God dwells with His people, and they are missionaries whom He sends into the everyday stuff of life. Jesus intends to saturate the world with His presence through His Spirit in His people—His sent ones.
God dwelt with Adam and Eve in the garden and gave them a mission to accomplish with His presence and help. But when they rebelled against Him, He drove them out.
He dwelt with His people Israel while they traveled in the desert. Moses told God he would not go to the Promised Land unless God went with them. He asked God: “How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” (Ex. 33:16). Moses knew that it was God with them that gave them their identity, purpose, and power. Eventually, God instructed His people to build Him a dwelling place (the tabernacle), where He would dwell with them when they paused in their travels. When they finally arrived in the land, they eventually built a temple as a permanent place of dwelling for the Lord. Before God came to dwell in the tabernacle and temple, both had to be purified by the shedding of the blood of an innocent animal. Once the tabernacle or temple and its articles of worship were purified, God dwelt there.
However, a better dwelling place was to come. God wanted to dwell not only with His people. He wanted to dwell in His people.
So He sent the Son—Jesus.
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. God’s Son became flesh and dwelt among us. God set up His tabernacle—His temple—in the person of Jesus.
Now we become children of God through regeneration brought about by the same Holy Spirit. We are born again of the Spirit (John 3:3–9). When this happens, we are new creations with a new spiritual DNA. Christ, the very life of God, is in us. If we belong to Christ, we have the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9–11). The presence of God’s Spirit in our lives is the evidence that our lives have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for our sins. Just as God dwelt in the tabernacle and the temple after they had been cleansed, He now dwells in us, who by faith have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
We are the temple of the living God! God is present and living in us by His Spirit.
Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River before He began His earthly ministry. When He came out of the waters of baptism, the Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove and the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Jesus was assured of the Father’s love before He went out to love others.
The same is now true for us. We need the same affirmation. If we are going to show the world the love of the Father, we need to know we are dearly loved by Him as well!
Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). We are sent like Jesus, with the presence and power of the Spirit reminding us of the love of the Father.
We need the constant reminder that we are God’s dearly loved children. God gives us His Spirit to remind us that He is our true Father and He loves us very much.
Always on Mission
We have the Spirit of God in us so that we might be empowered, just as Jesus was. We are His missionaries, filled and anointed by His Spirit. If you have the Spirit of God, you are a missionary sent by Jesus to tell the world who He is and what He has done.
Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” Everywhere you go, whatever you do, you are a missionary sent by Jesus to love like Jesus, overcome sin like Jesus, proclaim the gospel like Jesus, and see people’s lives changed by the power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.
You are always on mission. Every part of your life, every activity and event, is part of Jesus’s mission to make disciples.
Remember, you are not alone on this mission. Jesus goes with you everywhere because His Spirit is in you to empower you to be His representative in the world. He wants to saturate your world in Word and deed by His presence at work in and through you by His Spirit.
Our baptism is a reminder of our new identity in Christ. We have been saturated with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have a new name because we are new creations that can do new works by the power of the Holy Spirit living in us. This is why Jesus places baptism first in the sequence of events of making disciples. He wants us to know who we are and what power we now have to do what He wants. His command for us to “[teach] them to observe all that I have commanded you” comes after we establish people in their new identity (Matt. 28:19–20).
Since you do who you are, you need to know who you are in Christ.
Knowing and believing who you are in Christ leads you to obey Jesus’s commands.
We are the Father’s family; therefore, we love others like He loved us.
We are servants of Christ; therefore, we serve the least of these as He served us.
We are missionaries filled and empowered by the same Spirit that was in Jesus; therefore, we are always on mission to proclaim the good news of Jesus.
Whatever He has done to us, He now wants to do through us to others.
I wrote a new guide to help disciples of Jesus share the good news of Jesus. Using the B.L.E.S.S. rhythms taken from Dave Ferguson and Jon Ferguson’s book: BLESS: 5 Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor and Change the World, this reflection exercise is one that a community could walk through together, or you could do on your own. We hope it provides a chance for prayerful reflection, clarity, and next steps as you serve and share Jesus with the people in your life who don’t yet know Him.
Sharing the Good News of Jesus is available now inside your Saturate membership.
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This article is an excerpt taken from Chapter 14 of Saturate: Being Disciples of Jesus in the Everyday Stuff of Life by Jeff Vanderstelt, ©2015, Crossway.
