The Genius of the Prime Directive!

Jesus People are governed by a Prime Directive just as solemn and absolute as the one in Star Trek. Any Trekkie knows the Prime Directive controlled those decades of voyages. Never, ever violate the Prime Directive, right? It meant execution without exception, even for Captain Kirk. (Did anyone actually get executed for violating it? I’m curious…)

Jesus People are dying by violating their Prime Directive—not executed, but through exposure and weakness. Ours is not a threat, it confronts threats. Call it Great Commission, Jesus Revolution, or Prime Directive, the title should convey the power and protection Jesus gave us in Matthew 28:18-20, in case you don’t know it:

Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Christians who pray for God’s power and protection will find answers in the Great Commission, as God teaches us how to apprehend it:

• Protection: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” is cool, but cooler still, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the age.”
• Power: “Baptizing” and “teaching” is serious power that changes lives, families, communities, and even eternity.

Visit Laurie's site

Listen to Greg Laurie’s attached teaching about the Great Commission. He makes a tremendous point of how easy it is for any Christian to see immediately victory penetrating the spiritual darkness. The excitement of the Jesus Revolution is within grasp when Christians understand (and believe) the tremendous, spiritual authority they carry. It means understanding and teaching God’s Truth. This always unleashes the Jesus Revolution. (Note: check out Greg Laurie’s Harvest Ministry, a refreshing evangelist, great speaker–his site is a great wealth of info. Use the RSS news feed for “New Beginnings“, his weekly broadcast, also available in iTunes.)

Get Victorious!

Why are Christians struggling with insecurities and tragedies like non-Christians? Christians share the same divorce rate, and Christian homes are quickly becoming dysfunctional if 80% of the kids keep entering universities and adulthood  unimpressed by the Jesus Revolution. A better question is, why does Church History share so much common failure with non-Christian history? Bloody legacy and cruelty followed Church Institutions when they became government institutions (recent history certainly looks cleaner, thankfully).

Both individuals and communities immediately get strengthened and renewed with vision through the Great Commission. The opposite is true, too: the great struggles for Christian individuals and groups arise from disorientation with the Jesus Revolution, and I can prove it.

First consider the importance God assigns the Great Commission:

1. “All authority in heaven and on earth” is wrapped around it.
2. It brings eternal significant to all Christians, not the clergy-elite.
3. It transforms Christian lives by replacing old, useless priorities.
4. It defines purpose for the Church.
5. It is God’s Eternal Plan for “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Then consider the huge divergence between Christian products and God’s blueprints:

1. Church Institutions correspond little or none with the blueprints in Matthew 28. Substitute blueprints spawned the tragedies of Church History.
2. Individual Christians leave the Great Commission to “the church”, and build “home sweet home” without the power or protection of Matthew 28, and what tragedies these homes become.

If I were to depict the problem mathematically, it would look like this:

Matthew 28 describes a strategy for both Christian fellowships and individual Christians. Anyone can disciple, anyone can teach others “all that I commanded,” and any Believer can build eternal significance with the Prime Directive. The genius of Jesus frees His People from bureaucracy and red tape required by the Kosmos.

What Jesus gave us is sheer, strategic genius, and with only a few words! Nobody else in history nailed such an effective, precise, sweeping strategy. No other strategy is so portable to all time periods, from  the advent of “All authority!” (33 AD) to the Second Advent at “…the end of the ages!” Those two phrases are the milestones of God’s direct role in the grand scheme, and sandwiched in between is our role.

Jesus earned that authority, He owns it, and He shares it: “I am with you always!” The open question is whether we want it or not.

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