think that is a powerful statement.  We were created by God, who allowed us choices.  He didn't make us robots or mechanical people who only did what we were told.  God gave us the ability to choose and He wants us to choose Him and in doing so, love Him, of our own cognizance.  Hence the statement "without choices, there would be no love."  We would not be able to love if we did everything we were programmed or told to do.

That got me thinking about God and it dawned on me that He made choices too.  He chose to create this universe.  He chose to create us human beings and create us in His image.  He chose to love us even when we failed to obey.  He loved us so much He chose to give His Son as our ransom so that we can have a relationship with Him.  He made all these choices because of love and to love.  And for that I am grateful.

The other thing that Jay brought up was Jesus' Great Commission to us:

Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Jay talked about the sad fact that a lot of American churches today don't talk about The Great Commission, instead they practice the "Great Omission."  I really want to be on the Mission to carry out the Commission and not omit anything.  So,I started to think about the word Commission and the things associated with it and I went to dictionary.com to look up some explanations of the word.

The root of the word is to commit, which means "to do."  One of the explanation for Commission is "authority granted for a particular action or function."  Another explanation I found is "giving in charge."  Those are great explanations, as Christ-followers, for what we have in our hands.  We are granted authority and put in charge of the action and function of making disciples.  Another idea that came to mind when I thought about the word Commission and that was people/agents who are paid a commission for the work they do.  This may be my weird sense of reasoning (see if you can follow me here), but it struck me that our "payment/commission" for the "work" we do as Christ-followers is eternal life; not that we can ever work our way into heaven; but it is our reward.  It is, however, because of the "payment/commission" that Jesus already paid for us on the cross that we can have the reward.

All that to say (and I know it sounds cheesy), I am willing to take on that commission to be on the mission to make Christ known.  I am also choosing Christ and choosing to love.

Thanks for a great night!