A Great Commitment

If this is really The Great Commission, then it requires a great commitment.

Jesus is inviting…no…let me say that again…The Lord of heaven and earth is demanding that we prepare ourselves to lay down our lives, if necessary, to lead others to faith in Jesus and help them follow him at all cost.

Read the following testimony by a communist (quoted from Corrie ten Boom, Marching Orders for the End Battle [London: Christian Literature Crusade, 1969], pp. 9-10). Feel his commitment (great commitment, but a misguided one) to the cause of communism. See if you can say the same thing if you replaced the underlined words with Jesus or world evangelization or Great Commission or Christians, whatever is applicable.

We are fanatics. Our lives are absorbed by one tremendous all-important factor: the battle for world-communism. We communists would not spend any money on concerts or other pleasures. We have set a clear aim before our eyes. We have an ideal to fight for. We dedicate ourselves and our personal lives and possessions in the service of a great movement. What does it matter that our personal lives, our own egos have to suffer for the sake of the [Communist] party? We are fully rewarded at the thought that every one of us is co-operating a little in the creation of something new, something better for mankind. There is only one thing for which I will die: communism. That is my life. That is my faith, my hobby, my love, my beloved; that is my master, my food and my drink.

During the day I work for it and during the night I dream about it. As time goes on, its influence on me get stronger and stronger. That’s why I cannot make friends, why I cannot love, or even hold a conversation without touching on all this, and this is the force that stimulates and leads me. I have been in prison for the sake of my ideas, my ideals, and I am willing, if need be, to stand in front of the firing squad.

Can you say the same thing? If not, why not? Is communism (or for some of you, materialism, atheism, personal worldly ambition, sex, family, or this nation) worth dying for than Jesus Christ – the God who became one of us, and died for our sins, and rose again, the hope of the world, the truth, the way and the life?

Read, watch, listen or download the sermon Make Disciples.