What Do You Want Me To Do? Pt. 2

Deep down we all long to discover what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives––not just a job or a hobby––but a genuine sense of purpose that makes everything else make sense. Pastor Nick Gatzke explores The Great Commission and gets specific about our purpose in life.

Abraham Lincoln met with a group of ministers during the Civil War for prayer. And there’s varying accounts about Lincoln’s faith. It’s pretty commonly believed that he was not a churchgoer, but that he was a man of some kind of faith. And as they were having breakfast together and as they were praying, one of the ministers said to him, “Mr. President, we need to pray that God will give us victory, that God will be on our side in this war.” And Lincoln’s response showed far greater insight. He said, “No, gentlemen, let us pray that we are on God’s side in this war.” He reminded those ministers that religion is not a tool by which we get God to function on our agenda.

Quite the opposite is true. When you put your faith in Jesus, you choose to sign up on His agenda. And that begs the question. If you really stop and look at your life, whose agenda are you following? Yours? God’s? Somebody else’s? To be a Christian is to be a disciple, and to be a disciple we see here is to be a disciple maker. We might say that if you are not a disciple maker, then you’re not on God’s agenda. That’s a hard word. It’s a hard word because I know the reality of it. The reality is if we pulled the room and said how many of you have participated in making disciples, very few of us would actually raise our hand.

And so we’re confronted with the greatest call of our life and the torch being passed to us. And so many of us standing there and saying, what do I do next? Christian, you are called to a disciple-making life. And it is the best life that you can have. If you look back with me at the text, you see these three descriptions of a disciple-making life. You see that it includes verse 19, going. And I love this expression, even though we so often misunderstand it. Going here. is a description of making disciples. We might phrase it this way. In your goings, make disciples. As you go about your work, as you go about your play, as you’re at your kids’ sporting events, as you’re engaging in the neighborhood barbecue, in  those contexts of everyday rhythms of life, be a disciple maker. That’s a different way of looking at your daily existence than so many of us do. Disciple making becomes a key component, it becomes a fabric, it becomes a motivation for the life of a Christian. It’s part of my rhythm, it’s one of my goals. Baptizing can then aptly be described here as another element of making disciples. It’s to say that people are initiated into the life of faith. Thirdly, we see teaching. It says teaching them to obey all that I have commanded. So you get the progression, right?

The Christians say, I’m gonna, in my goings, make disciples. I’m gonna be where people are, I’m gonna engage with people. And when they put their faith in Christ, they’re gonna be baptized. This is part of disciple making. And then when they’re baptized, we continue in teaching them how to live. They’re gleaning how to follow God with their life in the ins and outs and the ups and downs with the joys and the pains. In the big picture, God is not calling you to participate in just helping people to believe, but he’s calling you to help people walk down the road of transformation. And in fact, there’s a torchbearer who’s handed you the torch and it’s time for you to advance it. Christian, you are called to a disciple making life. And if that’s the what of your calling, then what about the who? You

There is a surprise in this passage, and the surprise is one that is sometimes lost in us with Western eyes. It’s not that God has put a calling on your life to do something. I mean, really, just step back and think about it. We’re talking about God, the King of Kings, and Jesus, who expresses here in this passage that he has all authority to do anything he wants. His resurrection has guaranteed that he has authority over everything in the universe, including you, and therefore he can tell you what to do. And it makes sense that he would tell us to do this because he wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave us purposeless in this life to just sort of figure our way through. No, God in his mercy and his grace wants us to be fulfilled, wants us to be part of something meaningful, even the most meaningful.

And so one of his great kindnesses to us is that we get to participate in this cosmic plan of redemption that he has for humanity. The surprise is not that he has a call on your life and that he expects you to do something. We should actually expect that. But the call, or the surprise in this call is who he expects them to do it to. He’s speaking here to his 11 remaining disciples. They’re Jewish. And for centuries, the Jews have experienced God as their God and their God alone. And for centuries, God has displayed his works and his ways through these people. And for centuries, there was the expectation that he would save the nation of Israel and the nation of Israel alone. And now, in some of his final interactions, he stands before them and say, go and make disciples. But he doesn’t say, go and make disciples with the nation of Israel.

Go and make disciples with all nations. And who are all the nations? You. You represent the nations. The vast majority of you here are Gentiles. And here in Northeast Ohio, we have people of Italian descent, Slovaks, Poles, Irish, English, Arab, Africans, Mexicans, even Germans. Even Germans. I know. You are the nations. We are the nations. And so when you think about this call that God has placed on your life, okay, it’s not just for pastors and missionaries. It’s for all Christians. And he tells them to engage with the nations. But the nations are right here. You are sitting in the middle of the nations.

And now you say, man, this really is for me. He’s placed me in the middle of it. He’s called me to do it. But what’s one of the biggest hurdles? One of the biggest hurdles that we have, that so many of us have a hard time getting over, is that to make disciples, you really need to invest your life in other people. And who are all the nations? You. You represent the nations. The vast majority of you here are Gentiles. And here in Northeast Ohio, we have people of Italian descent, Slovaks, Poles, Irish, English, Arab, Africans, Mexicans, even Germans. Even Germans.

I know, you are the nations, we are the nations. And so when you think about this call that God has placed on your life, okay, it’s not just for pastors and missionaries, it’s for all Christians, and he tells them to engage with the nations, but the nations are right here, you are sitting in the middle of the nations. And now you say, man, this really is for me. He’s placed me in the middle of it, he’s called me to do it, but what’s one of the biggest hurdles? One of the biggest hurdles that we have, that so many of us have a hard time getting over, is that to make disciples, you really need to invest your life in other people.

For some of us, that’s exciting. For some of us, that’s fearful. And for others of us, that’s just downright annoying. I mean, people are some of the weirdest, most inconsistent creatures on the planet. I mean, I tell my wife all the time that the world would be much better if everyone was just like me. She rolls her eyes and I said, fine, they don’t have to be like me, they just have to agree with me. Well, they don’t have to agree with me, they just have to do what I tell them to do. But we all tend to think that way. And this causes a tremendous hurdle in our mind to say, it’s messy to invest my life in other people.

I remember talking to a gentleman one time of how he was bored in his relationship with God. He professed to be a Christian, he read his Bible, he went to church. He used to serve in some program along the way. He had drifted off to the fringe, his kids graduated high school and now they were out of the house and they were trying to figure out what life looked like next for them. Some of this story is your story and he sat across the table and he said, I’m bored. I know, I thought God was supposed to be exciting. I’m trying to follow him. I’m at a place where I’m bored. And when I’m bored, I wander. And when I wander, I fall prey to temptation. And when I fall prey to temptation, I begin to fill my life with other things. I know it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Help me figure a way back to not being bored, to be excited about my relationship with God. And I asked him one simple but direct question.

When was the last time you had somebody over to your house for dinner? And he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t answer because he wasn’t investing in people. You see God’s agenda is transferring people from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his son and then transforming them into the likeness of his son and he uses people, he uses disciple making disciples to do that very work. You might even say it just summary this way, God’s agenda is all about people and if your spiritual life is boring, then I dare say you’re probably not investing in people. If you want a vibrant, interesting, ongoing, dynamic relationship with God, then participate in his agenda

And it has to do with investing in people, but not just people for the sake of sitting around the campfire and yucking it up, in the transforming work that God does of taking someone from belief to eternity and the growth that happens in between. Christian, you are called to be a disciple-making disciple. You’re called to a disciple-making life. And if you’re bored, you’re probably not investing in that calling. You know, it was a long time until someone finally told me that Jesus didn’t call me to believe and that was it. That Jesus actually called me to do something with my life after I put my faith in him. And I was open to that. I mean, and I wanted that.

And so, when this idea of being a disciple maker came up, I had every excuse in the world, I’m too young, I don’t know what I’m doing. I had all the same questions that so many of you are having right now, which is, Pastor Nick, if this is supposed to be the defining thing that I do with my life, number one, why has nobody ever told me before? And number two, how? How do I get started? Let me tell you the first step. The first step is to come to the realization and to make the decision that your life is no longer about advancing your own agenda. but that you, in putting your faith in Jesus, are making a decision to embrace God’s agenda for your life. That sounds simple, but that is a massive paradigm shift that almost all of us have been raised with. To say that my life is not my own anymore. That actually, yes, God calls me to have a job and provide for my family and succeed in those things and to do a variety of good things in this life. But the fabric through all of that is disciple making. That’s a tremendous paradigm shift. And from there, now you are, if you’re willing to do that, now there’s a training piece that comes into  play. One of the things I love about what’s happening at Old North right now is that one of the growing pieces of our identity is that of a training church.

Because we take this charge from God very seriously. And we take a lot of other charges, of course, in the New Testament seriously as well. But we recognize that we don’t naturally know how to live a disciple-making life. And there’s all kinds of infringements in our culture right now that prohibit that from happening. And imagine, imagine what it would be like if you had a group of people like this who are motivated in kingdom-expanding work. Who are trained to do it. And then are loosed in this community to say, wherever I am, I’m gonna be on this mission from God, Blues Brothers style, to make disciples in the name of Jesus. Christian, you are called to a disciple-making life. You’re a torchbearer.

And Jesus came to you in this relay of God’s kingdom expansion. The torch has been handed off to you. But some of us are saying very plainly, Nick, I’ve been a Christian for 20 years, but I’ve dropped the torch. Maybe I didn’t know how important it was. Maybe I was injured along the way and I couldn’t relay to the next station. Maybe, maybe my heart or my mind wasn’t in the right place. But what happens when someone drops the torch? On the relay. In the Olympic Torch Relay, leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, a 13-year-old boy named Kieran Maxwell fell during the torch relay and he dropped the torch. A torchbearer dropped the torch.

He was quickly helped up, and he smiled as he carried the torch through Bishop Auckland County Durham. He was a teenager from New Aycliffe, and he underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2010. Following his treatment, he lost part of his left leg. Now the flame was being carried from 84 miles between Durham and Middlesbrough in England, and Kieran was part of that relay. He was from the village of Heighington. He completed his chemotherapy in October 2011, and less than a year later, now he’s in the middle of the Olympic torch relay, guarding and advancing something very important in this great position of honor.

However, due to the damage that he had from his treatment, he lost his left tibia, and he had his left leg amputated below the knee. He now has a prosthetic leg, and he uses a wheelchair most of the time, but would not use a wheelchair in the relay. This was way too important for that. And so, as he walked with the flame through Newgate Street, he stumbled to the ground, and he dropped the torch. And immediately, in a moment of shame and on the ground, people came right alongside of him, and they picked him up, and they helped him carry the torch, the rest of the leg of his relay. And as he walked through the streets, huge crowds began to gather  in Bishop Auckland, and they cheered on the torchbearers, and they held up banners of support for them. It’s a picture, it’s a picture of… what heaven does when torchbearers go through their life making disciples of Jesus. It’s a picture of so many of us who have fallen down and dropped the torch, but guess what? The relay isn’t over yet. And people come alongside and they help and they train and they encourage and more disciples are made. What happens when you drop the torch? Is it all lost? Should you just quit and pack it in? Not at all. Right alongside of you supporters come, they carry the load with you and they advance this thing of great importance. Christians, you are called to a disciple making life and I know that most of us aren’t doing it, but the torch is in your hand. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for such a high calling. You have commissioned us to the guarding and advancement of the most important thing, this work of transformation that you do, that you don’t leave us purposeless, that you give us something to sink our teeth into, to devote our lives to, to pray for, to devote our thoughts to, and to experience up close and personal, the joy that happens as transformation begins and continues to grow in the lives of those around us. Lord, I read this text and we have both at the same time a sobering word to us and an exciting word to us. And my prayer is this. that the sobering word of dropping the torch would motivate us to finish this relay well. That we would indeed be trained up to a disciple making life. And that in our years here, however long you have us on this earth, we would be witness to the most exciting thing imaginable and that is people being transformed. We pray these things together in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.