Coming and Going

As you may or may not realize, I have not written anything in a couple of weeks. It's good to be back. One update to the blog that I hope you notice is the people group of the week in the upper right hand corner of the blog. This is provided to my site each day by the Joshua Project. Each day they highlight a people group that has had very little to no opportunity to hear the gospel. They ask us to pray for them. I think that is something we can all do. I hope you will.

Through my Bible reading lately, I have been reminded about the call of God on our lives, and I have once again been made aware that our call is twofold. It involves both coming and going. The call of God is first of all an invitation and secondly it is a command.

God's call always begins with an invitation. Jesus' first contact with His disciples was not to tell them to go do kingdom work. His initial contact was to invite them to "Come, follow me." This "Come first" pattern emerges even in the Old Testament in the example of Moses, when God tells Moses on numerous occasions to come to me to Mount Sinai or to the tent of meeting as the case may have been. Then God would give Moses the command to go and speak to the people or do something before the people.

If the first part of God's call is to invite us to come, then our first act of faith and obedience is to accept His invitation. This is obvious in our conversion experience. We cannot do kingdom work and be obedient in it if we are not first of all part of the kingdom. We become part of the kingdom when we answer His invitation and "come" to Him confessing our sins and turning control of our lives over to Him. Scripture says that God desires that no one should perish. Therefore, it is safe to say that his invitation to "Come" is issued for ALL people.

I also believe we should not overlook the biblical truth that His invitation to "Come" is not only for conversion's sake and that is all. On the contrary, God continuously invites His children to "Come." For instance, on one occasion after the disciples had returned to report to Jesus about the kingdom work they had gone from him to do, Jesus told them to "Come away with me and get some rest (Mark 6:31)." So, to fulfill God's call in our lives is to respond first to His invitation, to come repeatedly and often.

The second part of God's call is a command. God always issues the command to "go." We are never to stay. Among the last words our Lord spoke before ascending into heaven were the words, "Go and make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20)." This is how the verse is most often translated and remembered, but the Greek language should more likely be rendered, "as you go." Interpreted this way, we see that "going" is more than a suggestion. It is even more than a command. It is an expectation! We are expected to be going about doing kingdom work. As evidenced earlier in the example of Moses, this pattern of God's call existed in the Old Testament. Since God's call has two parts, we cannot completely fulfill His call on our lives until we also go. Complete obedience involves coming and going!

Sometimes we say we struggle with knowing what God's will is. One thing I can tell you is that the never-changing God who consistently called people of the Old Testament and the New Testament in the same manner, calls us in the same manner today. God's will for you and me is twofold -- "Come and Go."

If I were to look at a regular week's schedule, Sunday morning and all other times during the week that I spend in Bible study and worship is the "coming" part of God's call on my life. The rest of the week's schedule should involve times when I am "going" -- doing kingdom work witnessing, teaching, encouraging, and helping those in need. This is the "going" part of God's call on my life.

So, when I see you during the week and I ask you, "What are you up to?" I hope your response will be, "I'm just coming and going!"

Let me hear from you!