Following Jesus’ Orders A.S.A.P.!

Intro – From our study of King Jesus’ orders for all soldiers of the cross, we know that there is one imperative mood of command verb in our “Great Commission” assignment – “make disciples”. He expected these orders to be obeyed personally — by ever believer; progressively – extended to all people groups; pervasively – take to the ends of the earth, and promptly — ASAP – As-Soon-As-Possible!

In our text as found in both Matthew 9-10 and Luke 10, we can uncover five principles that help us follow Jesus’ orders and multiply followers. They all have the acronym ASAP so that they are easy to remember and pass on to others.

I. Asking Strategically Aimed Prayers – Lk 10:2

A.J. Gordon said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

Prayer is God Choosing to Partner with Us in Transferring the Kingdom of Heaven into the Earth

John Piper: “Prayer is the walkie-talkie of the Church on the battlefield of the world in the service of the Word. It is not a domestic intercom to increase the temporal comforts of the saints. It malfunctions in the hands of soldiers who go AWOL. It is for those on active duty.”

Prayer enables us to live in the awareness that the King of Kings and His kingdom is an always enveloping, always over us, ever present, all-encompassing, all-penetrating world of ultimate reality that is interactive at every point in our lives.
We must pray to the Lord of the Harvest for laborers in His harvest work that will be established in the apostolic pattern of intercede/proceed– to intercede for the harvest, and then proceed into the harvest. Crying out and going out was the disciple’s life rhythm (10.2).

(Please go to our website at TRIDM.org and read the remainder of this study. Print it out and teach it to your disciples!)

Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful.” This is the good news you have been waiting for. While the harvest is indeed plentiful, Jesus also adds: “but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2). As, pastors and leaders, I’m sure all of us can relate to the latter part of the verse. What he says next, however, is crucial. He tells us where to find workers and then shows us where they will come from. He has a plan. He is the Lord of the harvest. His plan is probably better than yours and mine. We should pay close attention.

Jesus says, “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” We need to go to the Lord of the harvest on our knees and beg him for workers. The word translated “beseech” means to beg as if your life depends on it. Why must we beg? Why such a strong word? I believe God wants us to want it that much. Jesus tells us to beg our Father. One can’t help but believe that if we obey Jesus’ admonition and beg God for a harvest of souls for his kingdom, he will grant our request with joy. It is what he wants—even more than you do! After all, He is the Lord of the harvest and has a vested interest in seeing it happen. So join him in his concern and repent for not wanting it like he does.

Before we stand on our feet to go we must bow on our knees in prayer to get a clear vision of what Father is doing and how desperately we need more laborers. Prayer must precede planning.

Practically, pray for God to enable you to put together a team, or teams of two. Note how Jesus sent out teams of “TWO” in Luke 10.

Then we should start a prayer chain or begin prayer walks if possible over the area the Lord is leading your team to start with. Begin to ask the Lord for the harvest and to raise up workers from within it. Ask the Lord to let you see what the spiritual strongholds are in the village or city. Then pray for God to destroy the strongholds. “For our battle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12).”

We must pray it out before we walk it out!

Campus Crusade for Christ, the world largest Christian Campus organization was started by a 24-hour prayer vigil on the UCLA campus. Founder Bill Bright decided before he would try to plan, strategize or reach out to the students, he would first pray for them. He formed a 24-hour prayer chain with college students from his local church asking God to open a door at UCLA to preach the Gospel. A short while after this prayer vigil God opened a door for Bill to preach to a sorority house where half the students gave their life to Jesus and in the following weeks 250 students on campus were saved including the Student Body President, Top Athletes, and Yearbook Editor!
Our commission is clear. As we are going we are to make disciples of all people groups in the world. As if this task were not overwhelming enough, our intelligence reports from the Word of God inform us that every step of our efforts will be vehemently contested by armies of invisible spiritual beings. In spite of this, we are charged with the mission of pressing back the forces of darkness on every hand and extending the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth until the end of time.

As we advance in the bold missions thrust of making disciples of all nations, what kind of weapons do we need? We need powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles to dislodge the enemies from their position in the heavenlies. This is exactly what we have in prayer. When God gets ready to make a massive assault on the kingdom of darkness, he always sets his people to praying. Heavy prayer will bombard heaven for the success of the effort.

II. A Sincerely Attentive People – Lk 10:1, 5, 7; Matt. 10:5

10:1, “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go.”
10:5, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’
10:7, “And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house.”

The second step is to look for sincerely attentive people who are unreached with the Gospel. In so doing, we discover God’s answer to our prayers for more workers – in the harvest field itself! In Jesus’ day, where would they expect the workers to come from – another church, the Bible college or seminary? –NO! Why? Because there were none! This means we should be about farming leaders in the harvest field and not robbing them from other churches or ministries! Neil Cole, “If we all started simply to obey what Jesus says in this pivotal passage, we would begin to see a great harvest. We would find the fruit we long for out in the fields, not in the barns or produce departments.”
In Luke 10 Jesus sent out the 70 to towns and villages (specifically the lost sheep of Israel). We are to look for the lost sheep, not those who are well, but those that are in need of a physician.

Jesus’ specific instructions to those going into the harvest fields:

• Go in faith, trusting God to provide for daily needs. Also don’t take so much money that you make the persons or the village dependent on outside funds for their success!
• Travel light and do not allow material things to weigh you down.
• Go with a sense of urgency.
• Do not allow lesser things to keep you from greater things.

Jesus instructed His disciples not to go the way of the Gentiles or the Samaritans but specifically the way of the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 10:5). He sent the disciples out in pairs to various cities and villages looking for a pocket of people, a community of lost souls who were attentive and receptive to the message of peace (Luke 10:1). He taught the disciples to spot a receptive oikos.

The context of Luke 10 is clearly eastern where sometimes as many as three generations and families of several siblings plus servants could make up a household. What does this look like in the western world where individualism is the norm and extended family relationships are not? Does the teaching of Jesus in Luke 10 extend across all cultural boundaries? Yes it does. In the west our families tend to be various sorts of interest groups. For example, the team leader of a multifaceted ministry in England joined the local cricket club and got involved in all aspects of the club.  What was the result?  Several club members became Christians and were baptized as followers of Jesus.

In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, Jesus sends his disciples out. He tells them to stay in one house, or oikos. The word really means a household; a social web of relationships. That’s where they find the man of peace. When he comes to faith, rather than extracting him from his oikos and into a church, he is positioned to transform his original oikos. That transformed network becomes the church.

(The following is a lengthy quote from Thom Wolf that is well worth the time it requires to read and re-read it!)

OIKOS EVANGELISM — Dr. Thom Wolf, “The basic thrust of the New Testament evangelism was not individual evangelism, it was not mass evangelism; and it was definitely not child evangelism. The normative pattern of evangelism in the early church was OIKOS EVANGELISM.

“Oikos Evangelism” What is it? Oikos is the Greek word most often translated house or household evangelism. But be careful. Don’t just assume you know what those words mean. Of course, we know their basic meaning in English. But what was their original connotation?

Oikos means a house. Specifically, it means an inhabited house in contrast to domos, the mere building itself. Thus, one can understand the significance of a house being a dwelling. Oikos was sometimes used to specify a certain kind of inhabited building such as a temple, a palace, or even a grave.

In a broader sense, oikos referred to one’s entire estate, people and property forming one family, a household, as the usage of oikos applied to the church would imply in Israel, the oikos included not only wife and children, but also servants and resident aliens. Thus, the command of Deuteronomy 12.7, “You shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household”, is explained by 12.12, “You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and daughters, your menservants and your maidservants.” (See also Deut. 14.26)

This same concept of oikos was just as basic in Graeco-Roman society and thought. Acts 10 has a casually given, though faithful, definition of oikos. It says that “Cornelius feared God with all his oikos/household” (10.2). An angel of God instructed Cornelius to send for Peter, saying “He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your oikos” (11.14) When Peter arrived, “Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his kinsmen and close friends persons” (10:24,27).

An oikos is a social system composed of those relate to each other through common ties and tasks. The New Testament oikos included members of the nuclear family, but extended to dependents, slaves and employees. Oikos members often lived together, but always sensed a close association with each other. And note this carefully, the oikos constituted the basic social unit by which the early church grew, spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord.

Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, confirms that “the (oikos) family understood in this broad way, as consisting of blood relations, slaves, clients and friends, was one of the bastions of Graeco-Roman society. Christian missionaries made a deliberate point of gaining whatever households they could as lighthouses, so to speak, from which the Gospel could illuminate the surrounding darkness.”

With only a moment of reflection, we begin to realize a significant difference of thrust, tone, and tenor between much contemporary evangelism and early church outreach.

The first church does not appear to have had a fanfare of mass campaigns for evangelism. They would have considered it foolishness to organize camel caravans for growth, bringing kids to Timothy’s Children’s Church with the promise of Bythinia Burgers after the services. (Tell me now, can you honestly imagine Silas and Titus as camel captains vying for the grand prize going to the camel team averaging the most children at the 1st Ecclesia of Ephesus??) But, joy of joys, the early church was not encumbered with the wholly unnatural (unnatural then and unnatural now) experience of forced evangelism; going reluctantly, flinchingly and embarrassingly door to door to encounter people they did not know, to explain a message which the first time often did not make sense, to an audience totally uninterested or unfriendly.

OIKOS EVANGELISM is the God-given and God-ordained means for naturally sharing our supernatural message. The early church spread through oikos evangelism-evangelizing family members who saw the old sinner become the new saint; sharing with the neighbor who questioned how such a difference had come over his old friend, and reaching the guys in the local trade union or the oikos that played tennis together.
It is here, also, that we catch an eye-burning hint of the key to oikos evangelism: Life transformation. If oikos evangelism is God’s key to the natural and rapid spread of the Good News, the life transformation is the key to oikos penetration and persuasion. Life transformation.

Maybe that is why some adults are forced into evangelizing only children. Could it be that the children do not yet see what the adult peer groups so clearly perceive-that one has become religious without becoming radiant? And could this also be a clue to why, all too often, the persons who are so gung-ho on doorbell evangelism seem –er, uh, well, not to offend anyone, they just seem a little strange? Now, don’t get me wrong. They are sincere; unquestionably so.

And they are enthusiastic; embarrassingly so. And yet, so help me, I’ve met a lot of them, and well…Could it be that some of us in the contemporary church who are so bold to evangelize “out there” fall fruitless “right here” in our own oikos? In the early church, it was the restoration of balance, the restitution of wrongs, and the fragrance of an enchanting new life that drew so many to the fledgling oikos of God.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your oikos.” (Acts 16:31 ) That is the apostolic answer to the question, “What must I do to be saved.” The spread of the faith is included in the reception of the faith. Oikos evangelism is God’s natural means to spread the Good News, for everyone who has ever, or will ever receive Christ. And the key that opens every oikos is life transformation through the indwelling of the living God.” Neil Cole refers to this oikos as a pocket of people and says, “When looking for a pocket of people remember the saying that bad people make good soil—there’s a lot of fertilizer in their lives.”

III. A Supernaturally Anticipated Presence – Mt. 10:7-8; Lk 10:10-12 — Lk. 10:1b, “…into every town and place where he himself was about to go.”

Notice that the 70 or 72 were sent into every town and place where he himself was about to go. As Jesus’ presence was anticipated to follow them, we should anticipate His presence to go before us, with us and be manifestly demonstrated in the ministries of mercy that we are authorized to do. Then we should expect the gospel announcement to be attended with His presence and power. Paul would write to the believer’s in Thessalonica,  “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction…”(1Th 1:5)

Jesus told the disciples as He sent them out that they had authority to do the works of God. He said: “As you go, preach this message: `The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:7-8). 

They were to announce that the Kingdom of God has come near, whether they were received or not (Luke 10:10—12). In the Great Commission, Jesus said these words: “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). That’s a lot of authority. In fact, it is all authority. There is no door that Jesus cannot unlock and open. He is the One who “opens the door and no one can shut it” (Rev. 3:7).

Neil Cole, “You belong to the King. The King lives in your heart. Wherever you go, the King goes. Wherever the King is, the King reigns; there is the Kingdom of God. Jesus is Lord over any place that you take him, because he goes with you (Matthew 28:20). Jesus is the light of the world. Wherever you go, you bring the light with you into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome the light. The gates of hell cannot stand against the light.”

C. H. Spurgeon, the great preacher of nineteenth-century England, preaching on this passage observed, “You have a factor here that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter what other factors may be? `I will do the best I can’, says one. Any fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he cannot do, attempts the impossible and performs it.”

And lo, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the age.”  Please note that the “lo” follows the “go”.  Herb Hodges, “The promise of Christ’s special Presence in this verse belongs only to those who are pouring their lives into all the prescribed activities to fulfill the Great Commission. In other words, you cannot validly claim the PROMISE unless you follow the PLAN. We will never have New Testament POWER until we follow New Testament PATTERNS.”

In other words, if you wonder where to find Jesus today, you must look where disciples are being made.  He by-passes many a church where sermons are preached (and even GOOD sermons), where prayers are prayed (and even SINCERE prayers), and where crowds gather (and they may even be BIG crowds), and goes to approve and anoint any person who is making disciples ACCORDING TO HIS NEW TESTAMENT PATTERN.  Do you want to know where Jesus will be attending church next Sunday?  Look for Him in a church where world-visionary, world-impacting reproducers of world-visionary, world-impacting reproducers are being made.  Not merely “good Christians”, mind you, because that is usually merely a humanistic brand of Christianity.  Jesus doesn’t attend and anoint and approve many churches and many believer’s lives because they don’t have on their hearts what God has on His heart, to “turn men into disciples in all nations.”  On the other hand, when God sees a disciple-making church (building disciples after His pattern and fully depending upon Him in this gigantic undertaking), He gets thoroughly involved there.  He gets down-right, in-right, up-right, out-right enthused and excited about it – and He joins that church right away.  And He will meet with the people of that church as long as He can enjoy Himself there.”

IV. A Sovereignly Appointed Person – Lk. 10:6

10:6, “And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.”

Jesus said to look for and even inquire about someone who would be receptive to our message of peace. When we find such a person, we are to stay there and reach his or her entire household (oikos). We are to eat what he or she eats and stay where he or she stays (Luke 10:6-7).

Erich Bridges — Baptist Press – “Missionaries have unearthed a scriptural approach to evangelism that’s often been ignored: find a “man of peace.”  When Jesus sent out the 70 to preach the good news, he commanded, “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. … Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you. … Do not move around from house to house. … Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you,’”(Luke 10:5-9, NIV).

A Southern Baptist missionary in Asia discovered the power of that advice when he entered a potentially hostile unreached village with a co-worker: “We prayed, ‘God we know you’re at work here or we wouldn’t be here. We need a man of peace who will take care of us until we can feel our way around this village and know if it’s safe or unsafe.’

“I started my stopwatch. We walked into the center of the village where the well was. A person approached me out of nowhere and said, ‘Have you eaten?’ We said, ‘Not yet.’ He said, ‘Well, come to my home.’ His name was Li, and he was the person of peace we wanted. I stopped my watch: three minutes, 21 seconds.”

Li fed them, and then properly introduced them to the village’s hard-faced leader — who might otherwise have ordered the strangers killed with long knives. Li told the village [leader], who was ill, that the newcomers’ God “is a great God, and they will pray for you.”

They prayed; the leader got better. He soon became a man of peace in his own right, opening his heart — and the whole village — to the Gospel.

Who is a “huios eirene” or a son (or daughter) of peace?” The Person of Peace is the one God has prepared to receive the Gospel into a community for the first time. Persons of peace are characterized by three things:

1. They are people of receptivity. They are open to the message of the person and the peace of Christ.
2. They are people of relational connections. They know lots of people and are an important part of the community, for better or worse.
3. They are people of reputation. They possess a reputation, whether it is good or bad.

The person of peace becomes the conduit for the passing of the message of the Kingdom to an entire community of lost people. The person’s reputation gives credence to the message and becomes a magnet for a new church. A poor reputation can often be the catalyst for a dynamic church as the whole community sees the life transforming power of Jesus.

There are numerous examples of persons of peace in the New Testament. Neil Cole likens them to the “first domino” people, who start a chain reaction for the Kingdom. When they became Christian, others within the oikos did so as well, often almost immediately. You will see that some were people of good reputation, and others had a bad reputation.

Lydia was a woman of good reputation. She was the seller of purple fabric, which was considered quite valuable. In Philippi, she was a well-respected businesswoman. When Paul and Silas found her near the river, they told her about Jesus and she became a follower, as did all her household or oikos.

The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 had a bad reputation. There is a reason she was down at the well during the hot afternoon when no one else would be there. As Jesus informs us, she had five husbands in her past, and the guy she was now hooked up with wasn’t her husband at all. After she came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, she brought her whole village to Jesus.

Cornelius had a good reputation with all men. When Peter brought the Gospel to him, his entire social web of relations (oikos) came to Christ (Acts 11:11-18).

The Gerasene Demoniac is a great example of a New Testament person of peace sent out to reach his own oikos. He was well known in the city, but with a bad reputation. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of him and permitted them to enter into a huge herd of swine, only to have them all plunge over a cliff into the water and drown, terrifying fear propelled the people to send Jesus away. Jesus goes where He is wanted and since they didn’t want him at the moment, He stepped back into the boat. The formerly demon-possessed man asked Jesus to take him along. Jesus did not allow him to come; instead, He sent him out, saying, “Go home to your people” (Mark used the word “house,” or oikos) “and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you.” Mark goes on to describe that “he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone marveled” (Mark 5:19, 20).

Only a few minutes before salvation and deliverance came to this man, he was the town freak. Yet Jesus sent him to a place called Decapolis (which means “ten cities”) after he had saved for only a few minutes, and now he was a missionary to ten cities. I have trouble with only one city, and I have been a believer for more than forty-five years. He had not taken a newcomers’ class, had not been through the discipleship curriculum, and did not even know his spiritual gift profile yet, but he was sent to ten cities. No doubt this man still had a few issues to work out! However a few minutes with Jesus was all it took. Amazing! If any one of us were to do this, we would be considered irresponsible. But Jesus did it.

Was the man effective? The next time Jesus went through that region, people were no longer afraid of Him. Probably because this man’s reputation was so well known (both before and after), thousands came to meet Jesus and brought their sick, their demonized, and their handicapped. Jesus not only healed them all but fed them too (Mark 7:31–8:10; cf. Matt. 15:29-38).

To find the God’s Oikos setting – Pray for an Open DOOR “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.” Colossians 4:3 NIV

Then Look for an Open DOOR to a new location (neighborhood, community, town, region) or to a new people group for a Discipling Outpost. An Open DOOR is a relational entry point into the lives of others in whom God is at work accomplishing his purpose in the world. It is a measure by which a disciple maker can know where to apply his resources I the multiplicative process of disciple making for the impact of a community or people group and then the world!

“A great door for effective work has opened to me…” 1 Corinthians 16:9 NIV
“Found that the Lord had opened a door for me.” 2 Corinthians 2:12 NIV
“I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.” Revelation 3:8

What to Look for
1) Divine Initiative: Cornelius had a vision; Jailer had earthquake, Lk 10 indicates a person
thrown down (NIV, “send out”…by Lord of harvest) forcefully to join the harvest in answer
to prayer
2) Oikos Links: Cornelius, Jailer, Lydia, and Person of Peace accounts all relate connectiveness
to the oikos (household, or enlarged family — a circle of influence)
3) Open Heart: Cornelius gathered his whole family to listen to what Peter had to say from God; Lydia was listening because God “opened her heart”; Jailer asked, “what must I do?” and the Luke 10 man of peace (Mt 10 calls him or her the “worthy person” or the “deserving” one) is expected to “welcome and listen” (Mt 10:14) to the words of the messenger.

How to Look

Initiate and expand spiritual conversation in multiples of settings and methods. Sow much seed
with view to finding a receptive heart that demonstrates the characteristics of an Open DOOR as described above. Below are some startup conversations for both catalytic and oikos setting. To name even the few below is dangerous. It is not intended to create a box into which you or the one with whom you share must be stuffed.

Experiment. Find out what works for you at work, among friends, with strangers, at the convenience store, etc. Then sow seed abundantly.

K.P. Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia, was asked  how do workers with “Gospel for Asia” evangelize villages in India who have no Christian witness and are often very hostile to the gospel?  He answered by stating that, “…workers move into the villages and do nothing but fast and pray for one week. Then they seek out the most demonized people, take them aside privately and cast out the demons. Word soon spreads like wildfire and this creates and openness and interest in the gospel.”

Here are some sample conversation starters that might be used as you approach ministry in a new area:
1. What are the biggest problems people face in the area or village?
2. How do most of the persons who live here feel about these problems?
3. What do you think would help solve these problems?
4. Would you think there might be any ways in which God could make a difference? How?
5. Would you be personally interested in exploring what God has to say? Explain that a small group of neighbors could be organized to look at what the Bible has to say to these kinds of issues.
6. Would you be interested? If yes, would you be interested in opening your home so that some of your family or neighbors might explore with you?

3) Enter the Open DOOR

Nurture a good hearted relationship by listening and caring; be credible, available, and reliable “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.” Titus 2:10 NAS “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’ “ Luke 10:5-10 NIV

4) Invite and assist the one who is the open DOOR to gather as many as 10 lost of his lost friends and family members friends to an exploratory get together.

V. A Scripturally Assigned Purpose

Instead of drawing people out of community and robbing what community already existed, Jesus’ plan is to inject the Gospel into an existing community. Like a virus, the peace of the Good News infects and transforms the community so that the members become a church themselves. So when the son or man of peace comes to faith in Christ, rather than extracting him from his oikos and into a church, he is to be positioned to transform his original oikos. That transformed network becomes the church.

Most people setting out to start new churches automatically think of starting in their own home. But Jesus’ idea of starting in the home of the new converts is a small shift with global implications. I suggest that if it takes longer to find an open home, it is worth the wait rather than starting in your own home. Trust Jesus’ plan. He felt it was a strong enough plan to repeat it.

One of the keys to maintaining the momentum of this  new movement is to be disciples in such a manner as to quickly work his/her way out of the new movement by modeling & training the new emerging leader to lead the new kingdom movement. In this way, the new movement will not be dependent on the movement planter to lead them, but they will indigenously take responsibility to lead themselves and reproduce leaders of their own kind naturally.

Pastor Jason Ma uses the acronym M.A.W.L. to describe the way we should move people into their scripturally assigned purpose of being the church where they are and getting fixed for reproduction of disciples with a local and world vision imparted.
Model — I DO, YOU WATCH
Assist — WE DO, WE WATCH
Watch — YOU DO, I WATCH
Leave — YOU DO!

The implications of the person of peace strategy for global, spontaneous, persistent and reproductive evangelism begs our attention.

For those of the 1st century, their market place was their ministry place. They did not wait for an ordained person to show up. In their thinking, they themselves were the ordinary person that God had raised up to be his hands of blessing to those around them. They themselves were the agents of change for the transformation of the culture.

The lifestyle discipleship pattern of the early Christianity can be seen in what Dr. Thom Wolf calls the Four O’s:

(1) They offered their lives personally — Having received life itself from the living resurrected Jesus, the earliest followers offered themselves as living sacrifices. This was accomplished through deep personal worldview transformation by the renewing of their minds and the recalibrating of the walk of their moral and behavioral lifestyles. Thus they daily proved out what was good, pleasing and acceptable as every life aspect came under the scrutiny of the living Jesus.

(2) They opened their homes generously — It is a well-documented fact that the homes of the earliest generation Christians became conversation hotspots. With conversion, every home became a viral social transformation recruitment center, for every home became a missionary base. They opened their homes to the new song, the new worship and the new adoration point of their lives, so that every home space became a sanctuary space.

(3) They operated their businesses with integrity — Turning to the God of truth turned them into people of truth, and that alone impacted economic activity. In the J-zone (the Jesus-zone), integrity flushed out corruption, honesty replaced deception, and reliability became the currency that Christians traded in. Work by employees became marked by excellence and wages judged as fair became the norm by employers convinced that they themselves had an Employer they answered to on the Day of the final audit.

(4) They were one with God spiritually — They were one with God their Father. The intercessory prayer of Jesus seemed almost instantaneously answered as the new movement carved out fresh lifestyles of wit, purity and compassion, and justice (John 17.13-26). It was as though they had a force shield about them, protecting them from the corrupt, tempting, and taunting culture that surrounded them, while transforming them within that culture.

They were in their societies, but they seemed, peculiarly, almost not of their societies (see John 17.15 with Acts 4.13-22). Their personal, intimate and daily oneness with Jesus, who had rescued them from themselves, was a strange attractor to others, drawing others in flowing numbers to join the new movement of fresh living.

Thus, all of those in the 1st century who saw themselves as God’s people, in all the life domains—technological, political, economic, social, educational, cultural—engaged in doing good deeds and sowing good seeds, creating good will and sharing good news, reaching, teaching, and releasing disciples for reproductive multiplication in every people group on the earth!

It is time to align our discipling efforts with Jesus’ ASAP approach—ASAP!