What a journey we have been on together!

My prayer is that on this journey, no matter where you began from, you have learned something new about Jesus that has changed your life and that you have been able to know Him more than you did before you ever picked up this book.

I pray that whether you began this journey standing on the bank of the river or out in the water up to your waist, that now you are standing even if just a little deeper in the river of God than you were before you’ve ever been.

Now, as we close, I get to tell you one of the most important things that I can tell anyone who has truly met Jesus.

And that is this…

Those who meet Jesus create spaces for others to do the same.

That’s right! You can lead someone to have the very same experience that you have had with Jesus. And as a matter of fact, this is exactly how we fulfill God’s will and purpose in our lives.

Helping others meet and then become followers of Jesus is central to the purpose that Jesus has for each and every one of our lives. If you are looking for your purpose or your calling, this is it. Look no further.

And for that matter, nothing that God will ever call you to do additionally from this point will ever get in the way of this call. As anything that God may call you to do here and out will be a means to further support and fulfill this foundational call that He has given to all who have met Him.

In fact, this has been God’s strategy since the beginning of His church.

I’ll prove it to you! Or, rather, we will let the Bible do the proving. I’ll just read it with you.

Just before Jesus ascended into Heaven, He gave His disciples a commission. And that commission was to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15).

Simple enough, right?

Essentially, what Jesus was saying was… those of you who have met me... I am sending you out to go create spaces for others to do the same.

“Me? Lead someone to meet Jesus?”

YES! You can. And God is telling you to go do it.

As a matter of fact, God has given you supernatural power to do so!

This is exactly what Jesus was saying in Acts 1:8 to His disciples when He said that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon” them, and that they would “be witnesses to” Him “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Jesus was saying that when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, He was, through that experience, going to give us everything that we needed to help other people meet Him too.

Meeting Jesus has a twofold purpose:

  1. To reconcile you back to Himself.
  2. To empower and send you out to help others experience the same.

This is what people who have met Jesus do. Full stop.

Or, at least, in Jesus’ eyes, are supposed to be doing.

I know that there are some streams of Christianity that don’t call for disciples of Jesus to embrace the missional call that Jesus gave in Mark 16 and Matthew 28, maybe as radically as I am in this book. But do we really want to dilute the purpose that Jesus has for His church, just to satisfy our present comforts?

Let me just reference briefly a writing from Paul in Ephesians 4:11, where Paul writes that the reason God has supplied the equipping gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the church… was “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).

Yep. You read that right.

The saints (which if you have been born again, you are) are to be equipped to do the work of the ministry.

What ministry?

To create spaces for people to meet and follow Jesus.

Jesus was so seriously burdened by this that the only prayer request that He ever made in the Gospels was this one:

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38).

This is Jesus’ plan to save the world.

To enlist and empower those who have met Him to create spaces for others to meet Him too. And then, those who have met Him, in turn go out to create spaces for others to meet Him.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

This is how the disciples in the Book of Acts, without the assistance of modern technological advancements such as the internet, the telephone, email, social media, streaming, and more “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

Because one person who met Jesus turned around and helped someone else do the same.

There is a special supernatural assistance and grace from God that will surely come into your life as you fulfill Jesus’ commission to help other people meet Him and become His followers.

Jesus will help you. His Spirit is within you. He will give you the words to say, the places to go, and highlight the people to talk to.

In the Book of Acts 4:33, Luke writes that “with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33).

Power? What power? That is the power of the Holy Spirit! And as they put this great power to its function, being witnesses of the resurrection (which is the gospel of Jesus), God poured out great grace upon them all.

The word great here in the original Greek language in which Luke penned it means “mega” or “loud”! When we partake in Jesus’ mission to help more people meet Him and, in turn, be transformed by His gospel, and ultimately become His disciples who follow Him, we become eligible recipients of the great grace of God for the task.

Will you do it? Will you accept Jesus’ call? Will you go out into the harvest fields that Jesus declared are “white, ripe and ready for harvest” and help somebody meet Him? (John 4:35).

If you do, I want to warn you. You won’t be able to stop. And your life will be filled with an abundance of joy, peace, hope, and the continual overflowing presence of God.

Again, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now, my final words to you in this journey together.

Mold grows in the dark, and algae grows in stagnant water.

Jesus’ invitation to meet and then follow Him is an invitation to “walk in the light as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7), and to let the river of God’s Spirit, which is His “rivers of living water,” flow out of our hearts (John 7:38).

This is your moment to let your light shine and to let the river of God flow through you!

This missional life in Jesus, of helping others to meet Him, is part of the recipe that keeps the flow moving and the light from being hidden.

As you live this way, in helping others meet Jesus, you will truly discover what it means to have met Jesus yourself and having become His disciple.

A Christian. A true first-century disciple in the twenty-first century. A true follower, and disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, take whatever tools and knowledge that you have gained from this book and help someone else meet Him as we all participate together in Jesus’ kingdom mission to see His kingdom come and His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:10).

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