One of the most well-known passages in Scripture is also a text that invokes a blend of longing mixed with conviction. Jesus’ soul-stirring-words at the close of Matthew’s gospel simultaneously causes our hearts to scream, “Yes” while our minds manufacture a stream of objections.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19–20a ESV)

As Christians, making disciples is something we want to do but too often don’t. Consequently, we can find ourselves carrying this nagging sense of failure over our lack of disciple making, but this is not where we were meant to live. The catalyst to making the Great Commission our life’s actual mission flows both from the posture of our prayers and the direction of God’s presence.

The Importance of the Word “Go.”

The human propensity is to insulate and isolate ourselves with people just like us to the point that it becomes more and more difficult to do what Jesus has command us to do. This is why “Go” in verse 19 is an imperative. A tiny word with massive implications. It not only compels us to leave the comfort and safety of our disciple saturated social circles, but it also compels us to pray differently.

As Christians, making disciples is something we want to do but too often don’t.

In surveying (albeit informally) the bulk of my evangelistic prayers, I have found that the ratio tends to favor prayers about God saving, and God bringing people to me. Neither is bad, but what I found all too scarce were prayers reflecting Jesus’ imperatives. My prayers don’t line up with Jesus’ call to action or His teaching about evangelistically driven prayer earlier in Matthew’s gospel.

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37–38, ESV)

So many Christians (myself included) are almost exclusively praying prayers in contrast to the explicit direction of the “Great Commission” (i.e.- “Lord send people my way”). The prayer that most naturally flows out of Matthew 28:19 is: “Lord, where do you want me to go?”

It seems that Jesus is calling us to reshape our prayers in a way that focuses less on God to bring them, and more on God sending us.

Jesus Gets It

Part of what makes these verses at the end of Matthew 28 so beautiful is what they tell us about Jesus. They clue us into the reality that He is well aware of the difficulties attached to this assignment.

It’s impossible to continually experience Jesus’ nearness without embracing His mission.

It is clear that Jesus understands that making disciples requires a massive amount of confidence in the truth that we are not alone. The final few words of Matthew’s Gospel are not just pretty or poetic; they are the lifeblood of the mission that we have been entrusted with.

Jesus said, “And behold” (or you could say “And don’t miss this”) “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That sounds comforting, and it is. Jesus is with me. However, these words are intended to provoke more than comfort. Jesus is on mission, and it’s impossible to continually experience Jesus’ nearness without embracing His mission. To grasp that the crucified and risen Lord of heaven and earth is with you is to understand that his presence is prodding you to invest yourself in the Great Commission wholeheartedly.

We go because we must. Going is essential. It is the mission you were created to fulfill.

I love coffee! I love thinking about it. I love the smell of it. I love drinking it—I love everything about it, but what I love most about coffee is how refreshing it is. Coffee can take a dreary morning and turn it into a bright day. A good cup of coffee can give you a new lease on life.

Like a fresh cup of coffee that energizes our mornings, there is nothing like having a freshness with God. Freshness opens our eyes and hearts to the new things God wants to do in our lives. If we desire to experience what God has for us, then there must be a shift in our thinking regarding certain aspects of our lives.

3 Things that Bring Certified Freshness:

1. Fresh Praise

When facing a difficult circumstance or situation where we have no idea what is going to happen, we can have the tendency to start asking questions like, “What do I do?” “Can anyone help me?”

We start questioning everything that’s happening in our lives and why it’s happening. This is generally because we have shifted our focus almost entirely to our circumstances rather than the One who has them under control. We allow our feelings of doubt to override our faith. When this happens, there’s one thing we must do: praise!

In Psalm 103, the psalmist starts with praise.

“Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things…” (Psalm 103:1-5a NIV)

Our attitude towards God shapes the way we approach God.

We must constantly and continually remind ourselves of who God is and what he is able to do in any season, situation, or circumstance. Our attitude towards God shapes the way we approach God. When we approach God with praise, like the psalmist, we will begin to be energized with life and faith, knowing that God is good and does good because we know that the God in Psalm 103 that, “heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion”, is the same God that wants to do that for us today! Fresh praise puts our thinking back in focus and increases our faith!

2. Fresh Perspective

Few things are more difficult than trying to live for God with an outlook full of condemnation. Condemnation drives us to work harder, be better, and do more for what God has already given us through Jesus. The work we do from condemnation is like an old gritty cup of coffee. We may not be able to tell it’s bad from merely looking at it, but once it’s tasted, it’s getting thrown out. Why? Because old coffee may have the caffeine we need, but its taste kills the joy of drinking it. Work done out of condemnation may be good work, but the feeling of never adding up kills our joy, peace, and our freshness with God.

Understanding who God is and what He has done for us through Jesus Christ will break us from the vicious cycle of performance. Paul, the writer of Romans, says this about the importance of God’s grace in the life of the Christian:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1-2 ESV).”

God’s grace removes the tiredness of, “meeting God halfway” and empowers us by the realization that God has already done everything for us.

God’s grace helps us grasp the life of freedom we have in Christ. God wants to work in our lives in order to strengthen us, build our faith, and bless others because of His love for us. When we capture the fresh grace of God in our lives, we will feel the baggage of failure, disappointment, and lack of ability lift from our shoulders. God’s finished and completed work through Jesus Christ, puts the focus on what Jesus has done and not what we are attempting to do for Him. God’s grace removes the tiredness of, “meeting God halfway” and empowers us by the realization that God has already done everything for us.

If we are focused on performance, we will never walk in God’s power and grace! This change in perspective will move us from sitting on the sidelines of life, to becoming an active part of what God is doing. God’s grace is essential to a fresh perspective, which in turn brings renewed freshness in our walk with Him!

3. Fresh Faith

Some people seem to view doubt almost like a badge of honor, but doubt is like a cold cup of decaf coffee. It is useless. It has no power to energize us or bring life to our situation. Walking and living in doubt is cold, bitter, and worthless when desiring the freshness of faith in God’s power and presence in our lives.

James 1:5-8 says, “Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open” (MSG).

Doubt will detour us from the fresh faith God wants to give us as we walk with him.

God wants to energize our faith, but are we praying in faith or are we filled with worry? Doubt will detour us from the fresh faith God wants to give us as we walk with him.

Jesus says this in Matthew 17:20, “. . . I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

We can be assured, knowing what Jesus has done for us, that we can put our trust in Him. Fresh faith enables us to see God moving in new ways through our prayers.

A Fresh praise helps us magnify God; a fresh perspective helps us come before God, and a fresh faith helps us confidently serve God. No matter what we are facing, God wants to do something fresh in our lives. The question is, do we see that? And if we do, will we pursue it?

Healthy spirituality is violent. It’s ruthless. It’s unrelenting. The object of this violence is not people or other religions or competing ideologies. The target is sin. The Puritan pastor and writer, John Owen, famously wrote, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you” (I hope I didn’t just lose you at Puritan). This statement echoes the depiction of sin’s deadly prowess found in the opening pages of Scripture. God warns Cain in Genesis 4:7 “… watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

Sin is not passive. It’s ready to strike. It lays in hiding. It desires to rule your life. This is the sinister nature of sin, and if it is not met with violence, it will always bring destruction.

Six Results of Not Battling Sin

Here are some of the most essential truths that flow from the pages of John Owen’s 86-page book on the importance of the killing sin, which show up in his detailed description of the effect that unopposed sin has in the life of a Christian.

Sin is not passive. It’s ready to strike. It lays in hiding. It desires to rule your life.

1. Sin darkens the soul and deprives it of comfort and peace.

Sin will always have this effect. Owen writes, “Every unmortified sin will do two things: it will weaken the soul and deprive it of its vigor. It will darken the soul and deprive it of its comfort and peace.” Throughout Scripture, God’s work and word are associated with light. They have the power to drive out darkness, but sin has the opposite effect. The Gospel of John says, “God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil” (John 3:19, NLT). God brings light. Sin always brings death and darkness, and wherever it is present, darkness creeps in robs the soul of comfort and peace.

2. Sin weakens the soul and deprives it of its strength.

“An unmortified lust will drink up the spirit and all the vigor of the soul, and weaken it for all duties.” When Owen uses the word “duties,” he is talking about the spiritual disciplines that of the Christian life, in particular reading the Bible, praying and gaining the spiritual strength that flows from these practices. On the other hand, when sin is allowed to go unchallenged it weakens not only our desire for what produces strength but also our strength itself.

When sin is allowed to go unchallenged it weakens not only our desire for what produces strength but also our strength itself.

This is the Psalmist’s experience, “There is no strength in my bones because of my sin. For my sins have flooded over my head; they are a burden too heavy for me to bear” (Psalm 38:3a–4, HCSB).

3. Sin untunes our hearts.

We are what we love, and if sin is not opposed it will distort our desires and reduce our sensitivity to God’s voice. Owen notes that “It diverts the heart from the spiritual frame that is required for vigorous communion with God; it lays hold on the affections, rendering its object beloved and desirable, so expelling the love of the Father.” Part of what Owen is saying here is that sin wants to own your heart, and if you don’t fight it, it will.

4. Sin makes room for more sin.

When sin is given space in our hearts, it crowds out what should fill our hearts. Owen writes, “Thoughts are the great purveyors of the soul to bring in provision to satisfy its affections; and if sin remain unmortified in the heart, they must ever and [always] be making provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

5. Sin redirects our time and attention away from God.

Sin steals the time and attention we need to deepen our relationship with our Creator. Owen says whether it’s consuming ambition or vanity or greed or sexual desire, or any sin issue you can name, if left unaddressed, sin will divert our focus away from what ultimately matters. Sin’s desire is not simply to make people engage in a certain action but to consume their capacity to worship God by monopolizing our time.

6. Sin diminishes the privilege of our adoption.

One of the most beautiful truths of the Christian life is the reality that in Christ we have been brought into the family of God. Sin had separated us, but God, through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection has brought us near. God deeply, personally cares about you as His child.

One of the most beautiful truths of the Christian life is the reality that in Christ we have been brought into the family of God.

Sin diminishes our grasp and awe of this reality. “It is a cloud, a thick cloud that spreads itself over the face of the soul and intercepts all the beams of God’s love and favor. It takes away all sense of the privilege of our adoption; and if the soul begins to gather up thoughts of consolation, sin quickly scatters them.”

So, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Be killing sin so you can live the life God designed you to live walking in the light, strength, and sensitivity to God’s voice, more and more free from sin, focused on God, and continually growing in your amazement of your place in His family!

*John Owen’s book The Mortification of Sin in Believers is part of a larger book entitled Overcoming Sin and Temptation. You can order it here.