Most people are concerned about what other people think about them. Some people are way too concerned what other people think about them. And it turns out that when it comes to living an extraordinary life, the last thing Jesus was concerned about was what other people thought about Him

They say first impressions count. Of course they do and so many people in this world are set on making a good first impression. Nothing wrong with that but it’s easy to take that one or two steps too far. I fact, way too far. A good many people these days, can I say maybe most people, live their lives to impress others. A good many people care way too much what other people think about them. You see it in men and women.

Just consider the way people dress as one simple example. Have you ever heard that expression, ‘Dress to impress’. Men love to power dress. They wear that dark shirt with the bold shirt and tie and the strong gold jewellery. I’m always interested when I sit down at a meeting table of how men position themselves – at the head of the table with the bright light from outside behind them so that the other person has to squint when they talk to them. It’s all about power and impressing people.

And women, I mean it’s lovely that a women would dress nicely and take care about her appearance, absolutely nothing wrong with that. But often on a bus I’ll see a woman who … well … the expression I would use is ‘tarted up’. She’s trying way to hard, using her figure perhaps to attract people’s eye. It’s all about impression; it’s all about the externals. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and maybe a bit wiser these days, but to be honest, none of that impresses me any more. It used too, but come on, all that power dressing is just a sham.

This week again on the program we’re continuing in our series of ‘How to Live an Extraordinary Life’. The best way I know of answering that question is to look at that most extraordinary that’s ever been lived on this earth – the life of Jesus. If you’ve been able to join me over the last few weeks you know that we’ve been following Jesus around, as it were, through Matthew’s Gospel account of His life and His ministry and we’ve seen some amazing radical things that Jesus did and said and believed which contributed to the extraordinariness of His life.

I figure if you and I can just pick up just the odd thing from how He lived His life maybe we can turn our ordinariness into extraordinariness. That’s what this program is all about. And the facet of His life that we’re going to stick under the microscope today is His passion for focusing on the things happening inside us, the things that happen in secret, rather than on the externalities that so many people are focused on these days. Have a listen to what Jesus said about this subject. Matthew Chapter 6 beginning at verse 1:

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them for then you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms to the poor, don’t sound a trumpet before you like the hypocrites do in the Synagogue and the streets so that they might be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have already received their reward. But when you give to the poor, don’t let the left know what the right hand is doing so that your alms may be done in secret and your Father in heaven, who sees in secret, will reward you.

Now, I know some people, when they give money to God’s work who want to go and tell everyone about it. There’s one visiting preacher who came to my home town once who had an area roped off at the front of the auditorium for those who gave a lot of money to this particular ministry. But Jesus was into giving in secret. Why? Because the point isn’t to impress other people, it that’s what we’re in to. That’s our reward, that’s it.

What underlies this teaching? What makes it extraordinary? Simply this. God wants us to honour Him first, not other people. God wants us to server Him in faith, not seek the adulation of other people. And this teaching stop with what we give. Jesus went on. He had more to say about this whole thing about our priorities – about who it actually is we’re trying to impress. He goes on to say,

Whenever you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. They love to stand up and pray in the Synagogues and at the street corners so that they will be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have already received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, shut the door, pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father in heaven, who sees in secret will reward you. When you’re praying don’t heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles do, for they think they’ll be heard because of their many words. Don’t be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then this way:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread;
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t bring us into a time of trial but rescue us from the evil one.

This is the most powerful thing of all for me. This was the source of Jesus’ power. We saw Him do it all the time. He withdrew to pray in secret. Jesus was a rock star. He was pulling massive crowds. Villages and towns were literally shut down when He came. He’d get tens of thousands of people to listen to Him. He was, in today’s time, a celebrity. And yet Luke in Chapter 15 verse 6 tells us, He would withdraw to deserted places to pray.

I was chatting with a young women at our church recently. She’d been on one of my blog posts on this very thing – praying and Bible reading, and God convicted her to start doing that. And over a coffee she told me what an amazing transformation had taken place in her life. All of a sudden she was empowered and anointed to have conversations with her friends about Jesus, and she was seeing one person after another coming to faith in Him, starting with her sister, Vanessa, who, you’d have to say, had been one of the hardest nut Atheists you’d ever find on this planet.

But a third time Jesus talked about the inside-out approach to living an extraordinary life. Here it is. Straight after He teaches them about the Lord’s prayer, Matthew Chapter 6 beginning at verse 16:

And whenever you fast, don’t look dismal like those hypocrites. They disfigure their faces so as to show others that they’re fasting. Truly I tell you, they’ve received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

See, over and over again, Jesus wants us to do this “inside-out” thing. He’s into this inside-out way of living. His focus is what’s happening on the inside, in secret, in a person’s relationship with God. Not how impressed people are by a person’s external trappings. Let’s face it, most of us a pretty good play actors. We put on our masks; we can fool most of the people most of the time.

But let me ask you, do you want to live an extraordinary life? Then what’s happening on your inside, deep down there somewhere where you live, what’s happening in your secret relationship with God Himself – that’s where it’s all at for Jesus, and that’s where it’s all at for you and me.

Extraordinary lives don’t happen by setting out to impress people, extraordinary lives happen when we get close to God, when we have a deep dynamic relationship with Jesus. Everything else flows out of that. The transformation, the power, the sweet fragrances of His love, the fruit in all our lives. It all happens when we get close to Jesus, not on the outside but on the inside, and that’s extraordinary.

Most of us have heard that expression about being a dog with two masters. Turns out that dogs are simple, loyal creatures. Two masters is hard work. Two masters is confusing. So they always, always settle on just one master. The trick is … choosing the right one.

When I was a young lad I had a dog called Banner. He wasn’t any particular breed. I think the technical term for him was that he was a mongrel. Great dog, truly man’s best friend or at least he was my best friend as I was navigating those difficult up-and-down teenage years of my life. Banner was my dog. What I mean by that is that even though we had a family of four – Mum, Dad, my sister, me – he was loyal to me. He did what other people told him to do as well but ultimately he listened to me.

Anyone who’s ever had a dog will understand that. Most dogs are friendly and sociable but there’s someone in the family that they look to as their ultimate friend and master, because a dog can’t have two masters. If he listens to one who tells him to come and the other who tells him to stay, what’s he going to do? He can’t obey both. He can’t stay and go at the same time so dogs, being simple, loyal creatures resolve this dilemma by deciding upon one ultimate master. If in doubt, listen to what the master says and do that.

That may all sound a bit simplistic and trite, but can I tell you that’s exactly what a good dog will do. Everybody who’s ever owned a dog is nodding at this point because you know from experience that what I’m saying is true. So Berni, what are we doing? Talking about dog training classes or something? No, we’re going to continue on talking about what we’ve been talking about every day over the past few weeks. We’re going to chat about “How to Live an Extraordinary Life”.

So what’s with the dog then? Well, the dog is a great picture, a metaphor if you will, for something that Jesus talked about. In fact it’s something He talked quite a lot about. The question He was addressing, the thing He was putting His finger on in people’s lives was who or what are you serving?

You look at Jesus’ own life and the answer to that is pretty clear. But first lets take a look to see what He had to say on this really, really important subject. Well, it’s important if you happen to feel a bit like a dog with two masters. Let’s have a read. Matthew Chapter 6:

The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye’s healthy your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye’s unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light in you is darkness how great is the darkness. Don’t store up for yourself treasures on the earth where moth and rust consume and where the thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes; where the thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.

No one can serve two masters for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and wealth.

Now that’s a great bit of advice. None of us can serve two masters even though sometimes we try really, really hard. Like that loyal and faithful dog, at some point we have to decide who you and I are going to serve: wealth, success, position, comfort – all the things the world tells us we should have – or God. Which one is it in my life? Which one is it in your life. When push comes to shove, when one says and the other says go, which voice do we listen to? Which one do we obey and respond to? The call of wealth and success or the call of God?

When God calls us to give sacrificially into something that He’s doing, do we hang onto our money or do we give freely and sacrificially. A lot of that has to do with whether we really trust God to provide for us. Do we feel the need to hoard the wealth for ourselves or can we give it up freely when God demands it of us to get done what He wants to get done in this world. Jesus knew that so He went on to say:

There for I tell you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink or about your body or what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you or much more value than them. And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? And why worry about clothing.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. Now they neither toil nor spin yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was never clothed like one of those. But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown in the oven, how much more will he clothe you, oh ye of little faith. Therefore don’t worry saying ‘What will I eat, or what am I going to drink, or what am I going to wear?’ It’s the gentiles who strive for all of those things and yet your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Strive first for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well. So don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of it’s own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Let’s come back to Jesus’ most extraordinary life for a moment and let me ask you this. How much of it had to do with money, a good car, nice home, comfortable sofa, membership at the country club, the circle of nice, safe, comfortable, loyal friends and family? The answer is, none of it! In fact, to a would-be disciple He said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head”. Jesus died penniless with not even the clothes He was wearing on His back. The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator of heaven and earth who owned everything, yet possessed nothing.

He laid it all down for you and for me. Even His life He laid down for you and for me. That’s what made Him so extraordinary. It seems to me that the degree to which you and I lead an extraordinary life is defined, not by what we earned, by what we have, by what how much wealth we amass, but by what we give, what we sacrifice, what we’re prepared to lose in order to love God and love others as ourselves. Without a doubt, the most extraordinary person you’ve ever known in your life is the one who’s give the most and sacrificed the most for you. Am I right?

When are we going to wake up that we can’t serve two masters. And when are we going to wake up to the fact that wealth is such a rotten master. Because it is a master. Money is a servant, wealth is a master. It owns us, it drives us, it robs us, it ruins us. 1 Timothy Chapter 6 beginning at verse 9:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, they’re trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And in their eagerness to be rich some have wondered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

My friend, if you and I want to live the extraordinary lives that Jesus came to give us then it’s time to choose masters. It’s one or the other. It can never, ever be both. Choose wealth and lives may at first appear comfortable but when all is said and done what will the world say of us when we’re gone. What will they remember, what legacy will we leave? The extraordinary life choice is the life lived for God. Wise stewards of our resources? Yes. Servants to wealth? Absolutely not!

Now, not all of us are wired in such a way so that compassion is our first thing. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that compassion takes time. And in this day and age, having compassion … well, we just don’t have the time. Jesus … Jesus was a man of extraordinary compassion.

Hey, I have a confession to make. I’m not naturally a compassionate person. How about you? Now that doesn’t mean I don’t care about people deeply, I do. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love to help people when they need help. I do. But I’m not naturally compassionate.

So what’s compassion? Well, my dictionary tells me that compassion is “a sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or the misfortunes of others”. It’s derived from the old middle English word that comes from an even older French word, that’s derived from an even older ecclesiastical Medieval Latin word that means “to suffer with”. In other words, to feel someone else’s pain and then to act on that and do something about it.

Now I’m pretty good at the last part – acting on it and doing something about it. I’m not so good at the first part – feeling someone else’s pain. Why? Because of the way I’m wired inside. Because my motivation, my personality type are different. You read Romans Chapter 12 in the New Testament and you’ll find several different motivational gifting. Some of them involve quite a bit of compassion but others don’t.

For example if a leader were overly compassionate they’d never actually lead. They’d never get stuff done. They need some compassion but not too much. On the other hand, someone who’s involved in caring for others, isn’t it great when they have a lot of compassion in their hearts, when they’re naturally good at feeling someone else’s pain and empathising with them. We absolutely love to be around people like that.

So why am I telling this stuff about myself, that in effect I’m compassionately challenged? Because today we’re continuing our look at what it means to live an extraordinary life by looking at how Jesus live his life. And one of the things He had in His makeup, we see it quite clearly on quite a few occasions, is compassion. And I guess as we take a look at this side of Jesus, I want to make the point that just because we don’t all have compassion naturally hard wired into our DNA, well it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t show it from time to time.

Have a listen to one of the compassionate things that Jesus did. Matthew Chapter 8 beginning at verse 1:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain great crowds followed Him. And there was a leper who came to Him and knelt before Him and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean”. Jesus stretched out His hand and touched the leper saying, “I do choose. Be made clean”. And immediately the leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus said to Him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the Priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.

Great crowds followed Jesus. I mean, He was a celebrity, a megastar. Doing what I do, preaching the gospel, often I’m dealing with crowds, whether here through the radio or whether I’m speaking at a church or a big event. And for someone who’s naturally wired with not a huge amount of compassion, can I tell how safe and how easy that can be. I mean, you detach; you rely on the fact that as the guy up the front you are separated from the crown. My great little radio studio is such a safe, comfortable place, I have to tell.

And that could easily have been the attitude that Jesus took. I’ll stick away from those messy individuals who have all those problems and pains that are going to inconvenience me. I’ll just preach to the big crowds. I’ll do the big gigs.

We all have our ways of isolating ourselves from the pains and the problems of difficult people. Some live in gated communities, some have stopped attending church. We withdraw, we try to make ourselves comfortable. But Jesus met the leper, this leper who was smelly with open, pussy wounds; this leper whom others reviled, whom God’s own law segregated from mainstream society. And when the leper said to Jesus, “If you’re willing you can make me clean”, Jesus did the one thing that no one had done since this man had started exhibiting the symptoms of leprosy – Jesus reached out and touched him.

Touching the leper – that’s compassion. That speaks of the value that Jesus placed on this one man in his isolation and his pain and his suffering. In fact Mark’s Gospel account of this very event tells us that Jesus was ‘moved with compassion’ and that’s what caused Him to reach out and touch this outcast.

And the sense of the original Greek word translated into the English word ‘compassion’ was that it was a deep gut reaction; it was something that Jesus felt in the core of His very being. And it was that feeling, literally that feeling of suffering with that leper in His heart, in His belly, in His gut, that caused Him to reach out and touch the man and heal Him.

One of the reasons, often, that we don’t suffer with people is that we’re just too busy. When I think about who I am, because I’m a driven, outcome-focused, delivery-oriented kind of guy, time is a premium for me. Don’t get me wrong, we need people like that, just as we need people who are nowhere near as time focused but have buckets of compassion in their heart. And what I’ve noticed, when I actually slow down and focus on the individual at hand, when I take the time to understand them and what they’re going through, I can experience that same sense of compassion, that hurt, that empathy just like anyone else. It’s the speed at which we move that often stops us feeling and showing compassion.

See, I want to skip right over the feeling and showing bit to the doing bit. What can I do to help the person. That’s my natural desire, and there’s a 50/50 chance that you might be like that too. But often that’s not what they need. The biggest thing that someone who’s suffering needs is someone else to stop and be moved and be impacted by their suffering; someone to understand them, to listen to them, to hurt with them, to be with them.

I remember a time in my life when I was suffering the biggest thing I’ve ever suffered in my 50 something years. There were some people who wept with me. That’s in fact the most powerful thing that anyone has ever done with me or for me. A truly extraordinary person is someone who shows compassion, whether or not it comes naturally. The truth is, if we’ll just slow down a bit, take the foot off the accelerator, we’re capable of suffering with someone else. We all are. We’re capable of feeling their pain. We’re capable of showing that we feel their pain and that will be one of the most transformative experiences of their lives.

I can tell you that because I’ve had to learn it; because it doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m still learning it, I’ll be learning it till the day I die. The leper – I mean, I am sure the guy was absolutely over the moon at being healed. In fact we know He was. Mark in His Gospel account tells us the guy went racing around showing everyone what Jesus had done. As you know, Jesus had expressly asked Him not to do that. The guy was completely over the moon.

And why wouldn’t he be. I would be, you would be. But I am absolutely certain that in the days, the weeks, the months and the years that followed, as he sat quietly at home by the fire in the evening, remembering that day in His life when Jesus reached out and touched him. That as the love and the compassion that Jesus showed, that would bring tears to his eyes. What do you think?

Compassion is one of things that sets a person apart. Compassion is one of the things that enables an ordinary person like you and me to lead an extraordinary life. Compassion in this day and age truly is extraordinary.

Sometimes it seems that life is just a series of power plays – it’s all about who has power over whom. But there’s a different sort of power. The power of God. There’s nothing at all that compares to God’s power. And that extraordinary power is available to anyone who trusts in Jesus.

I wonder what the word “Power” means to you. Power is what flows to the light globe when we flick the switch on the wall. Seems that every time I turn around there’s another power bill in my letter box, and the price is always going up! Power is that thing people in government, that officials, that a bank manager exercises over us. We actually call them people in positions of power. Sometimes they exercise it wisely, other times not so much.

Power is something a lot of people spend a lifetime striving for; to get more of it; to be someone who is in a position of power. You see it sometimes in petty low and middle level bureaucrats who’ve become little despots just so they can feel that they have power over you. Then there’s another type of power. It’s a type of power that’s set completely apart from any other kind of power that you and I know about think about or have ever experienced. And that power is the Power of God. Why is it different? Because it’s greater than any other power that you and I can ever imagine.

Think of the immense power in one lightening bolt. It’s so powerful that it’s seriously scary. Well, all the power in every lightening bolt that has ever bolted since the dawn of time is just a drop in the ocean compared to the power of God. And today we’re going to talk about that power, because it’s that very power that’s the key to living the extraordinary life.

Because I’m your kind of rational, sane, down to earth kind of guy, one of the ruts I can easily get stuck into is imagining that … well … the outcomes of everything I do in life, in ministry, whatever, that outcome is actually up to me. The harder I work, the longer I work, the faster I work, the more I’ll get done, the more items I’ll be able to check off my to-do list and the more impact I’ll be able to have in people’s lives. But quite a few years ago God convicted me to pray more and do less.

The other day on the program I mentioned the young women at my church, Lucy, who was convicted by one of the posts on my blog sites was to do just that. And you know what she reported? She said, ‘Wow, the things I do have so much more impact these days. After just a month I am having all these conversations with my friends about Jesus, and one by one they are coming to faith in Him.’ I smiled to myself because that’s exactly what I found when I decided to pray more and do less.

And do you know why it is that when we pray more and do less we get more done, because prayer unleashes the power of God. And it’s the power of God that makes for an extraordinary life on this earth, because the power of God is so much greater than anything we can begin to imagine.

Now, engaging that power is something that Jesus didn’t seem to have much of a problem with. He just did it. You and I of course will say, ‘Yes, okay, what do you expect. He’s the Son of God, of course He had all the power, that’s Him. I’m just me.’ Well, let’s just take a look at how He tapped into that power, the power of God to do extraordinary things. Matthew Chapter 8 beginning at verse 5:

When Jesus entered Capernaum a centurion came to Him, appealing to Him, saying, ‘My servant is lying at home paralysed in terrible distress.’ And He said to him, ‘I’ll come and cure him.’ But the centurion answered, ‘Lord, I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof. Just speak the word and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man in authority with soldiers under me. I say to one ‘go’ and he goes, I say to the other ‘come’ and he comes. To my slave I say ‘do this’ and the slave does it.’

When Jesus heard him, He was amazed and He said to those who followed Him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from the east and the west and eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven while the heirs of the Kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And He said to the centurion, ‘Go. Let it be done for you according to your faith.’ And the servant was healed that very hour.

Let me ask you something, was there any uncertainty in Jesus mind about the power that God had given to Him. Apparently not, He just did what came before Him, and what came before Him that day was a man of faith. Importantly not one of God’s chosen people, not a Jew, but a Roman officer. One of the foreigners, one of the gentiles whose job it was to occupy and oppress God’s chosen people. But He was a man with faith. In fact it was a faith so great that Jesus marvelled at it. “Many will come from the east and the west and eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven while the heirs of the Kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It was the man’s faith that caused the power to flow through Jesus and onto the centurion’s servant who, by the way, was no where to be seen. Remote control, distance healing. Pretty amazing stuff. No wonder Jesus marvelled at this man’s faith. By way of sharp contrast, when Jesus was in His own home town of Nazareth He was able to perform very few miracles indeed. Why? Well, let’s have a look because Mark in his Gospel account tells us in Chapter 6 beginning at verse 3:

The took offense at Him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Look, prophets are not without honour except in their home town and among their own kin and in their own house. And He could do no deed of power there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and cured them. And He was amazed at their unbelief.’

I love that. With the centurion, Jesus marvelled at the size of his faith. Here he is amazed at the unbelief in His own home town. It seems to me that one of the keys to an extraordinary life is extraordinary faith. Faith that goes against reason; faith in the miracle working power of Jesus the Son of God. Now I’ve scoured the Scriptures – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and Jesus never turned anyone away who came to ask Him to perform a miracle, to pour out the power of God upon their lives – not a one!

Why do we walk around in the miry clay, feet heavy, shoulders hunched, when we have access to the indescribable power of God to get His will done on this earth. Question for you today: would you rather that Jesus marvelled at your extraordinary faith in Him or your extraordinary unbelief in Him? Would you rather that He walks away pinching Himself to make sure that the faith that He’s just seen in you was real, or that He walks away shaking His head wondering how you could manifest such unbelief in this Jesus in whom you profess to believe.

There are so many things in this life that you and I can’t do; there are so many mountains we can’t move; there are so many things going on that are so beyond us. Have you noticed, God calls us into places and situations to do things we simply can’t do in our own strength. It happens all the time. What’s the matter with us that we imagine that we have to do this stuff in our own strength? Sure life is full of the mundane, it’s full of challenges, it’s full of hardships but life is also full of the power of God for anyone who believes in this miracle-working Son of God – Jesus Christ.

It seems to me that the difference between the ordinary life and the extraordinary life is a bit like the difference between those locals in Nazareth and that centurion who came to Jesus in faith.

Sometimes, looking at some parts of the church today, large parts in fact, you could swear that Jesus’ great commission to His disciples was, “build something and they’ll come”. Well, it wasn’t. The key verb, the key doing word in the great commission is “go”. Go is such an extraordinary word.

We are such masters of self-delusion, you and I. Come on, we are. At least I am. And I know for a fact that so often the church is too. I mean, take Jesus’ great commission to His Disciples.

All power in heaven and earth has been given unto me, therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I’ve commanded you. And remember, I will be with you wherever you go even unto the end of this age. Matthew Chapter 28.

The very last thing that Jesus said to His Disciples, notice what He told them to do. He told them to go. “Go on, get out there, get amongst it. This is what I have called you to do.” And here we are 2,000 years on building massive cathedrals, sitting in our pews expecting them to come to us, Now that’s a little unfair. So many of God’s people and God’s ministries and God’s churches are out there amongst it pews in just going, just like Jesus told them to.

But huge swathes of God’s people are warming pews and cathedrals, man-made edifices, feeling all so smug and comfortable waiting there for people to come to them. Huge slabs of God’s church have turned the “go” into a “come”. So, when are we going to stop building Crystal Cathedrals that come crashing down around their ears; at what point are we going to finally give up on getting them to come and get off our backsides and go.

“Oh Berni, your being a bit tough, I mean we need churches, we need to get together and learn and worship and fellowship”. Of course we do, but that’s not the end of it, that’s just the beginning. Jesus didn’t invite you and me to build a country club; He called us to go out into the world and to be His hands and His feet, scarred as they are, and His voice and His heart of compassion to a lost and hurting world. To the parents of that little boy in the soccer club whose marriage is falling apart; to that guy out there who sits on that bench in the Mall all lone each day, he’s a bit on the nose and needs a good wash.

When I was at Bible College studying my ministry degree one of the things I was required to do was to spend 2 semesters with a ministry doing practical field training. The ministry I went to as a raw wet-behind-the-ears seminary student was Christianityworks – this very same ministry that I am still involved with today. It kind of leaves me speechless that at a time when I knew so little I was already writing and producing radio programs that were being heard by quite a lot of people back then.

What was the Principle of the College thinking, what were my lecturers thinking and come to that, what was Jesus thinking unleashing me in my ignorance to preach the Gospel of Christ? Scary thought. Surely I needed to graduate first, surely I needed to become a much deeper theologian, surely there had to be something more. I wonder.

Not long into His public ministry Jesus sent His Disciples out to do some field ministry training. He sent them off completely without Him and without anything much else either it would seam. I mean, these guys were just fishermen and tax collectors. They were seriously uneducated, unqualified, unreligious dudes with absolutely no experience to do what Jesus was calling them to do. I seriously wonder sometimes if Jesus really knows what He’s up to. Come on, really. Have a listen to this. Matthew Chapter 6 beginning at verse 6:

Then He went about among the villagers teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out, two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money in their belts – but to wear sandals and not to put on a second tunic.

He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and they proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Now just stop and imagine that that had been you that Jesus sent out like a sheep to the slaughter. He gives you authority to cast our demons. I mean, you’ve know Him for like five minutes at this point. Are you feeling confident? And by the way, don’t take any food, don’t take any money, don’t take a change of clothes because you won’t need them. Is He dead set crazy, this Jesus? Maybe He’s on the same stuff as that John the Baptist lunatic in the wilderness not so long ago.

Do you see how easy it is for us to think in conventional terms? Do you see how easy it is for us to sit in the comfortable pews in our comfortable church buildings and complain that the air conditioning isn’t working properly, or that the pastor’s sermon wasn’t up to snuff, or that the guitar was a bit out of tune, or those kids in the third row were too fidgety, or that …

To us “conventional” equals comfortable, “conventional” equals convenient, “conventional” is all about us enjoying the experience, in any case we’re not qualified enough we need to sit in those safe comfortable pews just a little bit longer before we get our hands too dirty. But let me tell you something my friend, and this is for me as much as it is for you, if we’re someone who believes in Jesus then Jesus has given us the authority to cast out demons, He has given us the authority to minister His love in His compassion and His power to those around us. And not only has He commissioned us, He’s commanded us to go.

Conventional wisdom that I should never have been allowed to go out back then when I was so green and tell people about Jesus through these radio programs, but that led on to me now being involved in something that reaches far wider to many more people than I ever, ever could have imagined back then. Because when God calls us and when God commissions us, His power flows in us and through us and overflows out of us through us to achieve what He’s always planned to achieve.

It’s the same with those early Disciples. Conventional wisdom says they should never have been sent out on their own until they graduated from the Jesus Theological College. But they weren’t on their own. You see the power and the presence was in them and around them and ahead of them and behind them through the Holy Spirit. And as a result they went out and they proclaimed that all should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

You know what I get out of this? A lot of greatness is simply about going. Simply just get up and go. Go where Jesus calls you. Go where Jesus leads you. Just take those first few steps, and as wacky and as weird as it may seem to you, just as it seemed to those Disciples, just as it seemed to me back in those early days, because when He gives the authority to us to do what He’s called us to do then watch out. His authority gives us the power to prevail in what He’s called us to do; His authority gives us the power to lay down our lives to Him through what He’s called us to do.

There are many comfortable, suburban, pew-sitting Christians who will live a very ordinary life, then there are those crazy disciples who dare to go, who dare to accept the authority given to them, who dare to live out a truly extraordinary life. For whoever wants to save their life is going to lose it, but I tell you, whoever is prepared to lose their life for Jesus will find it.